DIESEL GEIGER
BRENDON BUSSY
CATALOGUE
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a kind of classical electronica - part volans, part balanescu, part africa, part turkey. urban field recordings, cello, oboe, violin, recorder, mandolin and computer. TRACKS: created between durban and cape town during 2001 and 2002, a cross country trip with glitches along the way. brendon
bussy: violins, piano, mandolin, electronics, field recordings,
samples and mixing. all compositions: b. bussy, except track 7 - b. bussy & charles maggs instruments
on tracks 4, 7, 10, 11 recorded at sui studios by dirk hugo &
ramon da silva produced
by brendon bussy tracks 1, 3, 7, 11, 13 were created using audiomulch interactive music studio designed by ross bencina cover
drawings by brendon bussy PRESS
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cd: diesel geiger
a car mechanic by trade, my father was a creative tinkerer, a keen amateur of everything including oil painting and music. he built my first violin, just because he wanted to see how. something of a concertina player he played a weird mix of wartime favourites from his days as a teenager with the south african forces during WW II, and boere musiek (afrikaans country). he taught himself to play a range of odd instruments; i still have some of them - including a melodica bought from a church fete and a mandolin with a pickup he made from four flat head screws and some resin, powered with one of those heavy square eveready batteries that is so heavy that it is difficult to hold up for very long.
he sent me off to violin lessons in the hope that i would have a proper education. and i did, although initially i hated it. basically, the violin is one of the hardest instruments to learn to play; a kind of aural and physical self mutilation only broken by the periods when you aren't playing. my teacher suggested i change over to the viola and this is when the trouble started. as a violist you are press ganged into playing in orchestras. there you sit playing on the absolute periphery of the composer's harmonic ideas. you perform the function of a kind of musical pratley's putty i.e. only noted by your absence. what you play is usually easy, repetitive and.... boring? a typical example is the endless cha cha's that keep a strauss waltz going. faced with hours and hours of this you get to thinking... what if i were to inflect every third cha with an accent, this would create some kind of weird cyclical irregular rhythm eventually throwing everyone off. or - what if I were to just not actually play at all, ok this doesn't work as well, they soon notice (pratley's putty etc). you see by playing the viola you may go (musically) subtly wacko. for me it meant endless experimentation. i couldn't bear to actually study the instrument but i had plans.
i went on to a degree in the fine arts (in painting and sculpture) followed by some years dipping into a wide range of musical genres - simon stengel's early music ensemble (medieval and folk music), deepak ram (indian/jazz crossover), eventually leading to string quartet arrangements with kenny henson, interitmo and nibs van der spuy. but string quartet writing and playing came to an abrupt stop during a gruelling time of running art projects for juveniles awaiting trial at durban westville prison. the emotionally charged and stressful prison work coincided with a forced layoff from viola (and music making) as result of a severe shoulder and neck injury.
not having an arm to use, my computer became my prosthetic limb. i became involved with electronica, when i met dean henning (aka captain asthma), who introduced me to sine waves and sampling. this lead to a collaboration with dean as corrective, the first project being ricky gass rock 'n roll cowboy, the audio exploration of the life and music of ricky gass, a durban based fringe music legend. corrective went on to perform live utilising audiomulch software, various oddball sound sources (toys etc) and mandolin (my new instrument of choice). other collaborations included mike whitehead (ex famous curtain trick), and dogtroep, a dutch performance group.
diesel geiger is my first solo 'electronish' album. 'electronish' as apposed to 'electronica' as i've used a great deal of fairly normally treated acoustic material which i've treated in subtle ways; sometimes just a kind of digital twisting of the sound. i don't particularly enjoy using other people's samples so i've used my own playing as sample source. i also use my own field recordings which involve a fair amount of eavesdropping. the works straddle two cultural spaces, as it was made over a period during which i moved to cape town. it makes reference to durban's masakanda culture, the street culture of cape town, and the train journey that links the two cities.
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01 enkeleen ek is legio full details buy online |
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02 alex van heerden & derek gripper sagtevlei full details buy online |
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03 brendon bussy diesel geiger full details buy online |
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04 benguela sui full details buy online |
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05 derek gripper blomdoorns full details buy online |
ARTISTS |
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alex
van heerden |
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CONTACT
ross campbell
iliketea@iafrica.com
cape town
south africa
distributed
in south africa by
kurse music distribution
contact alastair
tel: 021 424 1959 alastair@kursemusic.co.za