QRO had the opportunity to catch up with Buke and Gass’s Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez on their recent trip over to Europe and has a quick chat with them before their set at the Cross Linx Festival in Groningen.
QRO: Welcome back to Europe! You’ve been here before – how do you find shows over here?
Arone Dyer: Huge! Every show we’re played here so far has been a large show, at a festival or opening for a very popular band.
QRO: Who have you been supporting?
AD: We’ve supported The National (QRO spotlight on), that’s it I guess! We’ve only come here with the National…
QRO: At the Royal Albert Hall last year? How did you find that?
AD: Yes! It was so much fun.
QRO: Awesome! You’re signed to Aaron and Bryce’s [Dessner, of The National] label Brassland. How did that come about?
Aron Sanchez: Yes – Well, Aaron and Bryce (QRO photos at Cross Linx) both came to a show we did in Brooklyn two years ago.
AD: Their sister booked us at her venue.
AS: She brought her brothers and they say us play and loved it, and we became friends with them. They started asking us straight away what our label situation was… well, it turned into that conversation and it seemed like a great situation.
QRO: How do you find Brassland?
AD: They’re great to us.
AS: They’re a small label; they’re got really cool artists and a great community surrounding it. They’ve given us a lot of attention, which is great.
QRO: You’re very original in your genre and your live show is lively and accessible. There aren’t many artists around like you. As you’re only breaking out – as you said support slots and festivals – how would you describe your sound to first time listeners?
AD: Chamber punk, right?
AS: Sure…
AD: Well, that’s the worst question to ask a musician! Geez, I don’t know…
AS:
Those two elements coming together and creating this thing. [gestures outwards] It can be rock, it can be more punk, it can be almost classical at times… chamber punk. It’s kind of a meshing of stuff. It becomes something new – we don’t know what that is. I’ll leave that for other people to decide.
QRO: In reference to saying that, would you say in the recording studio, as your album came out last year, did it give you more creative freedom in terms of mixing and recording different parts?
AS: It does, but actually for this record we decided not to do that.
AD: We wanted to limit ourselves.
AS: We just wanted to make a record to showcase what we do live. We could have layer overdubs and lots of stuff – which we did a little bit of – but we kept it pretty tame to show what we do.
QRO: Would you say live performance is your forte?
AD: No…
AS: No, not necessarily.
AD: Just because we did it on this album doesn’t mean we wouldn’t do it. If we were introducing ourselves in a much grander scheme, then we’d not so many issues with publishing our sound. We didn’t want for it to be seen as misrepresentative of what we are – just the two of us.
AS: Especially as our first record, we wanted to show people this is just what we’re doing – We’re only two people, we play these instruments, we sound like this. If we had layered a lot of other musicians with a lot of sounds on top, and then we do a gig, and people see it being different, you’re kind of hurting yourself.
QRO: It sounds like you have lots of different ideas in the pipeline as for further records and material. What can we expect to hear from you in the future?
AS: More of what we’re doing, because we’re figuring out better what we are doing. I don’t know – we don’t know! We work a lot with improvisation as far as song writing goes so that dictates what the future is going to be.
Catch Buke and Gass on their upcoming dates:
