All things ü
in 1993 or thereabouts, we put the word out that we wanted to release a Pink Floyd tribute. We received some great submissions, and, in the spirit of the times threw a memorable party to celebrate the release.
Track list:
Side One
Jeff Byles : The Gold its in the…
Sone : She Took a Long Cold Look
Side Two
Goosewind : Another Brick in the Wall
Vixen Hailer : Brain Damage/Eclipse
The Italian magazine Blow Up has reviewed a number of bugskull releases. Thanks to Luigi from UnderwaterNow who sent and translated several of their reviews:
BUGSKULL “Snakland” (Scratch)
arrangement, with flutes, clarinets, electronic gadgets everywhere and continuous games and exchange of roles between guitar, drums, keyboards and bass, which overlap and challenge the listener in a melange of sounds that fascinate the most stoned Julian Cope outweighed left to madness and sometimes even genius. But do not imagine confusings music: at best they are confusing. The young men who come up with all three (in small lineup compared to the first album) and called Sean Byrne, Brendan Bell and James Yu and for this their third LP still widening the net of its electronic sound while eliminating nearly all the vocal parts and the tepid folk accemts. The CD is great, although we must admit that the debut had better songs, more measured and calibrated. Here the band is spreading, stretching and jarring. They have also managed to avoid the tendency to get lost in your own sound. It will be easy but fall in love with the art of lysergic lullabies of Snakland and From the skies , as well as with the robotic camouflated rhythms of Bouncer. It will be a pleasure to immerse yourself in that psychedelic oceanic remnant a la Mercury Rev that goes under the name of Mind Phaser and then drown in the following Egg chamber, capable of flirting with the environment. It is almost logical, then, to expect a tour de force as the Final Exit Wound, 11 minutes, where the multiple influences add up and break down into an excellent picture of acid post ambient. Missing this would mean neglecting one of the most intriguing musical experiences of recent months.
(8) (Stefano I. Bianchi)
This extensive biography is written by Piero Scarufi, and is mostly accurate.
The Bugskull project was started in 1992 by Sean Byrne in Portland, and was originally meant to be a private endeavour in the realm of avantgarde folk-rock. Two tapes were released for the Shimper and Eldest Son labels. A few years later Byrne was leading a trio, also called Bugskull, which included multi-instrumentist Brandan Bell and percussionist James Yu. In the meantime, Byrne had made a reputation as a surreal and dark songwriter with a fistful of increasingly popular singles. The gentle and intellectual minstrel of Fences/ Stiff As A Board (Road Cone, 1993) slowly mutated into the abrasive and dissonant experimenter of False Alarm/ Sunny Day Song (Quixotic, 1994), a master of bizarre orchestration (bells, violin, organ), and would soon mature as a shy and awkward Syd Barrett of the underworld with The Bloat (Ross, 1995), his most regular song so far.
The first Bugskull album, Phantasies And Senseitions (Road Cone, 1994), is a fantastic collage of sonic nonsense. The (mostly short) fragments rarely coalesce into a true song. They proudly exhibit a dadaist persona, although they are often conducted at funereal pace. It’s like listening to Frank Zappa or the Residents transformed into serious composers. The Intro, embellished by an orchestra which is tuning the struments, is an allegorical manifesto of Byrne’s ambitions. If such a thing as symphonic garage-rock can exist, instrumental piece Shorty could claim to be its archetype. Bugskull’s music is rock, and certainly garage-style rock, but the atmosphere is hardly ‘garagey”, rather somber and threatening. The keyboards play a solemn requiem that contrasts ghoulishly with the guitars’ theme and the drums’ pace. Another instrumental piece, Old Towne, is instead a delicate lullaby full of nostalgy, its tender melody hummed by a clarinet: were it be played by guitars only, it would fit in a Leo Kottke album. Elfin Magic‘s minimalist fanfare is created by looping frogs, flutes and organs. Long Corridor manages to compose a jam of industrial music for broken objects, hissing, metronomies and pots. as far an instrumental rock goes, all of these tracks are masterpieces that revolutionize the traditional genres. You wouldn’t believe that they last only two minutes or so…
However, the core of the album is the songs. Bugskull do not disappoint when they sing, although “sing” is not the appropriate term: the songs are “recited” in a tone which is annoyed and depressed; they are arranged in a madly spartan way, below “lo-fi” level, and developed through a logic that is without logic. Recoder is almost a classical piece masqueraded by rock song.
