Buke & Gase Scholars

Scholars is Buke and Gase’s third album & their first in over five years. The New York duo have reinvented themselves, challenging their songwriting, sound palette and performance. They’ve emerged with a more concise, electronic & emotional sound, in sync with our most forward-thinking contemporary artists. The band are already artists’ artists. In autumn 2018, they supported Steve Albini’s renown band Shellac on a tour from Portland, OR to Los Angeles, CA. Since their last album 2013’s General Dome, they have performed alongside or been hand-picked support to a who’s who of music icons: Laurie Anderson & Lou Reed, Battles, Reggie Watts, Swans, Deerhoof, Owen Pallett and Mike Patton’s metal supergroup Tomahawk. (That also serves as a pretty good RIYL of their uncategorizable sound—and a snapshot of a cult fanbase spread across progressive indie rock, art-folk, metal & math rock listners.) Expectations for the new record are high after vocalist Arone Dyer was the first thing anyone heard of The National’s Grammy-winning Sleep Well Beast album, singing the introduction to #1 AAA radio charting “The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness”—and accompanying the band on numerous live & television performances throughout 2017-18. They’ve received consistent media support from premium outlets such as NPR Music (an early Tiny Desk Concert), Radiolab (which has devoted two episodes to the group), music vlogging sensation The Needle Drop, and Pitchfork (which gave a song on their last album Best New Track designation). Coverage of four pre-release singles has been positive: • “a sonic shift, with a more electronic & ruminating sound” — Too Many Blogs • “It’s got a creepy kind of magic to it” — Stereogum • “percussive and funky” — Brooklyn Vegan RIYL: Dirty Projectors, Tune-Yards, Animal Collective, James Blake, Battles, or this idea via Twitter: “like if Captain Beefheart suddenly decided to be Justin Timberlake” (It was a compliment)