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Ullulator, Ullulator, What's That?

by The Ullulators

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Gabriele Tosti Bass and bong Gavin Bong and everything else.
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about

The Story behind "Ullulator, Ullulator, What's that":

This album was recorded between summer 1992 and spring 1994 in a very small village in central Germany.
After spending a year on tour with Circus Archaos and the band The Thunderdogs (Archaos Metal Clown European tour). I moved to Germany to try (and fail!!) to save a relationship with the mother of my son.(story of my life!! ).
I lived off the proceeds of Archaos, and an insurance payout from a motorbike crash I had whilst dispatching in London prior to Archaos.
I guess this was my (slippery) conversion from being a fully old school, tape based recording rock musician, to the nutty world of computer / sampling / midi based music.

I had my trusty Tascam 38 half inch 8 track tape deck, and I bought a Seck 12-8-2 mixing desk, a Boss SE-50 effects unit, a Roland W30 Sampling keyboard (from Joie Hinton) and a (terrible!!) Drum machine... It was an Alesis... don't remember the model.
I did all the backing tracks with midi link between the drum machine and W30... dumped to the 8 track in stereo... and overdubbed the rest.
My drum programming (and drum mixing!!) on this album is truly terrible!! But the vibe, and some of the samples (Very 'Ullulator') are quite cool.

It is largely a solo album, with the addition of Gabriele Tosti (thunderdogs bass player... now dream machine and Gabridelic) playing bass on the bong song... and yes... that is a real thai bong being smoked!!

It was a crazy situation. Moving from all the chaos and Anarchy that was Archaos to one of the last remaining fully catholic villages in Germany... where all the women still wore traditional dress... and baked ridiculously rock hard bread in the communal oven opposite our house every week..(we named it the 'German Hard bread syndrome!). and on Sunday at 8am the church bell would ring for about an hour solid... and the villagers would all rush off to church to have their villagy sins forgiven!!
Actually the vicors name was 'Adolph'... much to our amusement!

We lived in a big old German house in ther oldest main street (opposite the hard bread oven!!),
myself and my partner and baby son sharing with another couple. They were a German girl, daughter, and her partner was a crazy Thai Hippy freak called Sofian (Joe) who became one of my closest friends. He was a proper Thai jungle hippie (I think his dad was swiss and thai mum... He had grown up in Thailand mostly on the Islands).

Sof and I had got to know each other in Thailand. We spent a lot of time hanging out on Koh Phangan over a few trips (sometimes 3 months or more at a time)... and we ran a Longtail taxi from Than Sadet to the full moon party at Haadrin and back for a while... That was a whole blast!! I remember him saying only one thing first time out... "'Just don't fall asleep on the beach 'cos the lady boys will get your ass!!!"

We boys each had a room at the top of the 3 story house... Sofian made crazy art... and I made crazy music... it was a proper hippie pad, with palm trees, coloured lights... all kinds of crazy artwork and indian gods all over the place.... and the girls, and village, downstairs in another world altogether!!!

Sof and I made a real voyage of discovery together... not least of which was going out into the woods searching for 'special' mushrooms... and then eating them and staying out in the woods all night with a big fire and doing all kinds of voodoo magic / shamanic partying!!
We actually found so many different 'similar looking' kinds of mushrooms that we ended up buying big book on the subject... and trying some of the 'lesser known' varieties!! ... and some of them were... well... wow!!! I think we were quite lucky none of them killed us!!

The main town was actually quite cool. Marburg... a university town... on the euro gig circuit for bands. We would drive into town in my merc 508 (I lived in that with the circus)... go party... then return to the carpark by the river and make a bbq... and more partying.. often with types we'd met that evening.... Thankfully the local cops never seemed to bother checking that part of town... but it was pretty out on the edge and semi wooded.
We did a couple of trips to the south of France / Switzerland etc Sof and I..to escape the serious German mother / hard bread syndrome!! . and those trips are a WHOLE other story!!

Anyway... it was an amazing and fun time... and we truly were the Aliens in this village... I am quite sure to this day that the locals really could not work out who / what we were... and why we were there. Still... Despite some very strange looks and a lot of whispering they pretty much left us alone.

This album is what I have to show for that time. It was a really fun and special time Sof and I had in that crazy little village... and that goes a long way to explain the nature of the music!!

Sadly Sof has now passed away... he drank too much later on... and became diabetic... and one night in the jungle in Northern Thailand I think he just decided he had gone far enough in this life... and went into the wild... got drunk... and didn't bother taking his diabetes shot...he was found the next day... long gone - true native style... Bless him... that was him through and through... a real cosmic dude and far more 'connected' than most, but he leaves 2 amazing daughters here on earth... both amazing, beautiful, colourful souls... and I am sure that like Sof... they will do amazing things.

The other gems on this album are the last 2 tracks... that our dearly beloved, and now also departed singer,Kay, and recorded with Ed Wynne at some point around that time... and he offered them to me to release. These - along with a live Ullulator album recorded at Frome Festival (the one that got stopped after a horrendous car crash late one night there - I think it was '95-96 ish) are the last recordings we made with Kay.
I shall remaster and release thart live album very soon. It is called 'Live, Bitter, and Twisted'... for those that remember. It features Will white (Propellor heads) on drums, and Bozzy (Eat Static artist) on Bass... with Kay, Joie hinton, Janey, and myself.
So ... I can only ask you to forgive my terrible early days drum programming!!! and hope that you find some elements of this album rewarding / enjoyable / satisfying etc!! It was made with a lot of love, fun, and a true sense of the ridiculous!!
With Love and Good vibes,

Gavin.

credits

released September 7, 2018

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The Ullulators Bath, UK

The Ullulators are an expansive and alternative space rock / Dub / world music fusion band with roots in the UK festival scene, with history going back to the late 80's, and an extensive catalogue presented here. Having achieved cult status over the years, the band continues to release new material and spread it's diverse and expansive musical wings in the digital age. ... more

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