Blusom
Gig Seeker Pro

Blusom

Band Folk EDM

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"Go Slowly All The Way Round The Outside Review"

Breaking from its friends-only, unofficial home pressing to an official release, Blusom’s Go Slowly All the Way Around the Outside may be one of this year’s strongest albums that nearly didn’t get released. Admittedly, that’s a pretty slim field to rule, but Second Nature Recordings’ efforts to bring the electronic/organic experiments of this Denver side project to the masses is a noteworthy bit of A&R, to be sure.

The strains of Dntel and Turin Brakes style electronic-meets-acoustic experiments of weren't made for the public to hear. Recorded as a bit of learning, a bit of fun, by a pair of Denver rockers not known for their experimental strain (Jme White plays trashy bar punk in Acrobat Down and Mike Behrenhausen’s Maraca Five-O cranks out surf rock), Blusom’s private matters find the pair eclipsing their public personas. Blusom’s sound is firmly rooted in the studio, as its diaphanous layers of synths, ambient sounds and traditional guitar work belies a complexity only possible from a couple enterprising home-recorders instead of a traditional outfit.

Delivering a fragile dignity, Go Slowly All the Way Around the Outside perfectly balances its electronic and traditional elements to get a sound that’s hard to imagine a separation of the estates. Behrenhausen’s salt-of-the-earth guitar work and poignant delivery are strong enough to work on their own as a traditional singer/songwriter, though combined with White’s masterful production work, truly shine. “Iceland or Greenland?” features an ebbing low end and twinkles of keys that give its sparse vocal and guitar tracks the backbone they need to stand tall without overshadowing them. Other times, white adds an ambient growl underneath brittle acoustic strumming, while Behrenhausen’s awkward indie-kid delivery to get a tune that’s has the hooks, layers and honesty of Trembling Blue Stars in “X-Photo.” When the duo plays it closer to traditional formats, as with the pop beat and near-band production that put Behrenhausen’s vocals at center stage in “Off of Cliffs,” it’s hard not to imagine the ears of fans of everyone from Radiohead and Coldplay to The Postal Service pricking up with glee.

To think that Go Slowly All the Way Around the Outside might have ended up as a merch-table oddity while Blusom’s members’ bands did their thing in grimy rock clubs is a travesty. With an honesty borne of isolation and the shelter a “private” project grants, Blusom finds a stunning harmony between singer/songwriter hooks and electronic production’s promises of a digital future that few big-name acts can match.

- Aversion.com


"Go Slowly All The Way Round The Outside Review"

Blusom's music, a beguiling home-recorded mix of indie indulgences, ambient experimentation and good ole broken-hearted sadness, is incredibly effective given the variety of styles on their debut disc. Somewhere between the Portastatic pop of "On Glass," the Radiohead-esque "X-Photo," and noisy ambient numbers like "Fireside Iconoclasm" and "Kitelike Blue Paper," the shadowy figure of Blusom emerges.

Denver music vets Michael Behrenhausen (Maraca 5-0) and Jme White (Acrobat Down) have worked together before in Burstable, but never having heard that group it's hard to say if Blusom is a continuation of their collaborative musical goals.

Behrenhausen wrote most of the music and lyrics, while White twiddled the nobs and provided the sophisticated electro-backdrop for Go Slowly... Aaron Hobbs (ex-Acrobat Down and Burstable) adds some vocal support on track #2. But the real star here is the palpably downtempo melodies, even the semi-obscured, digitally-fucked ones. Textured synths, crisp acoustics, electronic squall and trebly percussion underpin indie-anthem vocals with just the right amount of playful poise, never losing their underlying energy.

"Rusting" closes out the disc with an aching, measured vocal melody that recalls Swearing at Motorists, Red House Painters and Sentridoh. The strongest overall song on the disc, "Rusting" is perhaps the best argument for Behrenhausen's talent as a songwriter, though it's still not fully representative of Blusom's sound. Like Superchunk meeting Radiohead in Aphex Twin's tanning booth, it's a confusing and intensely creative affair.
- Sponic.com


"Go Slowly All The Way Round The Outside Review"

The blurred album art for Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside is fitting, for the music on this album has a kind of blurry, unclear feel. Never intended for widespread release, Blusom features two Denver-area mainstays, Jme White (formerly of Acrobat Down) and Mike Behrenhausen (of Juhl and Maraca Five-O). The duo recorded this mix of acoustic pop and electronic experimentation in 2001 and passed it around to friends, but Second Nature fell in love with it and released it.

