Bus Hus
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| Started By: | Matt, Jamie, Ethan | ||
| Years Active: | 1998 - Present | ||
| Based In: | Louisville | ||
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| Number of Members: | three core members | ||
Experimental and surrealist hip-hop featuring members of Humongous, active since the late 1990s. The band's style also deviates into funk, psychedelic and vaporwave. All three members (Matt and Jamie Pickerill, Ethan Adrian) go by various pseudonyms, complimented by a fog-driven stage setup.
Biography via Soundcloud
Kentucky-based electronic group Bus Hus has been making challenging underground music for over 20 years, and their recent output has been no exception. For years their social media bios just read, “Born. Schooled. Worked. Played,” and somewhere between those four markers the group have gone through drastic shifts of artistic focus and personnel, using ever-evolving pseudonyms and fashion to obscure themselves from the public. The earliest efforts were sample-heavy psychedelic hip-hop evident in the LP Expectations About Big Cities (2006). The following era was characterized by the band as “frustrated”, with no publicly released musical output other than the widely bootlegged Big Hat, No Cattle (2008) and a string of intensely baffling live shows appearing alongside Shabazz Palaces, Clownvis, and others. The group spent most of the 2010’s curating a dynamically adventurous freeform radio show called The Wayfarer Way.
Recently the group has been releasing a flurry of recordings. Necro Techno (2019) was a gritty cassette-recorded return to studio music, exchanging samples and hip-hop lyricism for more instrumental electronic hardware composition. Two volumes of Reckless Remixes have been unveiled since 2020, with a supposed forty-one volumes on the way. In 2021 the group created a 20th anniversary reissue of their first single Space Raps (2000) that flexes the group’s evolved studio abilities with a full audio restoration, cinematic remix EP, and mastering, all done in-house with an expanded cast of collaborators.
Now they're gearing up to release a new project, fronted by new single "Lowdown”. On "Josie/Lowdown EP” Bus Hus has mutated various forms of nostalgia and pop culture into a funk hybrid. Two classic 1970’s yacht-rock songs by Steely Dan and Boz Scaggs bafflingly transformed into six tracks of 808-heavy electro vapor–prog-funk that replaces words with synthetic sounds created by what the group calls a “Troutman-lightwave apparatus” and the introduction of Rosemarie Simms as vocalist. Brilliant guest remixes appear from vaporwave maven Nmesh and hypnotic techno queen Zvrra. Josie/Lowdown is easily the most complex, refined, and accessible music the group has ever made, yet somehow still just as head scratching.Fans of Paul Hardcastle, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Egyptian Lover, and Dam Funk will find interest here.
Members
Releases
- Space Raps (EP) (1999)
- Expectations About Big Cities (Album) (2006)
- Necro Techno (EP) (2019)
- Reckless Remixes (EP) (2020)
- ...With Pleasure! (EP) (2020)
- The Freedom You Were, The Fascist You Are (Single) (2020, recorded 2013)
- Run For Your Life/Bob Guccione (EP) (2021)
- RRv2: The Formula of Two (Album) (2021)
- Illpassive/Illgressive (Single) (2022)
- Blue Putin (Single) (2022)
- Josie/Lowdown (EP) (2022)
- Top 10 Defense Contractor (Single) (2022)