Second Sundays: Big Lazy & Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang

In this August 10, 2014 edition of Pioneer Works' Second Sundays, Clocktower recorded the event's two experimental pop-rock groups, Big Lazy and Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang.

Guitarist and composer Stephen Ulrich has been leading the trio Big Lazy for close to twenty years. At once stark and otherworldly, Big Lazy is a moody surf-like outfit full of tremolo guitars, slowed down tempos and exotica touches. Their cinematic music evokes noir, spaghetti western, Lynch and Tarantino soundtracks – but Big Lazy’s organic and uncontrived music remains beyond category. Ulrich’s many other musical projects include a number of collaborations with members of Balkan Beat Box as well as countless TV and film scores including the series Bored to Death.

Janka Nabay is the king of Bubu – Sierra Leone’s brand of electro-pop. Back in his hometown of Sierra Leone, Janka electrified traditional Bubu music by adding drum machines and synthesizers and giving it a frantic edge that made him a national hero. Now based in the US, Janka has hooked up with musicians from Brooklyn and DC (where he lives) who call themselves the Bubu Gang. Janka and his musicians share a similar fascination with the old and the new, mixing modern beats and analog keyboards with call and response vocals, improvisation and touches of 70’s psychedelia.

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