Buke and Gase interview

day two of auditions -- DePaul and Syracuse today. Meanwhile, my Buke and Gase interview ran at Blurt yesterday.


WELCOME TO THE GENERAL DOME Buke & Gase

They're unorthodox in approach, complex in structure, and open-ended enough in delivery to defy categorization. Yet the Brooklyn duo just wants to connect with you.



BY JENNIFER KELLY

"I don't know if I would call making things - or fixing things - a lost art," says Arone Dyer, a sometime bicycle repair professor who constructed and now maintains the "buke" she plays in Buke & Gase.

The buke, a small-sized, six-stringed instrument originally built out of a baritone ukulele, is one of two unusual instruments in the Buke & Gase repertoire. Aron Sanchez, her partner, plays a Gase, which is a sort of bass/guitar hybrid. He got his start in instrument construction making equipment for the Blue Man Group.

"I think that only people who are really, really motivated would fix something that they work on," Dyer continues. "A particular kind of person is probably more attracted to taking something apart and putting it back together and building something new."

Buke & Gase is unusual in a lot of ways, from the odd-numbered time signatures that pace their work, to the eccentric, jittery sounds that come out of their hand-fashioned instruments, to the facility with which both principals handle welding tools. But perhaps the most singular thing about this duo is that last characteristic: they are perfectly willing to deconstruct their musical ideas, strip them down to essentials, turn them inside out and then build them back up again. Their latest album, General Dome (Brassland), is as intricate and quixotic as their instruments.

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