The setting is often more important than the singing. The cadaveric whisper of Opening Theme surfs through cycles of out-of-tune violin and our-of-mind flute. Byrne strums casually on a terrifying background of noise in Death Valley ’94. The jazz-flavored chaos of Almost Blue yields the least humane clarinet solo since the times of Captain Beefheart. Seguara soars in hypnotic jamming. Concrete Boots expands in a magma of hallucinated echoes. Inhuman is steeped in musique concrete and electronic turbulences. The catalogue of impersonations is endless. Possibly, the apex is reached with Concave Life, when Byrne’s distorted whisper delves in drones and rhythms which smell exoteric. What these songs share is that they are situated in a sonic and moral landscape which is extremely depleted. This landscape, this tragic waste land, is interior, psychological, and almost trascendent. Bugskull’s music tests the subconscious, adrift in the vast ocean of irrationality. Bugskull’s feast of fatal harmonic mistakes and gross sonic misunderstandings, is unrivaled, except maybe for the german band Faust, 25 years before.
when you least expect it, Byrne manufactures two regular songs: Sit On This and Olympic. On another planet the latter could become a hit.
Byrne, which has behaved for most of the album, vents his avantgarde libido with the abstract piece of Space, a blasphemous hybrid of John Cage, free-jazz and Edgar Varese.
As far as “lo-fi” rock goes, Bugskull may be vaguely related to Pavement and Guided By Voices, but the level of creativity is just tremendously higher. It’s not the melodies (and it’s not the lyrics), but rather the sonic landscape as a whole, and each detail in particular. Red Crayola, Supreme Dicks, Faust, are probably better reference points.
The soundtrack in seven movements of Crock (Pop Secret, 1995), composed by Byrne, represents a pantagruelic summa of psychedelic, ambient and progressive music. The pieces are entirely played on electronic machines and on guitar (itself deeply manipulated). The rhythmic attack of Storm The Fort, between Neu and Morton Subotnick, coexists with the intense quiet of Pretty Boy’s Tent, the jazz fusion innuendos of The Lost Patrol Relax In The Sun coexist with the ghostly carillon of The Lost Patrol Return Home. The album has two supreme moments: The Lost Patrol’s Psychedelic Exp‘s nine minutes of abstract noise and The Cactus Corps‘s sixteen minutes of intergalactic meandering. The latter more than justifies the album’s excesses with a continuous discharge of abrasive shocks at frantic pace. Sean Byrne, which started his musical career by composing tape-loop music, and Brendan Bell, who seems responsible for most of the arrangements, have become two of the most fervid minds of our times.
Snakland (Scratch, 1996) continues, instead Byrne’s experiments with the rock song format, and in particular his knack for wrapping it into layers and layers of electronics and cacophony (a method reminiscent of Silver Apples). The majority of the tracks are hard to define, but the most accessible ones are a fanta-psychedelic mixture of Hawkwind, Red Crayola and Pink Floyd.
As usual, the first track, Bring The Clowns, is a metaphor for the entire album: a collage of samplings that yields a fanfare for clarinet, violin, keyboards and guitar. The album picks up speed with the psychedelic merry-go-round of Mind Phaser, led by abominable guitar feedbacks, and with the dadaist piece of Egg Chamber, littered with little noises. Another instrumental track, Bouncer, bleeds electronic maelstroms and distorted riffs from a tribal rhythm. The lengthy Exit Wound (eleven minutes) opens at the martial pace of a native american ritual but slowly deteriorates into a hodgepodge of cacophony (samplings, guitar distortions, electronic hissings, assorted percussions).
Less abstract, more expressionistic, less surreale of the previous albums, Snarkland has also more of a rock feeling (guitar and drums are prominent), although the founding principle remains the idea of making music that does not sound like music anymore.
Phantasies And Senseitions (Road Cone), Crock (Pop Secret) and Snakland, not to mention the countless singles, must be ranked among the masterpieces of the last decade.
Byrne has also recorded the 7″ Instress Volume 3 (Road Cone, 1996), which is credited to Capital Eye. The track Subplot is a return to his avantgarde origins.
Burne is basically alone for Distracted Snowflake Volume One (Pop Secret, 1997), a concept album which expounds one more time the “lo-fi” song format but arranges it like avantgarde music (Flowers Smile, Grand Canyon, all the way to the casual humming in the pandemonium of Vacancy).
