on Tasankee Records: Amnesia (1996), Big Lazy (2000) and New Everything
(2002). Big Lazy is Stephen Ulrich (guitars), Paul Dugan (acoustic bass)
and Tamir Muskat (drums).
NEW EVERYTHING (2002)
The Big Lazy album NEW EVERYTHING was hatched in the Ulrich family's
barn in
Vermont in the spring of 2001, just after the band returned from a tour
of Israel. On May 1 the trio left New York City in a van packed with
recording equipment, enough food for 10 days and a nearly pathological
variety of recordings that ranged from Charles Mingus and James Brown
to Bernard Hermann and Captain Beefheart. The trio entered the wood-heated
barn with sketches of 16 songs and stumbled out 10 days later later
with the basic blueprint for New Everything.
Upon returning to New York the band began recording the album at Vibramonk Studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with Tamir producing and engineer Dan Shatsky engineering.
The 11-song collection dwells in the unmistakable landscape of gritty, yet gracefully crafted American music. The dynamic recording veers from the raucous and rocking "Starchild" to the sparse, cinematic road song "Our Lady Of The Highways," to a surprising interpretation of the Charles Mingus's composition "Meditation On A Pair Of Wire Cutters."
Still in evidence on NEW EVERYTHING is Big Lazy's stripped-down and noirish sound, with trademark deep and dirty guitar twang, mournful bowed bass and hypnotic drumming. Lurking just below the surface are Paul Dugan's lush horn arrangements which occasionally explode into bawdy, bluesy choruses. Lo-fi noise specialist Giddy Raz contributed "found" sounds produced from samples, delays and hardware store products, lending an organic yet other-wordly quality to several songs. Ori Kaplan (from the bands Shadnez and Gogol Bordello) plays saxophones, Peter Hess (of World Inferno Friendship Society) plays bass clarinet and piccolo, and Robert Aaron (of Wyclef Jean) plays trumpet and saxophone. Original Lazy Boy drummer Willie Martinez joins the band on percussion for "Gone," and Jerusalem experimental chanteuse Victoria Hannah delivers a trance-inducing vocal track on "Tel Aviv Taxi".
During the recording, filmmaker Dana Yavin shot footage for a future documentary. Tamir is currently working on remixies of New Everything for a future release, and the remix of "Our Lady of the Highways" can be heard in the Udi Aloni film "Local Angel."
BIG LAZY (2000)
In 1998 Tamir Muskat replaced Willie Martinez on Drums. For the next
year the band performed up and down the East Coast. Spring 1999 found
the trio holed up for the first time at Vibromonk Studio playing twelve
hours a day for two weeks. From those sessions came the album Big Lazy.
Just prior to entering the studio a letter arrived from the La-Z-Boy Furniture Co. with a strange request: cease and desist from doing business as Lazy Boy. The recliner executives feared mass confusion between spooky, evocative music and the overstuffed La-Z-Boy recliner. The band's lawyer warned of a lengthy and expensive lawsuit so the band decided they'd make the necessary changes to become Lazy Girl. The recliner people said no: that would confuse consumers. How about Lazy and Sons? Still too derivative. At this point the album was mixed and artwork was waiting for a name: Big Lazy.
East Coast and Southern US
tours followed in support of the release. NPR invited Big Lazy into
their Washington DC studio for a live performance and interview. The
feature aired in November 1999 on Weekend Edition. The response was
overwhelming. "You're playing the soundtrack to my life" was
a common response from the punks and prison inmates, NASA scientists,
psychotherapists, soccer moms, farmers and film makers who responded.
Click here for FAN MAIL FROM A FARMER. The
band maintained close contact with their growing cadre of fans as they
spent months frantically filling orders for
Amnesia and Big Lazy sending them off to new converts in Rome, Tokyo,
Dublin,
Leningrad, Tulsa, Bayonne and beyond.
The New Yorker said of the self titled Big Lazy album: "The elegantly gritty trio plays stunningly beautiful music that evokes everything from truckers' romps to the haunting film scores of Bernard Hermann."
AMNESIA 1996
Stephen , Paul and drummer Willie Martinez, then Known as Lazy Boy,
recorded Amnesia at Sorcerer Sound in lManhattan in three days in November
of 1996. The six song EP is a rock record with atmospheric, noirish
tenedencies. The trio had performed together for several year's in the
downton NY music scene as Mild Thing. Sounding like a side project between
Ennio Morricone and Chet Baker, Mild Thing played songs of heart
trouble at impossibly slow tempos. Dugan's Jazz and Classical background
combined with Martinez's Latin influence and Ulrich's love of trashphisticated
guitar and film music created a unique sound. Already in evidence was
a haunting Fender twang combined with mournful bowed bass that would
become the trademark sound of Big Lazy.
Lazy Boy attracted national attention when Amnesia was licensed in it's entirety by NBC for use in several episodes of "Homicide: Life On The Streets". The band appeared in an episode. An NPR feature on Lazy Boy also exposed the band nationally. The Village Voice called Amnesia "The soundtrack to a life of slow grinds and deeply sucked cigarettes".
In 1998 Paul and Stephen scored the feature film "Frogs For Snakes" directed by Amos Poe and produced by the Shooting Gallery. The noir comedy in which actor's literally kill for parts in a play is punctuated by the darkly atmospheric score.