I imagine a bunch of violins and bowed double basses, like 40.  For the verse they are played mostly drone, but heavy on the vibrato and harmonics, maybe 2 or 3 parts. It would pick up a little for the chorus, melodic, but not lush (think John Cale rather than Spiritualized).

The ending could go in a couple of directions- either ascending pitch a la Day in the Life or Ligetti (not positive about that reference)..

…. or it could go all atonal/microtonal, still very drone, but more intense- distorted & harmonic.

Jimmy’s awesome drumming keeps everything moving.

Just an idea, might be mush in practice.

The Kraak festival in Belgium on March 6th

March 10th in Gent, Belgium

March 11th @Loppen in the free city of Christiania, Copenhagen.

Drop Sean a line if you want even more details

Side 1:

Horsey – Provider

Refrigerator – Running Along

Speed Bumps – Impending

New Bad Things – Forecast

Loren Mazzacane – Out Alone

Blah Blah Blah – American Tourist 1 & 2

Side 2

Shoeface – The longest day

Plastic Horn Devil – Aging Slab

Jupiteria – Talk like kids

Bugskull – It’s gonna be pretty angular

Paste – Shell Oil

Junket – 4 Minutes too long

In Portland’s hallowed history of rock, Bugskull is a shadowy influence. Born in 1991 as the bedroom four-track project of Sean Byrne, by the mid-90s the band had evolved into a three-piece rock ensemble—Byrne on guitar and vocals, Brendan Bell on bass, and James Yu on drums—weaving a spacy spell for the lucky attendees of their live shows, and releasing a handful of utterly unique albums incorporating elements of electronic music, raga, and alternately plaintive and poppy vocal work. Called Portland’s “sleeping giants” by Snipehunt magazine, the band reforms for an evening of soulful inner space travel. Be there when the giants awaken.

After landing its first album-length cassette Subversives in the Midst (Shrimper, 1992), Bugskull produced a slew of self-released cassettes and then a 10-inch self-titled EP (Quixotic, 1993). The band continued to redefine lo-fi experimentalism with Phantasies and Senseitions (Road Cone, 1994), Crock: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Pop Secret, 1995), and Snakland (Scratch, 1995). Byrne continued producing work after the band’s dissolution in 1996, including Distracted Snowflake Volume One (Pop Secret, 1997), Distracted Snowflake Volume Two (Scratch, 1997), and Bugskull vs. The Big White Cloud (Scratch, 2002). Communication (Digitalis Recordings) will be released Fall 2009.

The performance is accompanied by a live mix of projected images by Portland filmmaker Steve Doughton’s collection of original and found films.

Bugskull breathe ingenuity like the rest of us mortals inhale oxygen.

Alternative Press

Bügsküll’s progression from clumsy yet endearing indie-pop to puzzling electronic experimentation is quite amazing, but the seeds were there from the very beginning. Originating with the home recording efforts of Portland, Oregon singer/guitarist/organist Sean Byrne, Bügsküll followed a bunch of cassette releases with a three-song 10-inch. While it strays too close to the legions of Pavement and Galaxie 500 pretenders common at the time, it does manage to transcend these influences and stand as an unchallenging, yet thoroughly enjoyable, introduction.

Phantasies and Senseitions brings Bugskull (the umlauts didn’t last) beyond the realm of indie rock to embrace Brian Eno and Residents’ twisted take on pop music. Songs like “Concave Life” and “Almost Blue” are pop, but distorted and refracted through funhouse mirrors and prisms. It’s clear that Bugskull is preparing to stretch its awkward wings and fly away somewhere.

Bugskull not only flew off into the distance, but left the goddamn planet with their next release. Keep all the electronic noodling, tape loops and absurd humor from the group’s previous work, and toss away all the structure and songcraft that formerly came with it, and that’s Crock. Hallucinogenic and bizarre, Crock sounds like nothing else released that year.

Snakland sounds like a bunch of friends sitting around getting high in a basement while attempting to craft psychedelic epic with cheap keyboards and a sampler. It’s a disappointment, to be sure, but a retarded charm still shines through. These ramshackle songs sound held together by only a wad of gum and a prayer, but gems like “From the Skies” suggest a Magical Mystery Tour for the ’90s.

Pretty much pared back down to Byrne, Bugskull made Distracted Snowflake Volume One, supposedly the story of a small spotted gnome named Clearance Sale as she searches for the ocean. Byrne must have become enamored with current developments in electronica, since some of the backing tracks wouldn’t sound out of place on an Autechre album. Bugskull may continue to incorporate new influences into its mix, but the group still exists in its own little universe.

[Bill Cohen]

This piece was first published in Badaboom Gramophone #3.

Portland’s “sleeping giants” (Snipehunt magazine) reawaken after a long hibernation with this eagerly anticipated reunion gig. Bugskull, largely the project of Sean Byrne, emerged in the early ’90s with relatively straightforward pop rock. But soon Byrne & Co. delved deep into the world of ambience and electronics with legendary albums like Phantasies and Senseitions and Distracted Snowflake Volume One, which explored the outer brainscapes of music, littered with found sound, squeaks, whistles, drones, and hallucinations. For all its freakiness, however, Bugskull’s music retained humanity and warmth, and its harsher tendencies were always tempered by soothing balms of sound that were dizzying in their beauty and musicality. With the largely folk and indie fonts of Portland music at their critical peak, the time has never been riper for the local music scene to rediscover Bugskull. Fans of avant-garde, Krautrock, noise, ambient, and psych will do well to turn their ears back to a sound whose time may, just now, finally be coming.

Bugskull followed, playing meandering, stoner rock that breezily sailed without causing too many ripples. Their music was at all times pleasantly hypnotic, even causing a few brief moments of transcendence. A new song and a Pink Floyd cover aside (“Fearless”), much of their old material was unfamiliar to the audience, a symptom of their being overlooked and on ice for so long. Indeed, Bugskull’s inactivity seemed obvious at a couple points, but if they become an ongoing concern again—and I hope they do—there is no reason why, with a bit more practice and tightness, they won’t quickly become one of the best bands in town. They played in front of a charming collection of stock footage, which ranged from instructional filmstrips to surf flicks to arty dance film to stop-motion animation. It was tough to look away.

Experimental pop group Bügsküll began its existence as the solo project of Portland, OR-based singer/composer Sean Byrne, and was launched in 1992 with the release of the Shrimper cassette Subversives in the Midst. While early releases like the cassettes Gargamelodies and Magic Tremelo consisted of Byrne’s fractured guitar pop fleshed out by tape loops and samples, by the time of a 1993 self-titled ten-inch for the Quixotic label, Bügsküll had become a true band with the additions of bassist Brendan Bell and drummer James Yu. Split singles with Sone and Quasi followed in 1994 prior to the release of the group’s first full-length effort, the excellent Phantasies & Senseitions; the follow-up, Crock–Original Motion Picture Soundrack, appeared in 1995. Following the release of 1997′s Distracted Snowflake, Volume 1, the steady flow of Bügsküll material trickled to a halt, prompting many to predict the band’s demise; 1999′s Distracted Snowflake, Volume 2 disproved the notion, although the contributions of both Bell and Yu were at best minimal, returning the project to its solo roots. Byrne and Yu also teamed in Big White Cloud.