About Me
Butchers and Bakers are musical nomads, roaming the noisy steppes of Brooklyn for sounds to hunt, kill, cut-up, cook, and eat. A tribe of four, these nomads have surprisingly stuck to their ancient traditions despite the encroachment of the modern civilized world upon their territorial expanse. Though it is suspected that they themselves are steppe invaders, their exact origins are unknown. Most historical and archaeological data seems to point to a previous existence west and north of their current hunting grounds. While they have a rich history of previous sonic endeavor, the contemporary anthropological data gathered by scientists in the field shows that their historical depth is matched by a current culture of highly complex musical substance. Their current "civilization" (if we can call such primitives "civilized") ranges from crackling noise pyrotechnics to free chordal structures to sweet and sour melodies to sing-along choruses to rich old-fashioned vocal harmonies and more. To give a sense of their place in our own culture, it might be helpful to think of them as occupying the sonic space between construction equipment noise and a children's chorus. They seem to be a highly eclectic mix of previous sound tribes and cultures, like Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Beach Boys, My Bloody Valentine, Sunny Day Real Estate, Elliott Smith, German Art House Cinema, the foxtrot, the Pixies, light heavy metal, progressive rock, Masayuki Takayanagi, the Top gun soundtrack, power pop, Engine Down, Queens of the Stone Age, and many other unidentified influences (here is space for further academic study). Butchers and Bakers have created few fixed monuments, but when we have managed to capture their sound world on tape—for instance, in their latest Extra Play sound disc entitled Public—we are astounded by the beauty, the elegance, and, again, the variety engendered by this quartet of simple people, roaming that dark and primal world of concrete.
