+/- BUGSKULL

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.