The album’s key numbers are still the dadaist pieces. His scores are not only unpredictable, they are also futuristic. It’s amazing how in Icecream Daydream the organ’s catchy carillon is sustained by a tepid polirhythm pulsed by bass and keyboards. Another limping rhythm, again obtained by overlapping rhythmic events, leads the synthetizes tune of Winky’s Wild Ride. These tracks share the same minimalistic praxis: the song is built little by little by repeating a slowly changing theme and by overdubbing a handful of heterogeneous events. In Goodbye the melodic theme is “played” by the bells, while the percussions are left wild in the foreground.
A distorted, gigantic, martially paced riff, a vortex of sampled voices, and electronic sounds open Sun in the most metaphysical manner. Guitars and keyboards duel to the end. Indian-style percussions prevail over everything and turn the grand finale into a psychedelic raga updated to cosmic music.
As a whole, this is Byrne’s most experimental work, an album which takes him into a new genre of music.
Distracted Snowflake Volume Two (Scratch, 1999)
Despite the usual rainfall of noisy detours, The Big While Cloud (Scratch, 2002) is Bugskull’s most relaxed and accessible album.
This interview was conducted by Dan Cohoon and is reprinted with permission from Amplitude Equals One Over Frequency Squared
Sean Byrne interviewed @ Laurelhurst Park
Portland, Oregon (Fall of 1999) by Dan Cohoon
DC: What is the history of Bugskull?
SB: It started out in 1991 with me just recording stuff on a cassette four track. I put together a tape that Shrimper put out. James played a little on that. I got a drum set for James and Brendan joined the band.
DC: Was that the tape with the long piano piece on one side? What was the name of that?
SB: Subversives in the Midst. We had another name for that called Musk Grove Complex.
DKC: Who is in the band?
SB: When we were a band unit that performed and practiced it was me and James and Brendan.
DKC: What do you think of Lo-Fi as an aesthetic choice as opposed to something you do out of necessity?
SB: (pause) I think that is a good question. (laughs) I think a lot of people misinterpret what lo-fi was all about. Everyone thought that it was about people deciding to make things sound a certain way. I think people were using the only resources they had. I think it was more of an economic movement then an artistic movement. (pause) What do you think of that?
DC: I always loved lo-fi. I love the sound of lo-fi. I kind of miss it when bands get more resources and are able to record at a higher sound quality. The new Sebadoh record is just not the same.
SB: It creates a different way of working. This changes what the way you create. In one circumstance you can create at home when ever you want. When you go into a studio you all ready have to be prepared. You are not allowed to be as spontaneous.
DC: You write both songs and do a sound piece is there a difference between the two or how you go about making them?
SB: No, it depends on the situation. The sound pieces all come out of recording. Some times I write songs before I record. Sometimes I will be recording a sound piece, after I got the ambiance there, I then write a song over the top of that. Creating a space first then putting a song in.
DKC: What kind of music did you grow up listening to or what did your parents listen to.
SB: My parents didn’t listen to music that much they used to have Kingston Trio records and Joan Biaez. But they really didn’t listen to them all that much, thankfully. My Mom would always have KEX which would play seventies easy listening music like the Rose and Neil Diamond. That is what I heard most. Then I got into Heavy Metal (because of my older brother). Van Halen pretty big, Ozzy Osborne, Judas Priest, and Pink Floyd. I got really into Pink Floyd… Then I got into Classic Rock, Jimmy Hendrix, when I heard him he was my hero. I got into the Meat Puppets when I was 14. That was a pretty big influence on me. His guitar playing is incredible. Its been evolving, It seems like its constantly changing. Now I get mostly Jazz records and weird ambient stuff. I have gotten into Gil Evans. He did the Miles Davis record Sketches of Spain He arranged the whole thing. He does real cool stuff like real spacey totally different than most jazz.
DC: When you’re creating music are you thinking about a particular response of the listener?
SB: I guess so mean when I am creating it, I am the listener. So I guess I am looking for a response from myself. Hopefully that will translate to other people. I try to make something that I will want to listen to later. After I make something I cannot really step away from the creation of it and to be able to listen to it as a completely separate thing.
DC: Is there a reason why you don’t play out that often?
SB: Well we used to but that was back in ninety-six. At that time we went on tour around the states. I think we were all moving in different directions, we wanted to do other things, not necessarily musically. We had been living together for awhile. The band had been the main focus. I think there were certain limitations to that and everyone wanted to find different things to do. There is something about playing out live that I find a little stifling to the creative process. If you always got shows lined up then you end up being forced to write something new. Not necessarily because there is something new coming out but because you have a performance. For me that is not really a good way to try and write. I’m slow. Allot of the songs when I am recording the basic Idea, then it will be maybe a year where I will basically sit on it before I’ll try to finish it up. Sometimes more than that. I like the Ideas to sit for awhile.
