EJYG is Robin Burdulis, Terry Dame, Mary Feaster, Lee Frisari and Julian "Julz A" Hintz

Band Bio

Electric Junkyard Gamelan is the brainchild of bandleader and composer Terry Dame. Born out of desire to create a totally new and original sound Dame fused her two passions, making music and inventing and building things to form this totally unique group. While studying Balinese Gamelan in graduate school in 1997, Dame became intrigued with the high energy interlocking rhythms and the amazing ring of overtones created by the ensemble of metal gongs and xylophone-type instruments used in traditional Balinese music. An inventor by nature she began experimenting with making mainly percussion instruments out of found objects and junk from the local scrap yard. Thus was born the Electric Junkyard Gamelan.

Today the group's music is influenced by everything from Indian classical to klezmer, rock to jazz and is shaped by Dame's unique and humor laced voice. They perform on innovative instruments such as the Rubarp and Big Barp (electric rubber band harps), the Sitello (an electric cello/sitar combo), the Terraphone (copper pipe horn), the Clayrimba (a three octave tuned clay pot "marimba") and an arsenal of percussion instruments fashioned from old farm equipment, turntable platters, saw blades, and truck springs. The result is a super original sound with haunting melodies, funky bass lines and layers of danceable interlocking rhythms that ride over thrilling clashes of metal on metal and colorful harmonic washes. Audiences are transfixed by the beauty and strangeness of the unusual collection of instruments on stage and the amazing array of carefully placed sounds they produce.

The five musicians in EJYG hail from diverse musical backgrounds. Band leader and composer Terry Dame, a saxophonist by training, has studied music from around the world including Indonesia, the Middle East, the Balkans, India and Brazil. She has been living and working in New York City since 1985, composing and performing for film, video, theater, dance, and concerts. She was the music director, composer and saxophonist with the seven piece global beat jazz group Monkey on a Rail from 1998-2002 and a founding member of the improvisation trio Trophy Wife . She was composer in residence and saxophonist with Jennifer Miller's New York based Circus Amok from 1994-2004 . Ms. Dame is also a member of Gamelan Dharma Swara, the traditional Balinese Gamelan based at the Indonesian Consulate in New York City and Paprika, Brooklyn’s acclaimed all-female international dance music band. She was an artist in residence at HERE Art Center in New York City during 2003 & 2004 and has received commissioning funds from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Rockefeller Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts and the Meet the Composer Fund. Dame was recently selected to be a 2006 Sundance Institute Composer Lab Fellow.
She met Julian Hintz aka Julz A, a singer, hip-hop accordionist and classically trained percussionist while in grad school at Cal Arts. Mary Feaster, Lee Frisari and Dame met while playing together in the Circus Amok Band. Feaster, also a member of the trio Trophy Wife, is a bassist that plays everything from punk to funk, Latin to klezmer. Frisari is a classically trained percussionist and punk rock drummer. She performs with her own gender-bending punk rock trio Inner Princess and tours nationallyas a drummer with Bitch. Master hand drummer Robin Burdulis who has played Cuban and African drums for over twenty years rounds out the group.

EJYG has been performing together since 1998. They released their self-titled debut cd in 2002 and have just finished a live dvd to be released in the fall of 2006. This highly adaptable group has performed at every type of venue possible from prestigious art centers such as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Kitchen in New York City to rock clubs such as The Knitting Factory and CBGB’s to underground music parties and outdoor festivals.

Press Qutoes

"Electric Junkyard Gamelan makes
music so originalthey had to invent
their own instruments to play it.
It's wild enough to please fans...
regardless of genre."
                                      --Global Rhythms Magazine

“...rhythmic, near-hypnotic
music.” --HX Magazine

“transporting...beautiful and
inspired sounds”
--Village Voice

"Terry Dame is one of those
eccentric musicians for whom
composing isn’t enough, she
has to create new instruments
as well. A downtown fixture.”
--Time Out New York

“...powerful, mesmerizing and
ever changing.”--Ellie Covan,
Founder/Director of Dixon
Place, NYC