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From The Gloucester County Times, circa 1982-83:
Breakaway:
'Crawler Music: It's Far Out!
by John Scanlon, Times Entertainment Editor
PENNSAUKEN -- The Nightcrawlers' music tends to put audiences
asleep, but, as Peter and Tom Gulch see it, that's almost as good as a
standing ovation.
"The people seem to get mesmerized by the music," says Tom. "We
played a concert where some people just stretched out along the stage --
they became so soothed, they just feel asleep. It was something to see."
Obviously, the Nightcrawlers aren't punk, and they aren't new wave,
either. The Gulch brothers, along with a third member, Dave Lunt, are
electronic musicians who specialize in synthesized rhythms that are
something of a Sominex for the soul.
Their heroes are the German band Tangerine Dream -- the Rolling
Stones of electronic music -- and musician Klaus Schulze who has done
much in recent years to promote the form. You can call that form
experimental. Call it avante garde, even cosmic or the outer limits.
Just as long, say the Gulch brothers, as you call it music.
"People seem to have the feeling that electronic music is composed
of gurgles or weird sounds," says Tom in his Pennsauken home. "They seem
to think a synthesizer is used just to create, say, a guitar sound, but
that's not so. It is its own instrument.
"It's a fact," he continues, "that it scares a lot of musicians,
too. As soon as they see anything that has to do with electronics,
they'll go back to the piano. I learned to play classical piano, there's
a lot of stuff you can do on a piano -- but it sounds just like that, a
piano. With just a one-oscillator synthesizer, you have so many
different sound combinations."
The Nightcrawlers -- a name suggested by a friend who thought it fit
the group's eerie repertoire -- make their music with a battery of
synthesizers and computers. The keyboards work of Tom and Dave carries
the melodies of original compositions. Peter supplies the percussive
foundation, along with the special effects that take the songs into a
dimension far from the Top 40 charts.
Their transformation into Nightcrawlers is rather intriguing. By
day, Peter, 38, is a chemist in charge of quality control at the
Paulsboro Packaging Co. and brother Tom, 35, is a postman. Lunt, 22,
works with the W.B. Saunders Co. in Cherry Hill.
"Dave, my brother and myself all like this thing we're doing," says
Peter, who lives in Camden. "We blend well. The spontaneity between us
is scary, it all just fall together. It's like you have a unified
consciousness of the machines and three people."
The brothers started as an electronic duo in 1979, eventually adding
a third member who, it soon turned out, was "heading in a different
direction than us and left," says Peter. So the brothers played on until
recruiting Lunt, a Collingswood resident, in late 1981.
The group doesn't sit down to write songs; they're inspired solely
by improvisation. There are no vocals, no slick stage theatrics. The
Nightcrawlers immerse themselves in free-wheeling, instrumental opuses --
some lasting a few minutes, others lasting close to an hour -- that feed
on imagery and mood.
"Everything is composed in our heads," Peter explains. "We take a
basic rthythm or theme in a particular key, then we just keep building on
it to the point where everyone has a distinct part. We don't write a
note, but the phenomenal thing is we don't forget it. The piece won't
always be performed the same way, it'll be different, but that's cool,
too."
Since 1980, the group has recorded well over a dozen compositions on
cassette tapes sold by mail order from Peter's home. A catalog lists
such song titles and definitions as "Poltergeists" (five impressions of
the elf underworld); "Narcolepsis" (two out-of-the-body aural experiences
at night); and "Midwinter Daydream" (wandering in a blinding snowstorm at
midday).
Some of these tapes have caught the ears of reviewers with small
publications devoted to experimental music. The reviews have been
favorable, branding the music with words like "surreal," "relaxing,"
"ethereal." Or, as one reviewer said while critiquing a song called
"Systema Naturae": "This is really a delightful cassette from South
Jersey's foremost -- perhaps only -- masters of synthesizer
pleasantries."
The brothers and Lunt realize their music appeals to a narrow,
partisan audience, much like electronic music fans who packed a recent
Nightcrawlers concert at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia.
After all, we're not talking pop rock or Michael Jackson here. It's not
frenzy for the feet, but rather salve for the psyche.
"We're amazed how well we've been accepted for what we do. No one
has come up to us and said, 'You guys stink, what you do isn't music,"
says Peter. "It's a shame more people can't experience it. It'd be nice
to take the music to someone who hasn't heard it and have them say, 'Wow,
that's great, that's weird.' Most of the people we play in front of are
into this type of music."
Whatever exposure the band has enjoyed, he says, can be attributed
to WXPN, the radio station at the University of Pennsylvania. The
station has been playing the group's tapes, and even sponsored a
Nightcrawlers concert on the campus.
What really boggles Peter's mind, though, is that the group has
picked up some fans in Europe, where electronic music remains a popular
form. Through mail-order sales of the tapes people in Germany -- and
even some in Poland and Yugoslavia -- have sent requests to his home,
explaining they had found his address in capsule reviews of the
Nightcrawlers' music.
"They said they'd seen small tidbits about our tapes in some of the
underground music magazines," says Peter with a shrug.
At the moment, the group is ready to distribute something else --
its first album in late January. Last summer, the musicians started
three months of recording at a studio in Lunt's home, and they concluded
the final stages of production just a couple of weeks ago. The result is
"Nightcrawlers," a 48-minute LP that features four compositions. It'll
be available through the group's mail-order operation.
"When the album comes out and we're legitimate, we hope to do very
well. I don't mean in the sense of groups like Journey or Asia," he says
with a laugh, "but in the sense of what we're doing. And that's
electronic music."
(For information about the Nightcrawlers tapes or record, write to Peter
Gulch, 1493 Greenwood Ave., Camden, N.J., 08103.)
This page first constructed by Steven Feldman
<scfeldman@juno.com>
4/18/00. Last update: 10/17/01.
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