Jung People

Best Local Release: Jung People’s Gold Bristle! is not only my favourite local release, but probably the best thing my ears have encountered all year. Cathartic, fragile and engaging in a way that post-rock can only hope to be. - Beatroute

Gold Bristle is a soundscape. The record doesn’t preach; it paints. It colours the imagination with all our world’s darks and lights, leaving the hungry mind satisfied. A champion of the instrumental genre, Gold Bristle will be Calgary-based Jung People’s breakout album.
Some music is best contemplated in size. Some moments on the record are as small and fragile as a butterfly on a leaf. The leaves and the branches sway in unique and calming time signatures, shaking and quivering by some otherworldly force, guiding the accents of time. In contrast, musical climaxes fire like cannons over a bay with crowds and fireworks filling the electric air with jubilation.

An intricate game is played between tension and resolution. Contrasting forces are found through the notes and rhythms, but most notably in the dynamics, resulting in immense moments, such as on “From Our Eyes into the Fire,” where the listener is positively overwhelmed when the opposing forces collide in a blaze of glory. Dissonant guitars clash with harmonious horns to create the moment when dawn breaks the night and the sky shares two contrasting forces – if only for a short while. “Awoken in the Shambles” masters the space between notes. This eerily beautiful piece delivers a small yet triumphant warmth with every key struck while the space between is a wash of vast, expansive darkness.

Every track on Gold Bristle is praise worthy, taking the listener on an incredible adventure through the soundscape created by Jung People. All in all, it is an outstanding performance by a breakout band.

By Sean Hamilton - Beatroute

Anybody can upload a handful of tracks to Bandcamp and call it an album these days, but it takes a different type of dedication to put out a double LP — never mind a handmade, screen-printed double LP with accompanying 26-page storybook. That, in record nerd speak, is the kind of “album as art object/statement” one might associate more with the bygone era of progressive rock, where the term “concept album” wouldn’t make civilians run for the hills. Gold Bristle!, the sophomore effort from Calgary post-rock duo Jung People, is most definitely a concept album, right down to the slabs of pink vinyl it’s pressed on.

Although recent live performances have boasted an expanded lineup, Jung People is essentially the duo of Bryan Buss and Jordan Bassi, longtime friends who spent years playing in punk/metal/progressive groups before coming to post-rock in 2010. I sat down with Buss to discuss the genesis of the duo’s new record, as well as recording in the same studio as Canadian post-rock heavyweights Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

“Jordan and I, we were working in this cafeteria for a couple years. We were both longtime vegetarians, and having to serve bacon every day got a bit revolting — and the whole imagery of pigs in general is always such a negative stereotype, so during my breaks I was just searching for something positive about pigs,” Buss explains. “Eventually I came across the old tale of Gullinbursti, or Gold Bristle, an old Norse tale that kind of inspired us. We were writing new music at the time and thought it’d be cool to do a concept album, something positive about pigs, and in our way to kind of promote — I mean, in the ‘cuter way’ with the children’s story — the allegory to factory farming for human consumer goods.

“And we love prog, so the concept album — all the old concept album stuff, we wanted to make something like that,” he adds.

Gold Bristle! was recorded with Howard Bilerman at hotel2tango in Montreal, a.k.a. the recording studio owned in part by Efrim Manuel Menuck from the Godspeed You! Black Emperor/Silver Mt. Zion axis. A fitting choice given Jung People’s sweeping post-rock/textural ambient sounds, not to mention the studio’s recording history.

“We tried to play it cool but were just fanboying it up, really,” Buss concedes. “All their gear was peppered around the studios; I used this screwdriver that was laying around — you never know whose stuff that was, right?”

Although the new record features expanded arrangements (including guest spots from the likes of Silver Mt. Zion violinist Jessica Moss and Arcade Fire/Bell Orchestre French horn player Pietro Amato, amongst others), Buss remains confident in the duo’s ability to perform new material live, regardless of how many extra people are onstage.

