Life of Brian

Remember when you were a kid, beating on pots and pans and strumming out crude rhythms on rubber bands until your parents screamed at you to cut out that infernal racket? When we are young, this experimentation on everyday objects can serve as an initial foray into the world of music, even if the sounds produced only loosely fit under that description.

Then there are people like Terry Dame and the rest of Electric Junkyard Gamelan, who take this experimentation with “found sound” instruments to the next level.

On Friday, Aug. 17, the Electric Junkyard Gamelan’s performance at Sage Street Mill at the Vermont Arts Exchange proved that all you really need to rock are a few clay and metal pots, bits of old furniture, wire and some rubber bands stretched over a wooden frame.

The aforementioned electric rubber band harp, or “Rubarp,” stole the show early on in the band’s opening number, “Drum and Barp.” “You’ve been barped now,” said Dame after the song was performed.

The Rubarp and its larger cousin, the appropriately named “Big Barp,” were the envy of anyone who has ever tried to create an instrument out of rubber bands (yours truly being among this group). The instruments, played with thin wooden sticks, created a surprisingly loud sound somewhere between a marimba and a xylophone. Throughout the performance the Rubarp and Big Barp provided the melodic backbone to the band’s pummeling, percussive assault.

The majority of the instruments on stage were invented by Dame using found objects, and included percussion instruments, stringed instruments and a woodwind instrument called the “Terraphone.” Dame and band members Julian Hintz, Mary Feaster, Lee Frisari and Robin Burdulis switched from instrument to instrument throughout the performance, sometimes doing so in mid-song.

Dame studied Balinese Gamelan music at the California Institute of the Arts as a composition and performance major. As Dame explained to the audience, Gamelan is a type of traditional music from Indonesia, involving metallophones, stringed instruments and bamboo flutes. This initial exposure influenced Dame to form Electric Junkyard Gamelan in 1998.

But Gamelan-influenced music is only the tip of the band’s musical iceberg. Compositions performed at Friday evening’s concert ranged from spaced-out progressive music (“Life on Mars”), to rollicking rhythms straight out of a Tom Waits song (“Big Barp”), to a combination of hip-hop and traditional Gamelan chanting (“Hipcak”) that had the audience clapping and grooving along. These varied sounds are due in no small part to the wide range of musical backgrounds within the group.

“[The band members] are all classically trained, they’re an amazing group of musicians,” said Dame after the performance. “[Hintz] has his own project, called Squeeze Rock, and Lee is a rock ‘n’ roll and punk drummer.”
Dame has been playing music since she was a child, having been influenced by her parents, who also played. “I grew up playing piano and trumpet, and started playing the saxophone when I was 26,” she said.

Dame first began building instruments in graduate school, as part of a thesis paper entitled “Woman’s Work,” in which she created music using objects found within “the traditional domains of women’s environments,” including office and kitchen supplies. Her first instrument was actually the Rubarp.

“After I graduated I moved to New York, and gathered mostly found objects,” said Dame. “One thing led to another, and I started making more.”

Dame uses two different approaches to writing Electric Junkyard Gamelan’s compositions. “Sometimes I’ll have a composition or a sound in mind, and I’ll create an instrument that makes that sound, and sometimes I’ll create the object first,” said Dame. “At first [the group] was very improvisational, then it was super-composed. Now we combine the two approaches.”

Electric Junkyard Gamelan has released two albums, their 2002 self-titled debut, and most recently their 2007 live album, “Live from HERE.” The band plans to just continue touring for a while.

“We have no plans for new instruments, we’re mostly focusing on touring, just spreading the web a little further,” said Dame. “I think we’re going to do our first cover soon, the ‘Fat Albert’ theme song.”