DC: What kind of work do you do? Is it related in anyway to music?
SB: It is in a way, at my job I sing a lot. The last two years I was doing early intervention. Which is pre-school special education. I have been working in pre-school for a long time. This year I am in a behavioral kindergarten. It is mostly kids who have been kicked out of several pre-schools and the parents don’t know what to do. The kids who really couldn’t make it in a regular classroom, they need a lot of one on one, need a lot of structure. It is pretty challenging. I bring my saxophone into the school and play. We have a piano in the room and the kids like to play percussion instruments. We sing songs and stuff.
DC: Do you ever record them and use them in your sound pieces?
SB: AH no. That seems maybe that might be a little exploitative. (pause) It seems like a good idea. It would feel weird to the other teachers. When I am there I just want to be there involved in the moment.
DC: How do you feel about the post-rock & techno thing? Electronica to me seems so impersonal where as lo-fi is much more human.
SB: I think electronic music can be human. Some of my favorite music now. I don’t hear that much new music just because it is not on the radio much out here and I don’t have the money to go out and explore. The stuff that I do hear that I really like is To Rorcoco Rot from Belgium. Kreidler from Germany that use electronics and real instruments. They have a real drummer and a real bass player and stuff. Although it is all instrumental it is not robotic at all.
DC: I like the noise an that its homemade. Its like living with in ones means. Just making due with what you have.
SB: I don’t really consider my self lo-fi any more, compared to the first tape I made. I get better and better at doing it. I always want to get more stuff. To be able to do more things.
DC: How do you like Portland are you from here originally?
SB: Yeah I grew up in the suburbs. I moved away for a few years and came back. I love it here. I have been around the country a couple of times and have not seen a place I like as much as this. Allot of people can’t take the weather but I grew up with it so I am used to it. In a way it is good. I am a home body. That sort of winter where you are forced to stay inside, it is a creative kind of time for me. It forces you to have some sort of project or just stew.
DC: What do you think is the difference between the east coast and the west coast music scenes?
SB: Well it is hard to say because when I think about I think about it in terms of different cities. On the east coast Chapel Hill has a very different scene then say New York or Philadelphia has a very different scene than Boston. And Portland has a very different scene than Seattle. So it would be pretty hard to compare the two. In general when people talk about the east coast they talk about the northern east coast. There is a definitely different pace of life that happens there. If you are talking about big cities compared to Portland which is not a big city. If you have a band in San Francisco you have to be a working band because you have to rent out a rehearsal space. Where here someone will be living in a house where you can practice in the basement as part of the rent. Once again its economics changing the way people make music. It is a lot easier to do it for fun here. There are people who want to be in a ‘BAND’ and there are other people who want to be in a band because…I guess to be in a band.
DC: Who do you think yr influenced by musically?
SB: (pause) Who do you think I am influenced by?
DC: There are people like Alistair Gailbraith who do something similar both writing songs and doing sound pieces but is a totally different feel.
SB: He always reminds me of Syd Barrett, if Syd Barrett kept going and got really dark. I suppose it is pretty varied…….
Wow look at this ( a bride and groom stroll along the side walk at the edge of the pond followed by a photographer) Congratulations (to the bride in groom).
Bride: Thank you we didn’t take pictures so we came here to take pictures.
SB: Nice choice.
(pause for the bride and groom to finish taking their photos)
SB: I cant think of specific times, Snow Flake One & Snow Flake Two. The last couple of records were made in a year when I did not work that much. At that time I was listening to Lee Scratch Perry called “Double 7″ That was a pretty big influence. You can definitely here it on the song “Ice Cream Daydream.” There is a high organ part and the bass is really DOOM DOOM DOOOOM. Really simply. I try and listen to lots of different kinds of music. It is really hard to say what would be more influencing than anything else.
DC: How do you pronounce the name of your band? Is it Boogskooll?
SB: No it is just bugskull the umlauts are there to make smiley faces..