“Since I play an eight-string guitar, there’s so many notes and harmonies going on in one chord that I figured — especially since we weren’t sure if we were going to be bringing people on tour with us or not — that we’d layer it in such a way that we could still perform with just the two of us, if need be.”

Jung People will be on tour with Edmonton-based drone group Pigeon Breeders, who have recently been joining the duo during more ambient/improvisational stretches. Both groups will be performing at the Lantern Church in Inglewood this Saturday, November 30, promising an immersive night of textural sounds and luminous acoustics. - FFWD

DEFENDERS OF (ANIMAL) RIGHTS

Progressive rock has always been known as a sort of genre for intellectuals and music conservatory purists. The genre is laced with things like extended 20-minute songs, ridiculous time signatures and impressive instrumentation.

Calgary’s Jung People, however, are bringing their own humanitarian element to the table. Formed in 2010, the band has been gaining a notable amount of steam lately, playing the massive South By Southwest (SXSW) festival and making an appearance at Canadian Music Week. In addition, they are on the verge of releasing Gold Bristle, their new opus to their animal loving roots.

“Jordan [Bassi] and I are very involved with animal liberation in most of our work,” says Bryan Buss, band main-man and eight-string guitar wielder.

“You can really see that just with song titles and, basically, although instrumental, we always like to put our morals in everything, in as much art as we can.”

The nine-song offering does not disappoint in that aspect.

Based loosely around the story of the Norse god Freyr and modified to suit the band’s own message, “the story follows a carousal of pigs through their journey of innocence and their unknown fate. Breathing fact into the lungs of legend, a golden pig is born, who sings the hiding gospel of certainty, and liberates his friends and family into wilderness, the original home.”

Mainly though, it serves as an allegory to the mistreatment of animals in factory farming. The instrumental band – rounded out by Bassi (drums, keyboards, guitar), Darren Young (stand-up bass), Dominique Ma (violin) – felt the message so important that they created a children’s book to accompany the album so listeners can get a real sense of the story.

“With the children’s story, we basically wrote as much as we could so you could read along to the story. If you read too fast, you can just listen along until the next track begins,” says Buss, who emphasizes innocence and subtlety in this kind of approach.

“We don’t like shouting at the top of our lungs on a street corner. We prefer to do it in kind of a cute kind of quiet way.”

The album was recorded at the highly regarded hotel2tango in Montreal, which has produced huge names that include none other than The Arcade Fire and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Manning the controls? Howard Bilerman and Greg Smith.

“They’re just really calm,” he notes of his engineers.

“Instead of overproducing your work they just let you do the talking and let you work on your own piece as much as you want. They really bring it out of you naturally.”

Bilerman and Smith also worked their magic into bringing a variety of session musicians in on the project, including Jessica Moss of Silver Mt Zion (violin) and Pietro Amato of Arcade Fire, doing nothing less than putting Buss and co. in a very surreal situation.

It was all a culmination that led to a record that plays very much like a classical orchestra, with very intricate and beautiful arrangements that convey the mood the band was trying to get to their audience.

“On the musical side, there’s certain elements that will carry out throughout the whole project,” says Buss. “So, there might be certain guitar melodies that are repeated at the start and then it comes back at the end and then a certain phrase that’s halfway through the album was at the start under some other musical layers.”

It’s something that the band’s fans can look forward to when the album is released November 30 at Republik and, with an upcoming U.K. tour being booked for May and another cross-Canada tour for the summer, things will surely only get better for Calgary’s favourite humanitarians.

Jung People will release Gold Bristle on November 30 at the Lantern Church.

By Brandon McNeil - Beatroute

Overview

When musicians talk about music they light up like Christmas trees. The love of creating, performing, and recording music resembles the love affair of high school sweethearts. For Jung People, that love shines through like a solar flare in space. It is bright, powerful and electric. Like a strong addiction, music acts like a drug, the instrument becomes the needle. They are one, intricately intertwined. The love of music, and the need express yourself through art, is what makes Jung People true artists. It is for this reason that up and coming instrumental duo Jung People are the Indie403's Featured Artists of the Month.

