Biography
Buckethead ranks among the strangest and most elusive presences in U.S. underground and experimental music since Parliament-Funkadelic introduced its array of otherworldly personas during the mid-1970s. A skilled multi-instrumentalist celebrated above all for his masterful handling of the electric guitar, he stands as one of the era's most distinctive innovators on the instrument, his blistering riffs, almost mechanical fingerboard technique, and singular solo phrasing drawing together aspects of Yngwie Malmsteen, Adrian Belew, Slayer's Kerry King, P-Funk's Eddie Hazel, and avant-improv artist John Zorn's Scud-attack sax abuse. The Deli Creeps, his earliest ensemble and a San Francisco-based metal-funk outfit, achieved local popularity yet dissolved without issuing any recordings. His solo path proved far more fruitful, spurred primarily by encouragement from Zorn and Bill Laswell, the latter with whom he has also cut records and performed live as part of Praxis. Laswell has furthermore helmed multiple Buckethead solo projects, among them Dreamatorium and Day of the Robot, while featuring him across more than a dozen standalone sessions alongside Hakim Bey, Bootsy Collins, Anton Fier, Jonas Hellborg, and Bernie Worrell. Beyond output such as the 1998 album Colma, he has supplied music for motion pictures including Last Action Hero and Street Fighter. He resurfaced in 1999 via Monsters and Robots, soon thereafter entering the brief reunion of Guns N' Roses. An unbroken sequence of recordings continued into the new century, spanning the introspective Electric Tears through an electronica/rock blend and joint efforts with San Francisco's underground hip-hop community. Throughout the subsequent ten years he issued several projects annually on average, partnering with scores of musicians such as Les Claypool, Iggy Pop, and Mike Patton; in 2008 he joined actor/musician Viggo Mortensen on Pandemonium from American. An intense run of further releases preceded another collaboration between the performer and the cryptic guitarist in 2011 on Reunion. One year later Buckethead issued Electric Sea, the successor to his 2002 album Electric Tears.
Albums