Communication (2009)- Digitalis
SIDE A:
SIDE B:
digiv013: bugskull “communication” lp
flashback to 1997 and in the world of underground droning weirdness, bugskull were heavyweight champions. the revolving cast of characters always centered around sean byrne. he concocted buckets full of syrupy delights that encompassed everything from electronica, post-rock, dub, noise and endless pop hooks. byrne was joined by multi-instrumentalist brendan bell and percussionist james yu throughout the latter half of the ’90s, taking bugskull from bedroom wonder to full-blown magic carpet band. bugskull released records and singles on some of the great experimental labels of the day such as road cone, scratch, and shrimper. i can safely say that as i was discovering experimental music during my mid & late teens, bugskull were one of my all-time favorite bands.
the last album byrne released was in 2002, “the big white cloud,” which followed-up the acclaimed “distracted snowflake” duology. during the late ’90s, byrne recorded a third album that extended the themes of the “snowflake” records. due to label issues and disputes, this third album never came out until now, almost ten years later. “communication” is the bookend to the hypnotic reverie created by “distracted snowflake” volumes 1 & 2. with layers of organ and synth floating like cotton candy on top of dub and hip-hop infused beats, byrne is in top form.
“communication” isn’t so much a lost album as it is confirmation of a legacy and declaration of intent. bugskull is back. from the tribal beach vibes of “high steppin’ ii” right down to the drenched bones of the droning, black river sonics of “subterranean life,” this album brings everything that made bugskull so great and concentrates it on two sides of vinyl. upbeat, fast-moving synth lines bob and move in minimal electronic waves while violins moan on “squeaky bagpipe.” the title track is an exercise in restraint as byrne uses turntables and molasses-paced guitars to the listener into a false sense of serenity, only to be drowned in opiates and put to bed by “pondlife.” whether he’s created simple, deceptive trips with sparse, but effective rhythmic cues or is just wallowing in the aural beauty of sine tones and synth drones, byrne doesn’t ever let up.
for those who have been as big of fans i have through the years, you probably never thought another bugskull album would show up on the horizon. i know i didn’t. but after seven years of waiting for something fresh, it’s all worth it in the end to start the journey from scratch.
vinyl only and limited to 300 copies
Review of Communication
*ONE OF THE MOST SURPRISING, VARIED AND KNOCKOUT ALBUMS OF THE YEAR, RANGING FROM WIDESCREEN SOUNDSCAPES TO INTIMATE DRONE TRANSMISSIONS, HIP HOP VARIATIONS AND MINIATURE BLEEPY INTERLUDES – AN ABSOLUTE MUST* Between 1992 and the early 2000′s, former folksinger turned lo-fi avant-garde minstrel Bugskull (aka Sean Byrne) released a string of highly acclaimed compositions for a selection of Portland, Oregon’s finest independent imprints. Since then his name has circulated in hushed tones among those in the know as a progenitor of the burgeoning experimental scene centred around the small NorthWest American city. His body of work has drawn comparisons to everyone from John Cage to Syd Barrett, placing him further outside the indie envelope than fellow Portland contemporaries like Pavement or Elliot Smith. Sonically, his work covers drone, free-jazz and dadaist psychedelia, and this massively anticipated new album ‘Communication’ is one of the most varied, original and satisfying records we’ve heard this year, tied together by a strong melodic identity and tendency towards off-balance textural counterpoints. This album (the first in nearly a decade) is split between one side of relaxed, beat driven psyche, and a side of engrossing pastoral ambience, appealing to a wide range of sensibilities and tastes. On the beat driven 1st side we can hear echoes of J Dilla in the low-slung and jazzy basslines of ‘Exposed Wires’ or ‘Floppy Drive’, but arranged with an organic slacker quality, while the alien melody and gentle bite of the tape distortion on ‘High Steppin’ II’ reminds of early Aphex Twin or the the cosmic circuitry of Italy’s Ra.H modified by Hauntology pioneer Position Normal. On the 2nd side, the strings of the title track immediately remind of Edward Williams’ chamber music for ‘Life On Earth’, but in lo-fi miniature, played with Stars Of The Lid, before plunging into hiss-textured field recordings and subtle audio hallucinations on ‘Pondlife’ and finishing on the tender acoustic guitar bliss of ‘What’s That Light’. The range and scope of sounds on display here is jawdropping, sounding like the work of far more than one artist, but apart from a few contributions on guitar, calimba and organ, it’s the brainchild of one very intriguing character in modern music. Incredible.
Preview to the 2009 PICA show:
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
This bio appears in the online Trouser Press guide, but was originally published in Badaboom Gramaphone
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.
The Portland Mercury Posted this blurb before the 2009 show for PICA
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.