Music, Influence and The Scene

Before enrolling at the Musician Institute in Los Angeles, Giordano W. Bassi and Bryan Buss played progressive metal which “wasn’t artistically captivating.” Their music and the way they approach their craft changed for the better when they learned their craft from the premier music school in the world. According to guitarist Bryan Buss, the Musicians Institute “pushed us into an extremely creative direction.” Instead of writing songs that told stories, the men wrote songs to captivate listeners into appreciating music as an art form.

Without the Musicians Institute, we would be without Jung People. While watching classmates practice 18 hours a day so they could eventually sell their music to jingle companies and film studios, Jung People took that reality and moved in a different direction.

“We starting writing music completely different way… seeing it a different way. From that point on, it was Jung People, it was us,” reveals Bassi.

In between talking about how great music surprisingly came from Iceland, by way of Bjork and Sigur Ros, and wondering what era gave us the best music, Bassi and Buss express their love of the music from the Winter City.

“Winnipeg has really huge musicians… huge in my eyes at least,” says Bassi, who admitted he “very rarely” listens to music that does not have a message, unless it is The Weakerthans singings songs about cats.

Bands like Winnipeg punk rock legends Propagandhi and Californian’s NOFX were credited as the bands that changed their lives and made them vegetarians who are passionate about animal rights.

“All the bands I really, really listen to, the ones I really remember, have a message,” says Bassi, who along with Buss has taken the social consciousness of punk rock and blended it with various styles of music that take you on a roller coaster ride through the clouds, down to hell, and back again. Carefully crafted, the music Jung People creates leaves you in a state the band craves: “emotional and uplifted.”

Those feelings have been incubated in Calgary, a city with a growing scene Jung People hope to see grow.

“It’s better to build a scene here then join a scene that has already been built,” says Buss, while dismissing any suggestion the band pack up and move to Vancouver or Toronto. Jung People holds a bit of pride and responsibility in securing a place for Cow Town in music folklore. Jung People wants to “help Calgary, help our friends’ bands, help our community.”

Buss teaches music to kids as at a music school when he has free time away from the band; he is expressing his love for music in many ways that include teaching youngsters how to play the guitar. He sees the future as a bright one for local acts.

“With Sled Island, Calgary’s starting to get a lot of recognition for its music scene.” As fans flock to venues like The New Black, Dickens and The Blind Beggar to name a few, Buss’s theory is getting the support.

Charitable Hearts and Social Consciousness

The late psychologist Carl Jung (who inspired the band name) once wrote, “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

Jung People is a group of two individuals who don’t just talk the talk; they walk the walk. When they tell you they care about the world, they mean it. Such is proven by their commitment to a local animal reserve.

RASTA is an animal sanctuary founded in 2001 by Lucie Carney, who noticed the lack of no-kill animal shelters in Calgary. Located just south of Calgary, the sanctuary “offers a Lifelong Safe Haven to several farm animals, as well as other domestic animals rescued from unimaginably horrific circumstances.” The volunteer-based operation is always in need of donations, and that is where Jung People step in.

Based on the idea that bands with label attachment don’t make much money off record sales for years, Jung People has decided to donate the record sales off their current album to RASTA.

“This is something we’ll do whether we make money or not,” reveals Bassi, who along with Buss will live off of the money they make off of shows, and merchandise. Such charity is part of the “social entrepreneurship” principle the band believes in.

“We are donating a small fraction… to an organization that will create a residual income for them,” says Bassi. As Buss puts it, d - Indie 403 (2013)

10-JUNG PEOPLE: Kanadalı enstrümantal rock grubu Jung People, Austin’e gitmeden önce izlemeyi aklıma koyduğum gruplardandı. Bir gitarist ile org, klavye ve perküsyon çalan bir multienstrümantalistten oluşan bu ikiliyi, insanlar tarafından sömürülen hayvanlara adadıkları “Tenterhooks” adlı ikinci albümleriyle tanıdım. Ufak bir tiyatro salonunda gece çok geç saatlerde çaldılar. Oturduk koltuklara, sakince dinledik şarkılarını. Bugüne kadar gördüğüm en tutkulu bateristlerden biriydi Giordano W. Bassi. Hayvanlara adadıkları albüm nedeniyle kendilerine teşekkür etmeyi de ihmal etmedim. - Zülâl Kalkandelen / Müzik Yazilari (2013)

