[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: We're gonna rip roar through this.

ROBERT KRULWICH: Okay. Do I need to know anything or you just wanna tell me it?

JAD: I'm just gonna tell you it.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: Maybe I'll play you some music as well.

ROBERT: Sure.

JAD: Okay. Three, two, one. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: The podcast.

JAD: That's right.

ROBERT: I shouldn't say it that way. The podcast.

JAD: Yeah, more declarative. So we do—we know music is very important to the show.

ROBERT: Very.

JAD: It's never the explicit topic, but some days it's always there.

ROBERT: It is the governor, really.

JAD: Yeah. And today we're gonna make it front and center. So I thought for the next 10 minutes or so, let me tell you about this band that we ran into.

ROBERT: I don't think you mean that literally. It was not a band that you had a collision.

JAD: No, I kind of did. Well, let me give you the backstory.

ROBERT: Okay. Please.

JAD: So you remember when we were doing the parasite show?

ROBERT: Yes.

JAD: Hey.

JAD: We did several pieces about hookworms. The first of which was about hookworms in the south. Remember this story?

ROBERT: I do. Very well.

JAD: Just to jog, here's a brief clip.

DICKSON DESPOMMIER: "We think that these people are sick from something because they don't—they don't behave like we do."

JAD: What does that mean?

DICKSON DESPOMMIER: They are slow. Not mentally. They're slow, physically. They're pale.

JAD: [whispers] Because they've got hookworm. Okay, so ...

JAD: Good to meet you.

JAD: Now we were searching for the right music to use. We went to our secret weapon. Her name's Karen Havlik. She works a couple cubicle rows down from us. We asked her: do you know anything that's kinda Southern but twangy but not. Kinda has an edge, because these hookworms are taking over people's minds. So it's gotta have a little bit of an edge to it. So she gave me all this stuff, and then she's like, "Oh, and check out Buke and Gass." Gas? Gase? Gase. So to make a long story short, she handed me a CD, this one right here called Buke and Gass.

JAD: And I was like, "That's totally wrong for the show, but it was so right in so many other ways that I was like, okay, so, yeah, so here we are.

JAD: I visited Buke and Gass in Brooklyn in this little basement apartment where they play. And should we just hear some?

ROBERT: Please. I've been a fan of Buke and Gass for—not yet.

JAD: It's really hard music to describe. For instance ...

ARONE DYER: I'm Arone.

SOREN WHEELER: You could say your last name.

ARONE DYER: I'm Arone Dyer.

JAD: Arone is one of the members of the band. Here's how she describes what they do.

ARONE DYER: Imagine a recently retired schoolhouse janitor riding the back of a big horse that's galloping over different scenes. Like, one scene could be a really calm, rose petal-surfaced pond. Jumps over that. And then it gets into another scene where there's a big party with topless beachgoers that are totally pruned out from hanging out on the beach, and they're very surprised. And then it jumps into another scene where there's an angry mob with pitchforks and flames. They're running after rabbits that have just stolen all of the carrots and cabbage, and they're not gonna be able to eat their feast because of it the next day. So they're very angry. But that's what the janitor is jumping over, and he's excited about it. And I would be, too.

JAD: In this scenario, this weird, weird scenario you just painted, are you the janitor? So are you guys the janitor on the horse?

ARONE DYER: No. No, I would say the audience would be the janitor on the horse.*

JAD: So that's how Arone describes it. But there's another Aron in the band.

ARON SANCHEZ: Aron Sanchez.

JAD: Two Arons. And here's his attempt.

ARON SANCHEZ: It's like—it's like miniature—it's like the loudest miniature fuzz.

JAD: Here's Buke and Gass rehearsing a song called "Two Frogs."

[music]

ARONE DYER: And that was that.

ARON SANCHEZ: That's as far as we got.

ROBERT: It's so hookworm-y. I mean, like, right from the get go.

JAD: Totally. Now the amazing thing is that all of that noise just came from two people.

ARONE DYER: Yeah.

ARON SANCHEZ: Just trying to make as much noise as we can. [laughs]

JAD: The reason that they're able to make that much racket is because they've heavily messed with their instruments. Arone, the girl, plays something called the buke.

ARONE DYER: The buke is a baritone ukulele.

ROBERT: Oh, her name isn't Buke. That is the instrument she plays?

JAD: Yeah, she plays the ukulele, which I didn't know comes in a bass flavor.

ARON SANCHEZ: This is yours, right?

ARONE DYER: Yeah.

JAD: Very cute. It's like a miniature guitar.

ARONE DYER: It's really light, too. And it's a wooden body. And you notice it has two pickups. This is just a ...