And it's worthy of release. Both men are accomplished musicians with a unique approach. There's a host of electronic effects here, from simple synths to drum machine and assorted studio tinkerings, but they mix with primarily acoustic guitar, bass, and other organic instruments as well. I suspect that, if they planned this to be a widespread label release, they may have put more time into some of the track's more blurry moments, but such touch-ups may also blur the moments of beauty and brilliance here.

The best moments are the quieter tracks, such as the acoustic ballad "X-Photo," which features swirling ambient keys and some soft bass. "Good night / sleep tight / it's over," White (presumably) sings, enhancing the song's lullaby feel. The sound of waves lapping against the shore contrast the stark guitar and singing on the lovely "Iceland or Greenland?" - surely the best track on this entire release. While "Versus Techno" may be an example of too much electronic noise mixed together, "Kitelike Blue Paper" is an example of the band getting it right: sweet, chiming, and cool up to its chaotic, contrasting finish.

One of the more accessible tracks, "On Glass," starts the album with mechanized beats and bleeps mixing nicely with acoustic guitar and the band's vocals. The chorus, "Go on without me / I am self absorbed and shitty," give a nice impression of the emotional direction this album often takes, although the more self-deprecating lyrics are belied by the rather upbeat feel to the song. "Off of Cliffs" is another up-beat and playful number, with so many odd time-signatures and electronic components that it could double as a Joan of Arc song. The acoustic guitar on "Ancient Medicine and You" is nearly perfect, upbeat and intricate.

And there are tracks that feel like just experimentalism. Left as between-song interludes, these hodge-podge tracks aren't bad segues, although they stretch a bit long at times. And sometimes the duo overdoes the electronic effects. With a few less bleeps and synth swirls, the acoustic guitar and vocals will be even more evident. Still, missteps are likely when you consider this album wasn't meant for a label's release, and they do little to take away from the sort of laid-back blurry feeling Go Slowly... is sure to provide. I hope the two musicians use this as a stepping-off point for further releases.

- Delusions of Adequacy


"Blusom Interview by Stacy Bridges"

How important is honesty in music today? In this cannibalistic and oh so fashionable rock and roll world we inhabit, it seems modern bands try to sound (and look) like their pre- and post-punk forefathers rather than continuing the experiments initiated by their heroes. How many times do we need to hear a band that sounds, “like the Stooges meets Television”, or “Joy Division with a little Cheap Trick?” Better yet “ A band that sounds exactly like Gang of Four. Period.”

Content has always preceded style.

With computers getting faster, smaller and cheaper, the 90’s generation of 4-trackers have bumped to multi-tracking hard drives in the double 00’s, and the result is high quality recordings from all quality musicians. Enter the MP3’d compressions of a shitty bands’ favorite song about a shitty singer’s favorite girl. Undercurrents of DIY VU covers eaten by tiny bumping drum sequences suck us in to a beachfront of dead jellyfish home recordings. We are wading in washed up sun dried tomato pasted motherboards.

Every so often, when the current breaks and the waters muddy,
you cut your foot on a large chunk of sheet metal poking through the sand.

One such scrap is Denver, Colorado’s Blusom (pronounced “Blue-Some).
The “band” consists of two musicians, singer/songwriter Mike Behrenhausen and multi-instrumentalist/producer Jme, whose debut “Go Slowly All The Way Round The Outside” (released on Second Nature Recordings) is a hidden gem in the littered landscape. Theirs is a record that welcomes you in with open arms, wraps them around you lovingly, then takes a vicious bite out of your left ventricular. It combines intimate acoustic confessionals, technologically-baffling soundscapes, and bouncy sing-alongs into a seemless progression of disorienting aural sideswipes. In their own words, it’s self absorbed and shitty.