Jung People are rising fast these days. Slated to play both SXSW in Texas and Canadian Music Week in Toronto this year, the instrumental duo is about to expose its unique take on post-rock to a very wide audience. Although Jung People has only been in existence for about two years, Bryan Buss and Giordano (Jordan) W. Bassi have been making various genres of music together for about nine years. The duo’s time at the Musician’s Institute in Hollywood has played a central role in their development and the band collectively describes music school as a frustrating-but-valuable learning experience. As Bassi puts it, “We realized we would never be the best… but at the same time, we realized that our skill was to write music, which a lot of the other people there couldn’t do.”

The pair hasn’t quite finished writing their third album, but their plans for the upcoming GoldBristle promise an even more cohesive final product than their sophomore effort, Tenterhooks. Buss and Bassi say the new album will be more varied than Tenterhooks was, but they are aiming for a subtler, more nuanced aggression than what was on their first album, Too Late to Die Young. The two are tremendously excited to record the new album at Montreal’s legendary hotel2tango studio.

Jung People are still making a name for themselves, both in Calgary and abroad, but their hard work has ended with a string of good fortune. Bassi believes the band exists in a sort of musical “no-man’s land,” oftentimes finding themselves either the most or least bizarre band on the bill, but they have experienced firsthand the benefits of networking with everyone they can. The duo’s proclivity towards playing at charity events has earned them fans that may never have discovered post-rock otherwise and director Thomas Robert Lee even approached the band about scoring his upcoming film, previously titled Transcendence. Jung People wrote the music for both of the film’s trailers and will be scoring the entire film once filming is complete.

The band’s applications to play at SXSW and CMW were accepted on the very same day that Union Events asked them to open for Crystal Castles and the sheer proximity of these victories caused considerable anxiety amongst the band members. Bassi recalls, “We were on our way to the Crystal Castles show and I was like, ‘What if this isn’t happening?’” The upsweep has been rapid, but the band is grateful for every fan and is dedicated to keeping a personal touch in everything they do. They are following in Constellation Records’ footsteps and including a handwritten note in every LP they send out and they make a point of promoting social awareness through all of their musical endeavours.

Buss and Bassi are both strict vegetarians with vegan habits and their firm belief in animal rights is a central theme across all of their albums. The band is motivated to self-release all of their music, so that, “Instead of all the money going to a label, it can go to something important.” Buss teaches music professionally and he is trying to organize a program that will help low-income families take music lessons. Additionally, the band is planning a fundraiser for their tour and recording sessions so that they can stay independent and start directing GoldBristle’s profits towards animals in need. Jung People’s success may seem sudden, but these opportunities really couldn’t have come to two more deserving people.

Jung People will be kicking off their tour at Broken City on February 28; Diatessaron and Mid-Atlantic are also playing that night. If you would like to help Jung People help others, keep an eye on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo for their upcoming GoldBristle fundraiser. - Beatroute (2013)

Calgary’s Jung People (that’s “Young People” for those not in the know) are an instrumental rock group that formed just over two years ago. Featuring just two members (Bryan “Octobuss” Buss on synth, lap steel, effects, and eight-string guitar and Giordano W. Bassi on drums, keys, samples, and more), the band crafts deeply textured walls of noise that blur the lines between progressive/indie/post-rock and even metal, folk, jazz, and punk.

