Dancers Music: May 2004 Archives
Never having heard a full album and actually knowing very little about a band certainly does not exclude them from being The Greatest Band Of All Time. CERTAINLY NOT!! It's true. Tussle haven't even released their first album yet, and lord knows, I haven't ever seen them play live. What I do know is that my friend, Adam Forkner, played with them or saw them or something when he was staying in New York in the fall of 2002, and he returned with a 1" button of theirs. I love it when the first thing you know about a band is what their button looks like. Forkner also had a CDR they were selling at their show and boy was that baby bouncing. Tussle is an instrumental band. BLECHHH. Who likes instrumental bands!?!? They play a super danceable mix of dub, kraut, and funk with four dudes. One plays bass, one plays drumset, another plays a "weird" drumset made of weirdstuff like plastic and paper and garbage, and a guy who plays samplers and keys and noises and junk.
Some true Mission district dudes, the majority of the band considers themselves to be visual artists first or at least "before Tussle happened." Tussle is deeply entrenched in both the San Francisco rock (Erase Errata, Numbers, etc.) and the San Francisco electronic scene (Kid 606, Matmos, Blevin Blectum, etc.). Tussle has released two EPs so far on Troubleman Unlimited, and this is where Adam Forkner returns to the Tussle story. Adam is in a band called Yume Bitsu, who released an album called the Golden Vessyl of Sound, with some crazy fractal lazer cover. Both of the Tussle EPs have artwork by the very awesome Chris Johanson but both are really reminiscent of the Yume Bitsu art. Scope on this: Yume Bitsu's Golden Vessyl of Sound (2002) on the left, Tussle's Don't Stop EP (2004) on the right.
Tussle is music that I feel comfortable putting on all the time. Tussle is so so well crafted and so versatile that songs take on very different vibes. Sometimes a song will make you wanna dance, sometimes it will make you wanna read a book, and sometimes it will make you wanna sit on a couch and clothes your eyes. Tussle are destruction dub masters and kings of crunk rhythms and their first LP is coming out in September. Pick it up, because who wouldn't want to own the first LP of The Greatest Band of All Time.