I contacted Blusom via the worldwide porn-pusher.
What follows is a copy and paste of the series of emails:

Tell me a little history about yourselves, for instance, how did this record come about? What was the intention in recording it?
MIKE: I was a drummer by trade, but also a closet songwriter. To satisfy that end, I had been an avid four-tracker for a few years, and a couple of years ago Jme was getting into recording digitally in his apartment. He recorded another friend of ours and I was blown away by how great it sounded. So I asked if he’d like to record a song of mine. It was pretty nerve-racking for me at first, as I’d never sang in front of anyone else before. But I managed to pull it off recording my guitar parts and vocals in front of Jme and his dog Armstrong. I left those parts in Jme’s hands and he just took it so much further than I could have ever imagined – I was really pleased with the results. So we decided to do more. We spent a lot of drunken, snowy nights recording at his place until eventually we saw an album forming.
Initially, we really didn’t have any intention in recording it. Lyrically it’s based on how I was feeling at the time. But we didn’t record it with an ultimate goal in mind. It was done mainly for the sake of the songs.

Who writes the songs?
MIKE: In most cases, I write the bones of the song, acoustic guitar rhythm part, lyrics, vocal melody. I bring that to Jme who records my parts then fleshes it out and finishes it.

Do you both work on the instrumentals?
MIKE: No. That’s Jme’s thing. He puts a lot of great stuff into those. Ask him.
JME: the third track is all manipulated pieces of a microrecording of an unfortunate musician who'd resolved to playing piano at a shopping mall here in denver...i watched him play for hours...he went from Dave Brubeck's Time Out into the theme song from Jaws...it was heartbreaking...after spending all this time wondering what this music thing is really worth...

What instruments do you use?
MIKE: Washburn acoustic guitar I bought from my buddy’s ex-girlfriend for $150.
JME: i have a bunch of crap...old univox copies of great old guitars, a modified univox copy of a mosrite bass, roland juno-60, fender rhodes, roland vk-9 organ synth, gretsch sierra jumbo, ensoniq asr-x, a boxload of stompboxes, Soundforge and Cubase are instruments for us too...

How did you end up on Second Nature Recordings?
MIKE: When the record was done we sent it to be mastered by our mutual friend Pete, who is in the band Living Science Foundation. It ended up being passed around and winding up in Dan Askew’s (who runs Second Nature) hands. Dan liked it and got a hold of me, through Pete. He asked what we were doing with it, and I told him it was sitting in a drawer gathering dust. Which it really was, for about a year or more. Jme and I had really both moved on from it.

Do you play live?
MIKE: We do now. We have a set up right now, that’s more acoustic and band-based than on record. It’s interesting, but it can be done better.
JME: people seem to think that records are supposed to replicate your live per - AMP Magazine


"It's Not Easy Being Blue (Interview by Matt Schild)"

It’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Denver, and the holiday season is in full swing. Rested from the post-turkey consumer orgy of the previous day’s shopping frenzy, Denver families take a drive down Colfax Avenue for a spin past the City and County Building to soak up its holiday light extravaganza. Red and green spotlights shine on the cold marble façade as light-up plastic manger scenes, menorahs, Santas and snowmen welcome the Holidays into the Mile High City with a conspicuously over-the-top electric bill. If it weren’t for the conspicuous absence of snow, most of Denver would be celebrating the storybook kickoff to the holidays.

Uptown in a vaguely seedy neighborhood that the light-spotting sightseers are sure to avoid, Blusom plays on a small stage at the Larimer Lounge. Singer/guitarist Mike Behrenhausen sits on a drum stool strums a guitar, while singer/programmer Jme White joins with lead guitar figures, both to the accompaniment of prerecorded songs. It’s winsome, quiet and, to some degree, distressing: The band sounds more than a few dozen blocks from the center of holiday festivities with depressed, layered and complicated songs. There’s no seasonal cheer in Blusom’s songs tonight – it’s heartbreak, isolation and washes of electronic noise.