However, it’s not all pedal mashing and knob turning, as both Bassi and Octobuss attended Musicians Institute in Hollywood, CA. They released their debut EP, Tenterhooks, in December 2011. They dedicated that album to all domestic animals hurt by or lost to “the human path” and have dedicated all future album proceeds to humanitarian causes. But that’s not to say they’re not fun to listen to! While they might be easier to get into for fans of acts such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, King Crimson, or Explosions in the Sky, they feature some of the musical elements that make such popular acts as Radiohead and Mogwai so beloved. - Canadian Musician (2013)

Subtle, yet dynamic, Calgary’s Jung People are surely not to be missed this Indie Week. This post-rock duo artfully balances the energy of punk rock with the endless drone of Krautrock, developing a sound that begs to be devoured live. The duo’s forthcoming double LP, Golden Bristle, showcases a dedication to repetition and rhythm and a penchant for cultivating a distinct mood in each track. If you’re looking for something thoughtful, political, delicate and profound, Jung People is the band for you. - Toronto Music Scene (2013)

Don’t expect an ordinary album launch at the Lantern Church on Saturday night. Jung People, the duo of guitarist Bryan Buss and drummer Giordano Bassi, decided they wanted something different, so they asked visual artists to join the fun. The result is an event that’s part performance and part art exhibition. Expect to see paintings and graphic art from some of Calgary’s most exciting young artists while you dig the sounds of Jung People and musical guests like Sons of Bullwinkle.

This inspired take on a release party is in keeping with Jung People’s outlook, reflected in their name and their philosophy. “We like Carl Jung a lot,” says Bassi. “We’ve been big fans of his work for a long time and we think he’s one of the fathers of forward-thinking and living. We wanted to represent ourselves as a forward-thinking band. With Jung People, with the way you say it and the way it sounds, it sounds like young people, as in the youth of today being forward thinking.”

Forward thinking has been part of Buss and Bassi’s music since they first started playing in local bands in 2003. Seven years later, after stints with metal bands, they formed Jung People with its distinct mix of progressive rock, indie rock, experimental and folk. “We originally formed from a metal band, a progressive metal band,” says Buss. “It sort of had progressive rock influences. Then we started getting more and more into experimental rock and indie rock and folk. For the last 12 months from the first album, it’s still more of a post-rock metal album, and now the new stuff has more of a folk, experimental and post-rock feel.”

The new EP, Tenterhooks, also marks a watershed moment for Jung People. “Listening to the new record we’ve just finished, I’ve really realized that this is the first thing that we’ve done together that really represents how I feel, how I have felt,” Bassi says.

The artists exhibiting for the release party include graphic novel artist (and Fast Forward Weekly contributor) Mariella Villalobos, and painters Maddi Matthews, Anna Semenoff and Nathan Navetto. Villalobos and Matthews are both ACAD graduates, the EP party is Semenov’s debut showing, and Navetto is an artist as well as drummer for the band Atomis. Jung People will also have a short film, created by Bassi, projected onstage during their performance.

The Lantern Church is a perfect venue for this party, and a perfect fit with Jung People’s philosophy. “The whole purpose of the church is we don’t want to label ourselves as ‘a rock band in a bar,’” Giordano says. “We want people to look at our show as almost like a symphony. You go to a show that’s in a very personal, quiet environment and you watch and you take it all in. We don’t want it to be something that you happen to be seeing while you’re partying.”

“We’re interested in new interesting ways to just change the system, change the way people view music.” - FFWD - Dennis Slater

The band Jung People -- pronounced "young people" -- are making a statement: youth are forward-thinking. Their name attests to this, being an allusion to the famous psychiatrist and forward-thinker of his time, Carl Jung.

These are musicians who aim to create and inspire change. But don't expect complicated lyrics or overstated theses -- Jung People let the music speak for itself. Besides the occasional sampling of historic monologues, their music has the effect of inspiring imagination and feeling without uttering a single word.

The Calgary duo is Giordano W. Bassi (drums/organ/vocoder) and Bryan Buss (guitar/special effects). The partnership formed in 2010 after the two men returned from a semester abroad at the world-famous Musicians Institute in Hollywood, California.

This month, Jung People will be releasing their third album to date, the five-song ep Tenterhooks. Several local painters, sculptors and other artisans will also have their work featured as part of the cd release show. Appropriately enough, the event will be held at a church in Kensington -- Jung People's music is more the work of the rock composers than the garage-band sound found in dimly-lit bars around the city.

