Michael Dog - The odd bassline, slidey guitar, vocals, track and solo arrangements by attrition, general annoying pain in the arse! Steve Rowlands - Keyboards, solos, harmonica, brass arrangements, production, much debate and almost everything else!
Influences
Steve - Stockhausen, Punk, Jazz in every form, dub, Mouse On Mars and the world of experimental music. Michael Dog - Electronica in all forms, Yes, Steve Hillage, Mad Professor dub and erm...Bluegrass.
Michael Dog and Steve Rowlands, otherwise known as Pushmipulyu, both hail from London where they have worked for many years in the underground music scene. Steve is best known as one half of cult '90's band Full Moon Scientist, famed for wild live performances and their unique take on dub-tinged electronica. The band released 2 highly rated albums and a clutch of singles on Leftfield's Hard Hands label before folding in 1999 to pursue their own musical directions. Michael Dog, is best known as co-founder of the Megadog party organisation, hugely responsible for bringing live electronic music to the fore over the last decade as well as being owner and head of A&R at Planet Dog Records, one of the '90's most cutting edge labels in the fields of ambient dub, chillout and trance. Michael has also worked extensively as a DJ of international renown, remixer and producer, co-writing 2 stunning albums with drum n'bass producer Future Loop Foundation. Steve and Michael knew each other from Megadog days and decided 3 years ago, to write a track together for the fun of it. Though coming from very different musical backgrounds (experimental/dub/punk versus psychedelic/trance/ambient and ...more psychedelic), the experience went so well that they decided to write another and another, meeting every Thursday night at Steve's studio and writing with no specific musical brief. Whatever took their fancy musically, they went for, with each sometimes finding themselves at a loss to understand where the other was coming from and each pulling hard in their own direction. Hence their name Pushmipulyu, taken from the twin-headed animal in the Doctor Doolittle story. In the end though, they always managed to incorporate the best of each other's musical influences and in the process, build up a diverse body of work encompassing psychedelic jazz, house, chilled grooves, prog rock and a touch of classical. The result was '133 Thursdays' an album that took, you guessed it, 133 Thursdays to write. Spanning births, deaths, breakups, near-breakups, changes of address and a lot of late night sessions, this eclectic mix of tunes, which defies generic pigeonholing, reflects both the diverse musical influences of the writers and the various and sometimes fragile states of mind that they were both in over a period of 133 Thursdays. As the result of a chance contact from Andrew Ross Collins, owner of Vancouver's Interchill label, the album finally found a home with a label (and head of A&R!) that understood where these 2 musical misfits were coming from.
133 THURSDAYS is out now on Interchill Records catalogue no. ICHILLCD028 and is available to download as a complete album or individual tracks from Itunes.
SO AT LONG LAST, HERE'S THE VIDEO FOR OUR TRACK 'REVERIE' ENTITLED PUSHMIS GO MAD IN THE BLUEBELLS. AN OBJECT LESSON IN HOW NOT TO TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY! CHECK IT OUT, IT'S LESS THAN 4 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME....AND WATCH IT ALL THE WAY TO THE END:
You can read Morpheus' thoughtful (and totally independent...no money or sexual favours changed hands!!) review of 133 Thursdays here and Damion from Psyreviews new (and quite funny) review of the album here (no..we didn't bribe him either!!) as well as some other positive feedback about the album on this thread started by Mixmaster Morris at The Big Chill Forum.
If you're STILL not convinced, here's a couple more recent independent reviews, one from the Properly Chilled website and another from the Decompression Chamber website.