Maybe the duo is due for its own chunk of humbug: Earlier in the year, its label, Second Nature, received the call from Fossil Watches requesting a track for an indie-rock holiday compilation album to help boost sales this season. Under the gun, the act hit White’s apartment computer/studio setup and delivered its own take on the “Do You Hear What I Hear” staple: A swirling mix of vocal harmonies, an eerie, faraway xylophone and heaps of computerized beeps, squawks and ambient sounds. It’s as if someone swapped out the soundtrack to the Small World ride, then set the whole ride ablaze and the little robot children of the world carry on in their holiday wishes amid the chaotic sounds of their dying compatriots. It’s only a few jingle bells short of genius.

Fossil’s people didn’t think so. They rejected the song out of hand, proving the common-sense idea that timepiece salesmen don’t make very good A&R men.

“Jme went into the studio and came up with this amazing track. Jme did all the underlying songwriting, these beats, these electronic noises,” Behrenhausen says. “I guess Fossil thought it was too weird. It’s a very weird song. The song isn’t weird, but the way we did it is.”

It’s a bit off-kilter, but would only affront aging marketing executives who hope to cash in on some easy indie cred this holiday season. Really, what did they expect, as Blusom’s debut, Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside (2003, Second Nature Recordings) features much of the same. A 10-track jaunt through a world where acoustic songwriting don’t just strike up a truce, but share a bed, the band’s home-recorded tunes equally put Behrenhausen’s earthy voice-and-acoustic songwriting and White’s mad-scientist production wizardry into the spotlight. “Off of Cliffs” opens with Behrenhausen’s lazy acoustic strumming, and then a heavy backbeat quickly joins the fray. Soon backward-recorded sounds, a second guitar part and keys swoop in wonderfully complicating the track. The album’s opener, “On Glass” takes Behrenhausen’s singer/songwriter bones and fleshes them out with one part Fischerspooner and one part Dismemberment Plan. Other tunes, such as “Attack of the Toothless Luthiers” provide ambient, grinding interludes of pure electronic gadgetry between the tracks supported by Behrenhausen’s songwriting.

While the album’s songs range from abstract to the vaguely traditional “Iceland or Greenland,” a common trail of fuzzy-around-the-edges melancholy leads one into the next. In fact, Go Slowly features a touch of the sort of blue funk that, when handled badly, turns into emo cliché. Unlike the hordes of lonely college boys making bad post-hardcore, Blusom knows what it’s doing.

“It was winter when we were doing this,” Behrenhausen explains his band’s gloomy atmosphere. “We spent a lot of long nights at his apartment, drinking a lot of booze and hanging out there, he and I and his dog, recording. It would be snowing outside. I don’t know if it was the winter or if we were both in the same place. I’d just gotten over a pretty long relationship and he was going through a divorce, so the emotional speed of the record kind of came out of that.”

It’s a marked change from the sounds that Behrenhausen and White’s other bands make. Both are staples of the Denver scene, though with a radically different sound: Behrenhausen sits behind the kit for surf rockers Maraca Five-O while White slings guitar a mean post-hardcore guitar with Acrobat Down. Obviously, Blusom is quite a curveball for anyone expecting the more straightforward, rock-oriented material of the act’s other bands.

With each of Blusom’s principals juggling a “serious” full-time band, they never intended Blus - Aversion.com


"Go Slowly All The Way Round The Outside Review"

Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside is a mood-swing and a half. Blusom has their distinct, emotional highs and lows, each of which contribute to each other: "On Glass"' giddy and bubbly disposition makes the proceeding, entrancing silence in "X-Photo" all the more potent, just as "X-Photo"'s minimalism puts you in the mood for "Fireside Iconoclasm"'s claustrophobic, metallic warbling, and so on.

Impressively, Blusom's consistent and distinct style keeps the album cohesive. The vocals are intimate, the music lo-fi and humbly produced. A central acoustic guitar supplies a folksy, organic feel, yet Blusom knows their way around a few amateur synthesizers. "Versus Techno" and its static-filled synthesizers and spacey background sound like the distant, nostalgic memories of a defunct robot: "Counting along/ 1,2,3,4,5/ always a different beat/ always alive." "Iceland of Greendland?" is also beautifully arranged. Rhythmic samples of water splashing and the light hum of an electric organ back a melancholy, classical guitar melody -- the song has the natural, homemade production feel of Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea.

