Potassium, Gunpowder & Congas: Bananagun’s eclectic debut album

Words by Max

Photos provided by Nick, credit to Jaimie Wdziekonski (SUB-LAT-ION)

There is an admirable, albeit understated mad genius to Banangun’s The True Story of Bananagun. The debut album is a story of overdubs, strange instruments, tight grooves, mind-blowing solos, eclectic influences and highly idiosyncratic production. You will find high-fidelity conga playing, Pollock-like smatterings of auxiliary percussion, wah’d out guitar solos, and transient group harmonies amongst much else.

Founded by Nick Van Bakel after the dissolution of his previous band The Frowning Clouds, Bananagun represents a noticeable change-up in sound. The Clouds’ — despite rejecting the label ‘revivalists’ — played classic 50s/60s garage rock mixed with tasteful amounts of psych/surf and released two good LPs in 2013/14. Much of The Clouds’ went on to become doom/stoner rock outfit ORB, while Nick started Bananagun.

This may be their first album, but with Nick and his other band mates previous experience, this isn’t Banangun’s first rodeo. “Between the first song and when we finished mastering was probably like two and a half, three years,” said Nick as we talked over Zoom. “‘Bang Goes the Bongos’ was the first song, and I started writing that before anyone else was in the band, before Bananagun even existed.”

‘Bang Goes the Bongos’ starts the album, and deploys the distinct, but rarely used toy animal-like squeals of the cuica drum in the opening seconds (imagine the sound of a small white tail lemur sporadically yelling and you’re in the ballpark). The same instrument was famously used on ‘Watermelon Man’ by Herbie Hancock, and the effect it has on ‘Bang Goes the Bongos’ is the same. The cuica’s high-register squeaks are dissonant and at-odds with the other layers, contrasting a deliciously fuzzy bass, and wholesome group harmonies to give a sense of uncertainty even in the song’s prettiest moments.

credit to Jaimie Wdziekonski (SUB-LAT-ION)

“All that sort-of stuff in the intro wasn’t really planned or anything,” outlined Nick on the cuica. “I mean heaps of stuff over the whole album — the percussion, flute parts, saxophone, heaps of stems we recorded at the studio — I took them home and just got lost for a week overdubbing all day and all night.”

This relentless tinkering that’s apparent on the opening track remains consistent throughout the album. Many songs offer far more complexity than how they appear on the surface. There is often multiple different instruments — whether it be a flute, trumpet, glockenspiel, guitar — which will take turns at carrying the melody within a song. And structurally, no part overstays its welcome, there’s an inbuilt momentum to the tracks with the spotlight always moving from one timbre to the next.

With all those parts, “it’s an in-the-moment, ‘whatever works’ situation,” explained Nick. “I’ve got a pretty decent instrument collection now, and it’s all set-up around the computer, so I’ll just tap away on top of tracks and really get into the layers.”

This approach, when combined with the afro-beat rhythmic base in most songs, gives the album a jungle-like feeling. As the congas tap away, keeping the energy high, you listen closely and you’ll hear the different clicks, clacks, and bleeps of Nick’s dubs, like the background insects noises of the jungle.

Afro-beat is hardly the only influence on the album though, with ‘Taking the Present for Granted’, the albums closer, taking from the relaxed samba/jazz chords of Brazil’s Bossa Nova. Classic funk guitar a la 70s James Brown also permeates the LP, with tight muted plucking and loose wrist rhythms o naturally gelling with the in-the-pocket drumming on every track; ‘The Master’, ‘People Talk to Much’, and ‘Out of Reach’ are great showcases of this.

Without even talking about the Middle-Eastern styled solos on many songs, the spectrum of sounds that make their way onto this record is amazing, but not suffocating. There are still plenty of familiar catchy hooks and tasty licks, the album is by no means inaccessible despite the slew of different elements mentioned above.

The True Story of Bananagun manages to combine frantic layering, intense song structures and far-flung influences into a tasteful, but not too over-the-top package. Bananagun prove to be a band not content with the status quo, and strongly pursuing their own unique sound through crate-diggin’ and dubbin’.