Electric Junkyard Gamelan
New York City, New York, United States | SELF
Music
Press
“transporting...beautiful and
inspired sounds”
- Alisa Soloman
“Terry Dame is one of those
eccentric musicians for whom
composing isn’t enough, she
has to create new instruments
as well. A downtown fixture.”
- Time Out New York
“...rhythmic, near-hypnotic
music.” HX Magazine
- HX Magazine
“...powerful, mesmerizing and
ever changing.” - Ellie Covan
http://www.ny1.com/1-all-boroughs-news-content/top_stories/?ArID=104062 - NY1
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/spinning/episodes/2009/10 - WNYC New York Public Radio
Concert Review: Electric Junkyard Gamelan at Barbes, Brooklyn NY 3/20/10
If there’s a more original band in New York than Electric Junkyard Gamelan, we need to know about them. Their shtick is to take found objects and turn them into percussion instruments, all of them their own creations (they should patent them if they haven’t already). Among their creations tonight: the barp (a drying rack for clothing used as low-register percussion, strung with what looked like rubber bands); the terraphone (a clarinet with a regular reed mouthpiece fastened to a handmade body made from copper tubing); the clayrimba (a perfectly tuned marimba made from clay pots of various sizes) and the cachoptar, sort of a mbira (thumb piano) strung over a section of an old futon frame. The drum kit has kitchen pots in place of cymbals, a plastic pickle drum for a snare, a 20-gallon plastic trashcan for the kick, what looks like the bottoms of several aluminum Chinese takeout pans on a stand for a hi-hat…and a small cast iron skillet on a kick pedal for a cowbell. A discarded circular saw blade became a small gong; half of a school bell became another. Considering that the kit was originally assembled for and required two players, drummer Lee Frisari did a mind-bogglingly impressive job flailing around, half of what she was hitting completely out of her field of vision.
What did their show sound like? Psychedelic, hypnotic, impossible to sit still to. The back room at Barbes was packed but surprisingly, nobody was dancing, considering what a groove they laid down. True to their name, they’re gamelanesque: pointillistic, gently and incisively clattering but also crashing and bashing or slinking and swaying. Several of their songs were basically acoustic trip-hop instrumentals, almost parodies, except that in place of a cold, mechanical drum machine there were four warm bodies rotating betwen instruments. Considering that in Indonesia, gamelans are community organizations where everybody plays pretty much anything (New York’s own gamelan, Gamelan Dharma Swara, of which Electric Junkyard Gamelan’s frontwoman Terry Dame is a member, works the same way), they held true to tradition. Julian Hintz alternated between the aforementioned instruments and another with multicolored rubberbands strung between two wire hangers and rapped on their hip-hop flavored numbers, and didn’t embarrass himself – if he’s the one writing the lyrics, his worldview is smartly aware and his flow is effortlessly smooth, hardcore Brooklyn circa the here and now. One of their later numbers centered around a couple of pairs of Balinese cymbals striking up a ferocious clatter like New Years Day in Chinatown, which was borderline painful considering Barbes’ cozy confines; by contrast, the slinky Space Kitty worked permutations of a woozy bent-note melody on the cachoptar while Life on Mars (an original, not the Bowie song) was mesmerizing and impossible not to get lost in. They also did a funny, fun tribute to their touring van, Fred Beans. Even before the hip-hop lyric and the audience-response part came in, the pans and the gongs were playing off his name – another band’s vehicle should be so proud. They closed with their most Indonesian-sounding number of the night, complete with a big crashing crescendo followed by an impossible series of trick endings. The packed house screamed for an encore and got one, a fiery, conscious hip-hop tune. By now they’d been onstage for over an hour and a half and it was time for the next band – smartly, the waitress had turned on the AC, because considering how hard the four percussionists had been working, they needed it. Electric Junkyard Gamelan do a lot of live shows: watch this space for the next one.
- Lucid Culture
“ a scattered mix of foreign music that mixes jangling and banging with worldly sounds. The EJG definitely knows what it’s playing. It never feels disjointed or awkward, but always feels out of this world; at times natural, earthy...”
- --Michael Levy
“Electric Junkyard Gamelan makes music that is the product of a highly personal vision, and Dame’s originality is alone enough reason to come check out the Big Barp in person”.
--James Heflin, Valley Advocate
- --James Heflin
"Electric Junkyard Gamelan makes music so original they had to invent their own instruments to play it. It's wild enough to please fans...regardless of genre." - None
Discography
"Life On Marz" released September 2009
"Live From HERE" released January 2007.
