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Just about anyone familiar with underground, avant-garde music over the last 30 years is bound to be familiar with the name ANT-BEE, aka Billy James, a North Carolina native and Berklee College of Music graduate who first came to prominence in the late 1980s when signed to the notorious Los Angeles record label, Voxx/Bomp.
Rumoured about for quite some time among long-time fans, ANT-BEE’s Electronic Church Muzik is James’ mini-opus, his homage to the late sixties, early seventies psychedelic freak scene.
Do not expect a nostalgic trip down memory lane, though, replete with all those psychedelic cliches we’ve grown so familiar with — long guitar solos, overly florid lyrics, or an effects-happy production (so much weirdness for weirdness sake). Electronic Church Muzik takes the dissonance of various disparate root elements — avant-garde, psychedelia, psychedelic blues, psychedelic rock, folk, and spoken word — and James brings them together under the allegorical quote made by Jimi Hendrix: ”We call it ‘Electric Church Music’ because to us music is a religion.” Thus, the religious overtones of this CD (from artwork is designed to look like a leather-bound Bible that folding open to reveal tracklisting and credits as biblical “verses”).
I kept being reminded of a particular phrase used in the 1970s to describe many well-known, psychedelic albums of that era: Headphones-to-oblivion. That phrase in reverse describes this CD exquisitely. Take a listen to these following tracks:
Eye of Agamoto
Don’t You Ever Learn
It’s easy to understand why such legendary Los Angeles musicians as Bunk Gardner, Don Preston, Buzz Gardner and Jimmy Carl Black (Mothers of Invention), Napoleon Murphy Brock (Zappa / George Duke), Peter Banks (YES, Flash), Jan Akkerman (Focus), Moogy Klingman (Utopia), Rockette Morton and Zoot Horn Rollo (Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band), Michael Bruce (Alice Cooper Group), Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth (Gong) would join James on his Electronic Church Muzik CD.
As an independent, DIY artist, Billy James has constantly been on the cusp on emerging creative trends, embracing new technologies. He reveals new promotional, creative paradigms of independent recording and publishing not through theory, but his own actions.
Purchase Electronic Church Muzik at James’ website, then listen to his monthly UK radio program Listening Through A Glass Onyon broadcasted the first Sunday of every month at 12:00 noon EST at Get Ready to ROCK! Radio.
“Ant-Bee is the brainchild of one Billy James. Formed thru a series of musical experimentations in the recording studio back in 1987 in Los Angeles, Ant-Bee was born. “In 1988, Ant-Bee were signed to the notorious Los Angeles record company Voxx/Bomp Records. The first Ant-Bee album was Pure Electric Honey, and received rave reviews worldwide. The Ant-Bee became an overnight legend in the European underground. As an author, Billy James has written several critically acclaimed and best selling books, with various reprints and versions in different languages including No More Mr. Nice Guy – The Inside Story Of The Alice Cooper Group (with Michael Bruce) and Lunar Notes – Zoot Horn Rollo’s Capt. Beefheart Experience (with Bill Harkleroad). He is currently completing vol.2 of his Todd Rundgren biography. As a musical artist, James records under the guise of ANT-BEE and has several albums out, most recently, Electronic Church Muzik. Billy James also runs Glass Onyon PR, a full line publicity company. Some of his clients are Kevin Godley and Graham Gouldman (10cc), Wishbone Ash, Mark Volman (Turtles, Flo&Eddie), Vanilla Fudge, The Grand Mothers, The Lizards (ex-BOC/Rainbow), Don Preston and many more.