For all of Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside's tempo changes, Blusom remains negative. The only difference between "Iceland or Greenland?"'s line "Are you lonesome? And are you cold?" and "Off of Cliffs"' "You're never gonna be happy with/ the way the curved roads straighten out" is that the former is sung slowly, the latter quickly. Despite all of Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside's ups and downs, Blusom never quite escapes from the depressed, bedroom-artist cliche -- look elsewhere for happy music. Given the limited appeal, Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside should be wholly appreciated in the right hands.
- Lost At Sea Online


"Go Slowly All The Way Round The Outside Review"

Blusom
Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside
Second-Nature CD

Blusom's calm release secretes feelings of seclusion and remoteness. The songs, like darkened clouds blanketing a chilly autumn evening, ebb slowly and unhurried. Resonating bass thumps, vibrant sounding acoustic strums and plucks, and cozy computer generated beats share the same space with cold chiming bells, piercing guitar distortions, sparse electronic beeps and clacks, and detached lyrics: "Go on without me. I am self-absorbed and shitty."*

Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside was not created with the intention of more than a handful of friends to hear. Two Denver-area musicians, Jme White (Acrobat Down) and Mike Behrenhausen (Juhl and Maraca Five-O), recorded most of the songs sometime in 2001 by White in his Thin Air Studio in Denver, and then dubbed copies for friends. Eventually a tape landed in the lap of Second-Nature, and liking it so much they released Blusom's debut for mass consumption. Good move.

Throughout Blusom's debut they blend cool elements from Modest Mouse (think The Moon & Antarctica), Joan of Arc (the vocals even remind me of Tim Kinsella's), and some Radiohead, while creating an original sound that is both good and comforting despite its overall feeling of isolation and solitude.

Experimental bedroom sounds with a professional studio touch; Go Slowly pulsates, bleeps, and hums around acoustic strings and strong vocals. The duo is capable of snaring brittle, cold numbness with balmy, organic warmth, resulting in producing an outpouring of lo-fi acoustic splendor. Blusom's album is the ideal release to listen to when you are alone, distant, and wanting to escape human contact.

by Ken Hawk
- Manatee Bound


"Top Ten Albums of 2003"

7. Blusom - Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside (Second Nature)



Ex-Acrobat Down and Maraca 5-0 members join forces for a left-field collection of bittersweet tunes that straddle indie and electro-ambience with wide legs. Vocalist/guitarist Mike Behrenhausen's resolute vulnerability (think Mac McCaughan in Berlin, exorcising his Thom Yorke demons with a bottle of absinthe) fits flawlessly with Jme White's deft swells of electronic dissonance, which recall Aphex Twin, Eno and the sound your car engine makes when it's about to die.
- Erasing Clouds


"Top Cds of 2003"

A side project that was never intended to be released, Denver’s Blusom takes a twisted chunk of laptop weirdness and singer/songwriter soul-bearing to get a sound that’s like Joan of Arc with a soul. More focused than pretty much anything Tim Kinsella ever did, Blusom sits on the bubble between experimental and joyous pop. - Aversion.com


"Go Slowly All The Way Round The Outside Review"

Of the daydream, Freud once wrote that it “creates for itself a situation which is to emerge in the future, representing fulfillment of the wish. . .which now carries in it traces both of the occasion which engendered it and of some past memory.” All apologies for starting with a Freudian quotation aside, Blusom’s debut album, Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside, seems to pulsate with just this sort of transfixed remembrance of the past in the present. Their filtering of long standing sentiments through the metallic effects of the moment enlivens what would otherwise be simply a nostalgic treatment of classic country and folk music.