Self-titled debut cd released in 2002.
All receive college and public radio airplay.
Photos
Bio
Performing original groove-driven music on self-invented instruments this highly original band has a distinct voice that is at once both old and new. "transporting...beautiful and inspired sounds" says NYC’s Village Voice. EJG performs at a wide range of venues from outdoor festivals to arts centers large and small, elementary schools to colleges, underground raves and even a wedding! The list is ever growing.
Electric Junkyard Gamelan is a true world fusion project. With inspirations drawn from the interlocking rhythms of traditional Gamelan music of Bali, modal traditions of India and the Middle East fused with American funk, jazz and hip-hop they produce hypnotic melodies and syncopated strings that ride over funky bass lines and layers of dance-able interlocking rhythms. They perform on innovative musical contraptions such as the Rubarp and Big Barp (electric rubber band harps), the Kachapitar (an electric zither/sitar combo), the Terraphone (copper pipe horn), the Clayrimba (a three octave tuned clay pot "marimba") and an arsenal of percussion instruments fashioned from old farm equipment, turntable platters, saw blades, and truck springs. The result is a super original sound that is new yet familiar. Audiences are transfixed by the beauty and strangeness of the unusual collection of instruments on stage and the amazing array of sounds they produce.
The musicians in EJG hail from diverse musical backgrounds. Band leader, composer and instrument builder Terry Dame, a saxophonist by training has studied music from around the world including Indonesia, the Middle East, the Balkans, Brazil and India. She has been living and working in New York City since 1985, composing and performing for film, video, theater, dance, and concerts. She was the music director, composer and saxophonist with the seven piece global beat jazz group Monkey on a Rail from 1998-2002 and a founding member of the improvisation trio Trophy Wife. She was composer in residence and saxophonist with New York based Circus Amok from 1994-2004. Ms. Dame was also a member of Gamelan Dharma Swara, the traditional Balinese Gamelan based at the Indonesian Consulate in New York City from 1999-2007. She is currently saxophonist with several NYC bands including Paprika, Brooklyn's acclaimed all-female international dance music band, Zapote led by bassist Dawn Drake and Squeeze Rock led by Julian "Julz A" Hintz. She was an artist in residence at HERE Art Center in New York City during 2003 & 2004 and has received commissioning funds from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Rockefeller Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts and the Meet the Composer Fund. Dame was selected in 2006 to be a Sundance Institute Composer Lab Fellow.
She met Julian Hintz aka Julz A, a singer, hip-hop accordionist and classically trained percussionist while in grad school at Cal Arts. Mary Feaster, Lee Frisari and Dame met while playing together in the Circus Amok Band. Feaster, also a member of the trio Trophy Wife is a bassist that plays everything from punk to funk, Latin to Klezmer. Frisari is a classically trained percussionist and punk rock drummer.
EJYG has been performing together since 1998. They have three releases to date including the recently released "Life On Marz" (Sept 2009), a live album "Live from HERE" released in January 2007 and their self-titled debut released in 2002.
Here is what the critic's say about the group
"Electric Junkyard Gamelan makes music so original
they had to invent their own instruments to play it.
It's wild enough to please fans...regardless of genre."
--Global Rhythms Magazine
"transporting...beautiful and inspired sounds"
- --Village Voice
"...rhythmic, near-hypnotic music."
--HX Magazine
"Electric Junkyard Gamelan makes music that is the product of a highly personal vision, and Dame's originality is alone enough reason to come check out the Big Barp in person."
--James Heflin, Valley Advocate
"Terry Dame is one of those eccentric musicians for whom composing isn't enough, she has to create new instruments as well. A downtown fixture."
--Time Out New York
"a scattered mix of foreign music that mixes jangling and banging with worldly sounds. The EJG definitely knows what it's playing. It never feels disjointed or awkward, but always feels out of this world; at times natural, earthy..."
--Michael Levy, New Haven Advocate
"Dame has created a panopoly of homemade instruments that are not only visually fascinating but sonically stunning."
-- Iris Hiskey Arno, The Rivertowns Enterprise
"...powerful, mesmerizing and ever changing."
--Ellie Covan,
Founder/Director of Dixon Place, NYC
Electric Junkyard Gamelan Venues played
Abundance Ecovillage - Fairfield, IA
Amazing Things Art Center - Framingham, MA
Amherst Unita
Links
