Interview: Bong II

For all that their music largely dealt with standard stoner-doom concepts like the occult, the arcane and the abyss, there was always a self-deprecating wit to Bong. From their name, to album titles like Stoner Rock, the Tyneside trio never seemed to take themselves as seriously as a lot of their po-faced peers. Which is why their welcome reappearance as Bong II makes a lovely klnd of sense.

“It’s called Bong II! Tongues are still firmly in cheeks.” explains drummer Mike Smith. “Exactly!” adds bassist Dawn Terry.  “Life continues to be as absurd as it is hard – it is important to laugh with the universe!”

The original incarnation of Bong ground to a halt in the late 2010s – “Bong only really fizzled out because of Covid.” Mike explains. “When we finally got round to starting up again, I think we all realised pretty quickly we’d taken it as far as we could.” But before long, Dawn and Mike started to consider their options. “Our previous guitarist wasn’t interested any more and we figured adding the suffix would allow us to continue along a similar path but indicate a slight change of direction and of personnel.” adds Dawn.

With the rhythm section keen to reawaken the beast, they needed a guitarist and it was a mutual love for Daniel Foggin’s work with his own project Smote that pulled it all together.  “We both love what Dan does with Smote and always felt there were some parallels with Bong. He seemed like such an obvious choice” says Mike. “We knew Dan would be a great fit personally as well as musically.” