Before we talk about Buke & Gase, there are a few things you should know. Yes, the band members, Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez, both pronounce their names the same way (“Aaron”). No, they are not a couple. Oh, and they don’t play folk music.
How, after hearing the duo’s delightfully scrambled second full-length, General Dome, anyone could call their music folk is a little baffling. But then, their music can be a bit baffling, too. Intent on creating as much sound as possible with just two people, Dyer and Sanchez’s live performance can look like that of a pair of scruffy buskers, especially considering their fresh-from-an-Occupy-general-assembly look. But the toe-bourine, the kick drum, the gase—a guitar strung with bass strings—are not being used to make folksy protest songs.
Buke & Gase’s compositions are lurching, swirling, surprising things that defy easy classification.
“I think with that limitation, with two of us and having to do more with less, it creates an interesting situation in that we have to stretch ourselves and really challenge ourselves and explore,” Sanchez says. “How do we make this moment be really full sounding with what we have? How do we create dynamics with these sounds we’re using? Musically, that brings about some interesting scenarios that we wouldn’t think of otherwise.”
Experimenting with making unexpected sounds come from instruments and other objects is nothing new for Sanchez. A former full-time, behind-the-scenes member of the Blue Man Group, he’s the man behind a great many of the noise-makers the group has used onstage over the years. When reached for this interview, he and Dyer were in a warehouse in Hudson, New York, “making PVC instruments.”
Dyer, for her part, grew up a singer-songwriter, “writing music by myself and singing it and performing it by myself, because that’s kind of what that means.” She and Sanchez met in 2000, when they were both living in New York City. They became fast friends, noodling around and making music with pals. Though they didn’t know it at the time, they were already developing the loose, experimental ethos that’s now integral to their sound.
“He introduced me to — [speaking to Aron] through you and your friends, and just meeting and hanging out in the basement loosened me up toward improvising more instead of hunkering down in my room by myself and tearing my soul out and putting it on paper or something like that. He introduced me to something much more free, and I think that the way we write is really free, loose,” Dyer says.
The final product of a Buke & Gase song is plenty organized; it has to be. Adorned with instruments from limb to limb onstage, Dyer and Sanchez contrast the minimalism of their small band with a maximalist approach to sound.
“I’m trying to sound kind of like an orchestra. I’m always searching for ways to make [my gase] produce more sound than it previously did. I’m always trying to add layers,” Sanchez says.