sam bunn

Back before Bunn made 'artworks', he played lots of bass guitar. Mostly for two bands with links to Sheffield, Champion Kickboxer, and Hexa. It all started when Bunn was bound to become a civil engineer with a thing called a Sound Sock. There Bunn and drummer Neil Piper met Dave Perlis, an American in South Yorkshire with his acoustic guitar. They formed The Round Town Four with James Brodie and did the kind of things you are supposed to do, like playing weird shows for their friends and travelling to Hamburg and busking on the Reeperbahn. It was fun! Then Perlis went back to the states and formed Hexa. Bunn and Piper stuck around in Sheffield and formed Champion Kickboxer with Tom Bates singing and playing guitar. Later, Sam Marsh joined on keys and guitar.

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Thanks to some kind of early local internet forum, the indie music scene in Sheffield was jumpin' back then, and it was a great time to be making music - and friends. The Grapes was often to be found full of folk, all playing and listening to loud music and having a good time. A band called Chuck and two blokes called Mark and Darren started a label called Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation to bring some of this music to the world, via short play vinyl records. A bloke called Alan Smyth made lots of recordings. Later, together with the Ape Drape Escape and Smokers Die Younger, we created the brief - yet legendary - underground indie night, Electric Blanket. Then Pierre Bouqet turned up and started inviting these Sheffield bands to play at his festival, Northern Sounds, as part of the Music Transfer Protocol in around Nord Pas-de-Calais in France. There were tours around the UK, northern France and the east coast of the U.S. It seemed like things were just going to keep on going up.

 

And then they didn't. Many parts of the scene continued, but the bits Bunn was connected to petered out in various ways.

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During these years, Bunn had started getting into making other stuff, like videos. He was invited / allowed by various mates to make videos for their songs. Here they are, in chronologcal order: