Buzz or Howl

To ride and be ridden. To be absorbed by and responsive to the noise. To find the balance between playing and being played. Buzz or Howl's members are Bruce McKenzie and Eric Nielsen, two multi-instrumentalists from Darla recording artist Maquiladora. It is primarily though not exclusively a live music, recorded as it happens, with minimal overdubbing. Usually none at all. It's a music that isn't afraid of stillnes or volume or the passage of time. That embraces the by-product of music - noise - and the heightened attention as players (listeners) / listeners (players) that drone and free music creates. We've got a decent pedigree for this kind of music having toured and/or recorded with members of Japanese psych-gods High Rise, White Heaven and Acid Mothers Temple. Most beautiful to us are the times when immersion, or a kind of forgetfulness, meet presence and instinctiveness. It may not sound like fun but it is, really. The best fun. Think Tony Conrad leading "Baxter's"-era Jefferson Airplane. Think Ornette Coleman leading Quicksilver Messenger Service. Think Skip Spence playing with the Arkestra on "Magic City". Played pretty loud. By two people.

Buzz or Howl + Astro - Western Mystery School (LHRCD13) 2009

This collaboration was born at the UFO Club in Tokyo. Buzz or Howl (Bruce McKenzie and Eric Nielsen) met Astro (Hiroshi Hasegawa) through mutual friend Junzo Suzuki. after a face-melting set by that duo and a celebratory, raucous set by Bruce and Eric's other band Maquiladora (with Phil Beaumont) - during which they were joined by Saya and Ueno from the Tenniscoats and Koji Shimura from Acid Mothers Temple and White Heaven - music was exchanged and plans were hatched to combine forces somehow. The music Astro took home that night was by Buzz or Howl, a fierce improvisatory psychedelic duo from southern California, using guitars, violin, synth, and lapsteel to create long tracks exploring time and tide. And tone. Through continuously evolving, fugue-like riffage drone and feedback.

For the purposes of this collaboration a new instrumentation was found. After an initial flirtation with guitars, the Californians decided on a markedly more pastoral direction and an arabo-andalusian flavor for the music they had been given. Over two tracks of Astro's synth textures the same instrumentation - mandolin, strum stick, and voices, - is radically transformed by electricity. Track one is spare and celestial, a delicate acoustic track that employs spare free improvisation and a repeating ancient-sounding chord progression as a basis for both Astro's sonic flights and a lilting wordless melody. Track two explodes with feedback and a crunching assault develops from exactly the same elements, electrified. One would never know that the sonic roar is created by electric mandolin and modified vocals atop brother Astro's synthesizer. Musical imaginations have reached across the pacific for this combination of filigree and mutilation.

Limited release (220 hand numbered) double sided silk screen with a black on black silk screened disc (CDR).

Track List
1. Nine Months More I Am Happy Suffer Is In My Life (Incubation Remix)
2. The Sins Of The Flower Are Visited On The Shunned.

$10

Buzz or Howl - Worship the Sun as the Destroyer of Dreams 2005

limited edition of 96 - each CDR contains an original 12" x 6" piece torn from the one of four paintings in the series - artwork by senkay "Guitarists Eric Nielsen and Bruce McKenzie of Southwestern sonic sorcerers Maquiladora recently unveiled a side project. Buzz or Howl diverges from the mothership via improvised compositions that, while retaining the essential sun-baked, psychedelic Maquiladora vibe, chart a far more uncompromising path.
Worship the Sun As the Destroyer of Dreams (Lotushouse) is a 44-minute cd-r containing just two exceedingly kosmische instrumentals; Think Acid Mothers Temple meets John Fahey at his most latter-day extreme. It's pressed up in a limited edition of 96 copies in hand-assembled sleeves, each bearing one-of-a-kind artwork." - Fred Mills, Magnet Magazine, March 2006. More details and images

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This mp3 is more than seven minutes of an hour long performance at The Make Out Room in San Francisco. This section is the 11.13.5 version of the track Worship the Sun as the Destroyer of Dreams from our first record.
Click here to download the mp3