BunChakeze

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UK outfit BunChakeze is among the bands that can trace their history back to another time and age. In this case the time machine takes us back to London in the early 80's, and a young, promising band called Odin of London. They had good material and dedication to their art, but as live opportunities dried up Odin disbanded. A band without a venues where they can perform their material to an audience is a tad disheartening after all.

Some Odin members decided to form a new band, BunChakeze........... and the rest is history. I caught up with Colin Tench for the BunChakeze story.
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Your biography has been covered in
      your
      ProgArchives profile so let's bypass the biography details. 

    But why did you fall in love with
      nerdy
      progressive rock and wanted to play this type of music instead of
      any
      other form of music ? 

Music is much like 
everything else you learn when you are very young. It stays with you for
 ever and can't be removed. In the 60s you bought 1 album and learnt 
everything about it. You couldn't afford another one! 

We all grew up with music that changed at an alarming rate. It never 
happened before and has not happened since. It was so interesting and 
inspiring. One day it was "She loves you" and shortly after, it was 
"Helter Skelter" and "I am a walrus". We grew up in the most progressive
 era in music. I never got bored with it. It was like an extreme sport. Nobody labelled it as prog. 
Anyway, how on earth could progressive become a bad label for anything? 
Music was a constant joy and inspiration. It was also on the radio. Wow!

The forerunner of BunChakeze was
      Odin.
      Please tell us more about this band.

Odin
 was conceived by Gary Derrick in 1980. I met them in 1981 because they 
were auditioning guitarists. Although not their aim, they took 2 of us. I
 had twin neck and I guess had a sound they liked and the other guy was 
John Culley. They couldn't decide and asked us if we minded if they took
 us both. I think we both loved the idea. John had a Strat and a 
fantastic feel and sound. At first, we didn't know his history. He had 
played in Black Widow and Cressida in the early 70s. He even played with
 Geno Washington in the 60s. He was a pro and a gifted professional 
guitarist.

We wrote, rehearsed and gigged in London. We were a 6 piece and felt 
pressure to keep it simple, in order to get gigs. Prog was a very bad 
word by then. During the first year we upgraded the drummer and Cliff 
Deighton joined us. This was bad because Cliff was totally influenced by
 Rush and all things prog. It was good because he took Odin to a much 
higher level.

Odin were a true band. All influences allowed. We were a rock band with 2
 lead guitars, keyboards, big drums and long songs. We were doomed. 

If Odin existed now, we would succeed. In fact, we made enough 
recordings at the time to release an album. That album will be released 
very soon. It has some of the best guitar work ever heard by John 
Culley! There is even a new Culley guitar piece on there.

Odin died and BunChakeze were formed
      and then disbanded again. What were the band members up to in the
      20
      years between the formation of BunChakeze and the reappearance
      again
      as BunChakeze ?

When Odin split, we sold the PA and never really had a plan to gig 
again. The pressures of work are bad enough but the hostilty shown to 
bands like Odin made it all seem a little pointless. If you already had a
 name, you had chance. We didn't!

We were never starstruck or thought we were great or any such nonsense.

Being realistic, we decided that bending to fads and fashions was silly.
 It would achieve nothing. We got an opportunity to help build a studio 
and that gave us studio time. Cliff, Gary and I decided to try to find 
the right singer, write and record an album, with no expectations of 
success, visit a few record companies and offer it to them. No cost to 
them and therefore worth a try. We did everything we set out to do and 
got absolutely no response. No surprise but a little sad. The 
album(tape) went in the cupboard, I emigrated to Sydney for a year, 
Cliff went to university and Gary played with various bands in London. 
Cliff has also played with a few bands in London. I didn't really touch 
the guitar again until 1992. That's when we went back into a studio, 
remixed the music, finished off a few sections that weren't right and 
went round the record companies again. A waste of time but we had a nice
 mix now. Ha ha!

I then proceeded to not play the guitar again and Gary and Cliff kept their hand in with some live gigs.

Joey Lugassy, the singer we discovered back in 1985, had come to London 
from Los Angeles. After the recording, he went back. He has been 
constantly active in music. He wrote and recorded a rock opera with 
DAYSIX. He got 2 Emmy nominations for music written for a drama series 
and he wrote and sung "Today" for Amnesty International.

The 4 of us are a mixed bag but have skied and travelled together and I 
also spent a lot of time in LA with Joey. We are still totally 
connected.

Reviving BunChakeze was pure chance. I was looking for John Culley, 
Found Pasi Koivu, who looks after the Black Widow archives. He was 
amazed to hear about Odin and BunChakeze and advised us to release both 
albums. The last 4 months have been absolutely astonishing. I'm playing 
guitar again!

Please give us your long or brief
      thoughts on your only album Whose Dream? released earlier this
      year.
      How would you describe the music ? 