Much like the Fruit Bats and Holopaw, Colorodo-based duo Blusom, consisting of vocalist/songwriter Mike Behrenhausen and electronics specialist Jme, infuse fresh vitality into traditional Americana by layering it with the rush and crackle of studio trickery. The chunky beats or midnight-oil electronics seem to settle onto the front porch with the straw-dry strum of acoustic guitars like they’ve been just slow country stroll apart this entire time. Their commitment to this combination is full-blooded and composed, without the hesitant transformations of a band like Ill Lit. The resulting album bears the honest elegy of a country choir that’s learned to soak their hymns in the shuffling currents of modernity. There’s no reason to gaze back at the moment of conception; Blusom has fulfilled our wishes with this one.

“On Glass” is the ideal starting point for the album, and one of its best songs. Underneath squiggling electronics and the album’s most high-charged beat, Behrenhausen’s delicate voice shimmers with the aluminum-reflected heat of a summer day. Its woozy drones leave you feeling victimized by sunstroke, and as it fades out into a choked-up guitar part that reminds of Califone, the album’s dizzy desert tone leaves a burn.

Starting with the sound of water sloshed about in a thick tube, “Iceland of Greeland?” is a solemn lament deadened with the notion of winter’s ceaseless darkness. A slowly picked guitar accompanies its alien synth tones to form a campfire dirge that, on its own, is worth the price of admission.

Added to these song-based tracks are a series of expertly placed instrumentals. They provide gaps to exhale some of the exhaust from its largely brooding tone, which if left without these intermissions, may have been too weighty to consume en masse. “Fireside Iconoclasm”’s scratching sounds and aerial drones lift the album from the similar sorrows of “X-Photo” and the forementioned “Iceland of Greenland?” The twinkling chimes of “Kitelike Blue Paper” help to still the sweltering claustrophobia left from the brilliant “Versus Techno.” Yet, these instrumentals never feel like side-show distractions, and their presence establishes Blusom as musicians capable of making a singularly magnetic album that swells forward with a mature and effortless grace.

Never losing its momentum, GSATWRTO is ultimately a work bound to the strength of its entirety. There’s a lot of weight to be carried at times, and the fact that its breezier moments never pacify but rather embolden its picket-fence jeremiads testifies to what a remarkable play the album is from start to finish. Full of meadow-bedded reverie and stanzas of stiffening chill, this is a daydream I’d settle in for anytime, as long as I was allowed to see it to its end.




Reviewed by: Derek Miller

Reviewed on: 2004-03-17
- StylusMagazine.com


Discography

FULL LENGHTH CD - Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside
released 8/12/03 on Second Nature Recordings

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

Sometime in 2001, Denver rock veterans Jme White (ACROBAT DOWN) and Michael Behrenhausen (JUHL and MARACA FIVE-O) made a record of experimental bedroom recordings, with no ambitions for national release. Titling the project BLUSOM (pro-nounced “Blue-Some”), they simply passed the recording among friends and local music fans. Two years later, the folks at Second Nature Recordings wound up with a copy and immediately hunted down White and Behrenhausen to ask permission to make it more widely available.

Blusom’s two-year old recording is a prescient combination of ambient electronics, brittle, lo-fi acoustic pop, trip hop flirtations, and intimate, earnest vocals – a combination of sounds that fits the cultural trends of 2003’s POSTAL SERVICE as comfortably as Behrenhausen channels the intimacy and disturbing urgency of 1993-era EAST RIVER PIPE.

Never intended for commercial release, but now released as a “proper” full-length, Go Slowly All The Way Round The Outside is being hailed as a perfect mix of heartbroken vocal melodies, thoughtful instrumentation, and indie pop sensibilities unconfined by commerce. It is, as one journalist described it, like “Superchunk meeting Radiohead in Aphex Twin’s tanning booth.” Recorded entirely by White at his Thin Air Studios in Denver, the strength and beauty of Go Slowly All The Way Round The Outside lies in the duo’s combination of songwriting skills and conviction to studio experimentation driven by a once private desire to create something new and honest.

The duo has made the project a full-time endeavor, performing live shows around the Denver/Boulder area. A 2003 Spring/Summer Tour of the South and Midwest followed soon after.
Currently, White and Behrenhausen are putting the finishing touches on their follow-up: a 15 song full-length cd, to be titled The Metapolitan.