Best friends and vegetarians for over a decade, the duo have dedicated the ep to animals living in "tenterhooks," a state of constant anxiety and suspense. Genre-wise, Jung People aggressively blur the boundaries of progressive, post-rock, experimental, indie and '70s pyschedelia -- shaken, not stirred. What makes Tenterhooks and its predecessors so intriguing is the challenge that live performances present as a duo -- Bassi and Buss are required to play multiple instruments in order to reproduce their compositions, including the organ, vocoder, lap-steel, synthesizer and even a typewriter.

"We try to do minimal sampling, because we want to be able to play most of the stuff we write," explains Bassi. "We don't want to be one of those bands that create albums and then can't play [them live]. In fact, our first album was recorded completely live off the floor. It is not perfect, but it was meant to be that way -- really raw and edgy."

Though the process is difficult, Tenterhooks will be another album recorded "live off the floor," and it will be what Bassi identifies as the perfect balance between high-production perfection and the natural sounds of live music.

"It is the sound of freedom and chaos, and humanism. It all has its place . . . like a creative dissonance. That's the feeling we want people to have when listening to it, that they are in the room."

For now, the album will be released as 100 limited-edition cds that Jung People are hand-crafting out of recycled materials all made in Canada. Eventually it will be pressed into vinyl. Each of the five songs on the album will have a corresponding video, two of which will be shown at the release party.

This spring, Jung People will record a full-length studio album, but not for a record label, they explain.

"We really don't plan to be owned by a label or anything like that, considering [that] we are going to be donating all our music anyway," Bassi says.

The idea behind this is to create residual incomes for non-profit organizations with a similar philosophy to that of Jung People -- making the world a better place. Bassi and Buss will also be creating the soundtrack for Transcendence, an upcoming feature-length film by Calgarian Thomas Robert Lee to be released in late 2012.

"We once wanted to be rock stars, but we've moved beyond that," remarks Bassi. "It isn't about becoming rich and famous anymore. We are never going to quit, we are never going to stop, and that's just the way it is." - Andrea Llewellyn - Gauntlet Entertainment

"They are a post-rock band that moves often to the indie scene but being within a progressive context. It's like someone mixing Explosions In The Sky with 65daysofstatic or hearing Vessels and Mimas... I'm talking about Jung People, my people, the next great band in the way for the Don Caballero, Caspian, Mono and God Is An Astronaut fans. But it's not ending here... " - Hunter Bloom, Into The Brackets (May 10, 2011)

"This could sound like a bunch of kids fighting over the iPod but instead comes off as cohesive, lovely, and interesting, thank god. It's clear that these guys are willing to take their music anywhere and everywhere their fancy leads, all while crafting gorgeous, acoustic sonic gems." - Mariella Villalobos, We Hate Your Hate (Jul 14, 2011)

Check out my friends' band Jung People, from the far away town of Calgary, Alberta, Canadia. Jung People, consisting of multi-instrumentalists Bryan Buss and Jordan Bassi, create some beautiful tunes ranging from delay-ridden post-rock to passively heavy post-metal ala Russian Circles. Their three-track Galapagos EP is available for free download, while the Too Late to Die Young LP is available for the low price of $5CAD (even cheaper in American dollars)! With track names like, "Galapagos: Yes, But Something There Is Which Adores a Mucous Membrane" you can't go wrong.

Get on it! I'll write a longer review when I have the data available to download a high quality version. - Noah Jansen, Music For The Modern Thinker (Mar 05, 2011)

"[On Jung People's debut album] "However, the second half seems fit for a movie backing a not yet developed chase scene or action sequence. The clean, intricate guitar picking gives way to a dirtier guitar sound with chords and a pounding, up-tempo hard rock beat that conjures those images behind the wheel of a muscle car. Believe me, I’m trying to come up with such a scene just so I can use this track!"" - Scott Allen, 3 Minute Record (Jan 14, 2011)