It's hard to describe music you wrote, played and mixed but I'll try. To
 my ears, it's not technical or full of deep meanings. Gary would 
disagree with that so it is purely my opinion. It grows on you because 
it has melodies and memorable tunes which are not always obvious on 
first hearing. It's easy to listen to and wouldn't scare your mum. I've 
been known to call it easy listening prog. That is where I would put 
Floyd, the Beatles, early Bowie and even Peter Gabriel to name a few. 
I'm not suggesting we are as good as any of them but I do think the 
album leaves you feeling good and wanting to listen again. I think we 
did end up some very attractive music and it has a lot of variation. We 
know that a favourite track of one person is almost pedestrian to 
another. This is good. It isn't a 2 track album padded out with lead 
breaks and badly written filler material. It even has the feelgood 
reprise of Whose Dream? at the end. 

In the band we all hear it differently too. Again, proof that it was 
made by 4 individuals with their own ideas. If you like listening to the
 music, you don't need to know what the lyrics are. If you like the 
lyrics, you can listen to them without getting hammered by the music. It
 works on many fronts.

How is your writing and creative
      processes ? 

The writing was amazing. In the true band style, we all put everything 
into it. We even built a studio together, wall by wall! We had tunes and
 lyrics but not very much that formed anything at the beginning. It grew as the year went on.

If I pick out some tracks, Bun Chakeze was a work out and fun to rehearse. It started out as 3 guys jamming. I am guilty of making it into a piece
 that requires all the notes to be played just so but that's fun to my 
ears.

Walk in Paradise was me playing the wrong instrument. I got the riff on 
the keyboard and then transferred it to guitar. It slowly grew into a 
long piece around Gary's lyrics.

Flight of the Phoenix was Gary playing the wrong instrument. He came up 
with the begining on guitar. The fact that Gary and Cliff did a 
parachute jump together created Gary's lyrics. I like that!

The Deal was all about the echoplex. It just built organically and I had
 to write lyrics afterwards. It sounds as though it was done the other 
way around! It would have drums in a live setting.

Whose Dream? was written around Cliff's lyrics. I think that track was 
very well written and proved we weren't just having lucky accidents.

Midnight Skies happened because I found a Strat in the studio. It was 
all about the sound. Gary's lyrics made us really concentrate on getting
 that one right. I think we did. It maybe the one that we are most proud
 of.

To summarise, we concentrated on the sound of each track. Partly because we still had no singer.

When we found Joey, he had to work with the music as recorded. That was 
very difficult. We didn't leave enough space for him to really shine as 
often as he can. He managed to make it his own. We had tried many 
singers but they all failed. Joey understood how to become another 
instrument in the music. We were stunned! As soon as he started 
recording, we knew we had found THE guy. By the end, we couldn't stop 
listening to it. It sounded completely new to us even though we had 
heard it 1000 times during recording and writing.

The question of who wrote which bits of which songs is irrelevant. We 
had no formula. If any one of us had been missing, the sound of the 
album would be completely different. To me, that is the magic of 
creating together. Odin had it and BunChakeze have it!

How is your gigs and festivals
      situation ?

We have nothing planned because everything hinges on album sales at the 
moment. If we get lucky, we cannot wait to get out there. This has never
 been performed live and believe me, it will sound fantastic live.

What is the latest updates and the
      plans for this and next year ? 

At
 the moment we are keeping our eyes open for 2 more members for 
BunChakeze. Guitar and keyboards. On the album, we had a guest playing 
piano and of course I did all the guitars. I am so looking forward to 
the time when I hear 6 of us playing this music. It would be improved 
just by the fact of there being 6 individuals playing a part.

To wrap up this interview, is there
      anything you want to add to this interview ?

I
 spent the 70s listening to Genesis, Yes, Floyd, Focus etc. Then it all 
went dead. Recently I never stop listening to the new guys. Pain of 
Salvation, Porcupine Tree, Flower Kings etc. The 20 years in the middle,
 it was Zappa, Vai, Satriani, Al DiMeola. I guess my brain needs the 
excitement. Joey, Gary and Cliff and I, have different musical tastes 
and that's why we work well together.

Gary is more rock influenced, Cliff and Gary like Rush, I don't. Joey 
loves Early genesis and of course Peter Gabriel but he isn't grounded in
 progressive rock at all. I also like Yanni and Opeth. Ha ha!!

Our music is not "TOO" anything. I hope to go forward with the same 
approach as ever. Find a sound together, mix it up, compliment each 
other's ideas and end up with something unique to that band. That's the 
point. That's the magic of music.

Pasi Koivu is a visionary and a keyboard wizard. He really has put us on the map. He is 100% 
responsible for what is happening now. Our thanks and great respect go 
out to him. 

Thank you to Colin for this interview
Their PA profile is here and their homepage here