JAD: She's actually taken this buke and modified it, added some strings, electrified it with some pickups and outputs and such.

ARONE DYER: Two outputs. So it's stereo.

JAD: That's the buke. Now the gass ...

JAD: This seems even more complicated.

ARON SANCHEZ: So this guy ...

JAD: That's what Aaron, the boy, plays.

ARON SANCHEZ: This is the gass. And this has—basically, this is a hybrid between a guitar and a bass.

JAD: Get it? Guitar. Bass. Gass.

ROBERT: Yeah. I'm just trying to think of how would it look like.

JAD: Well, it actually looks just like a normal acoustic guitar. But ...

ARON SANCHEZ: Two of the strings are bass strings.

JAD: The bass strings go to their own bass amp. The guitar strings go to their own guitar amp.

ROBERT: Wouldn't it be cool if the bass string was actually an elongated and taut hookworm?

JAD: [laughs]

ARONE DYER: Do you sing on this one?

JAD: Except it would be hard to play because it'd be biting your fingers the whole time.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: Anyhow, so the other thing that's happening when they play is he's beating a kick drum with his left foot. She's got bells on her ankle.

ARONE DYER: This is a really high pitched frequency. And then this is the brass bells.

ROBERT: Yeah. So this is like, one of those people who walk around, like, in central Europe with, like, nine instruments, doing them all simultaneously?

JAD: A little bit, yeah.

[music]

JAD: This is Buke and Gass performing from their first album, a song called Bundle Tuck.

[music]

JAD: How long have you guys been playing together?

ARONE DYER: We met in 2000, and then we were in a band in 2003.

ARON SANCHEZ: Called Hominid.

ARONE DYER: Hominid.

ARON SANCHEZ: That band broke up.

ARONE DYER: Broke up.

ARON SANCHEZ: We broke up because we were dating at the time.

ARONE DYER: This is the first time you've ever said that. [laughs]

JAD: Really?

ARONE DYER: Yeah.

JAD: What are you now, if you mind me asking?

ARONE DYER: Friends?

ARON SANCHEZ: We're bandmates.

ARONE DYER: Oh, not even friends. Jesus Christ.

ARON SANCHEZ: We're friends.

JAD: Now I kept trying to push and prod the two Arons about why they broke up, but they wouldn't tell me. I probably wouldn't tell me, either. Suffice to say, something happened, and then they just stopped speaking to each other for a really long time.

ARON SANCHEZ: We didn't speak for, like, three years.

ARONE DYER: Three or four years.

JAD: Really?

ARONE DYER: Yep.

JAD: Aaron the girl basically moved away, gave up music altogether and started racing bikes. And then one day out of the blue, for no real reason that he can explain, Aron the boy, writes an email to Arone the girl.

ARONE DYER: He said, "So how's the cycling going?" Or something like that. [laughs]

ARON SANCHEZ: I think I did say that.

ARONE DYER: You did. We've never really talked about it. [laughs]

JAD: Really?

ARONE DYER: Yeah.

JAD: And beyond that, they wouldn't really talk about it with me. But their music has something in it, some kind of like hookworm-y angst that maybe comes from just stuff they don't talk about.

JAD: There's something about your music that feels possessed. My temptation, maybe wrongly, is to say possessed by some sort of the history you guys have together.

ARONE DYER: Could be. Could be.

[music]

ROBERT: If large armies of bunnies are gonna steal their carrots, then they're just living in an anxious world. The truth is they fear the rabbit.

JAD: [laughs] I don't think they would disagree with you there. Well, that was Buke and Gass recorded with help from Michael Rayfield. You can find out more about Buke and Gass at BukeandGass.com.

ROBERT: How would you spell Buke?

JAD: B-U-K-E.

ROBERT: And Gass?

JAD: G-A-S-S. If you have any trouble spelling it, you can just go to our website, Radiolab.org. We will link you there. And for all you New York listeners, here's something: June 1, Buke and Gass are gonna join, actually join us on stage for the second installment of our performance series that we're calling Armageddon.

ROBERT: So we're gonna have Prune and Gase on our stage?

JAD: [laughs] Buke and Gass.

ROBERT: Buke and Gass. But she'll be pruned out.

JAD: She will. He may as well. And that's June 1, here at the Greene Space. Just check our website, Radiolab.org, for details. Oh and by the way, the first one that we did, which was just a few days ago, the video is now on our website as well. Radiolab.org. It was a really fun evening. We had basically two guys talking about swarms. Swarms—you know, the science of swarms. Also kind of making art from swarms. Very cool. Radiolab.org dot.

[LISTENER: This is Seamus Tilsbury, a Radiolab listener from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Radiolab podcast is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation.]

[music]

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