I walked into the recently vastly improved Red 7 not really knowing what to expect of the intriguingly named Buke & Gase.

When I arrived I was a bit surprised to see only a small amount of punters in the room . As always there were other options for Austin’s entertainment dollar tonight.The Gizza was tearing the overstuffed Mohawk a new one down the street and the looming uberfest ACL could well be impacting the show numbers this month.

Although the crowd was small in number they were big on enthusiasm as the Brooklyn two piece busily  ripped through their own brand of metallic folk . There are a lot of two piece bands around and its sometimes tricky to differentiate between them , but whats cool about Buke & Gase is their unique instrumentation.Arone Dyer provides ethereal voice and a homemade baritone ukelele (Buke) whilst Aron Sanchez sits beside her loudly strumming another Etsy style contraption , a lengthy guitar with thick bass strings (Gase), percussion is handled equally with a bass drum and tambourine shoes ! The result is a clanging , repetitive sound which is artsy and strangely hypnotic

I’m really not sure what percentage of the audience knew who the band were already but by the end of their set it seemed clear they had made a bunch of new friends and now a new fan.

Links//
Listen to “Hiccup” off General Dome here: http://bukeandgase.bandcamp.com/track/hiccup
Listen to and Purchase the “Function Falls” EP here: http://bukeandgase.bandcamp.com/album/function-falls-ep

*gase = (pronounced “gace”) – a guitar-bass hybrid of Aron Sanchez’s own creation.
**buke = (pronounced “byook”) – a self-modified six-string former baritone ukulele.

Written by Glen Brown
Photos by John Paul Wilson