About The Budos Band
Two years after releasing the Frontier's Edge EP, The Budos Band are returning with
their first full-length since 2020's Long in the Tooth. Titled simply VII, the new album sees them
doing what they do best: laying down hypnotic, horn-spiked grooves that menace
and mesmerize in equal measure.
Produced by Budos guitarist Tom Brenneck with
Simon Guzmán engineering, VII features 11 tightly
constructed new tracks that draw on the group's wide range of influences,
sounding like only The Budos can. It's music for getting down, for nighttime
drives, and for alternate headspaces - a beguiling mix of mystery and rhythm that
stands with the formidable work they've released in their two decades of
recording.
"We didn't really go in there with a concept
on VII," drummer Brian Profilio says. "It was the
first time in two years that we were together in a studio so we were like,
'Let's see what happens.' We ended up writing 11 songs in three days."
These 11 songs run the gamut, featuring sweaty,
hard-hitting funk workouts like "Escape from Ptenoda City" alongside
explorations of Turkish psych in "Night Raid" and Zambian rock in the
riff-heavy "Overlander." It continues the stylistic evolution the group began
with 2014's striking, shake-things-up album Burnt Offering.
"It's almost like we've refined the sound we
were going for on Burnt
Offering," Brenneck says of VII. "It's not quite as raw."
"That's the genreless aspect of the band,"
saxophonist Jared Tankel agrees. "We're not Afrobeat, we're not Ethiopian jazz.
We're not world music. We're not really funk, we're not soul. We're not rock.
We're just an amalgam of all these different sounds, so things pop out in all
directions when you listen."
As usual, these songs are chopped up and
splashed with the heavy horns so integral to The Budos sound, weaving melodies
through the muscular rhythms and even deepening the groove when it calls for
it.
"Horns can occupy a melodic space, even though
it's not a voice," Tankel says. "They can also occupy an articulated and
rhythmic space. Playing with that duality is cool."
VII was recorded in California and serves as The Budos Band's
first full-length album on Diamond West, the independent label founded in 2023
by Tankel and Brenneck. It's also the group's first album to include
instrumental contributions from percussionist Rich Tarrana, who previously
played in the Frightnrs. All told, it succeeds in opening up some new sonic
spaces while staying tethered to the intuitive, unique musicality that made
them such a sensation from the jump.
"Sometimes it's like we're speaking some
esoteric language that no one else understands except us, and we're doing it
wrong," Brenneck says. "It's like how the Stones tried to play the blues and
they missed the mark and they made something new - everything The Budos tries
to do, we do wrong, and it sounds like The Budos."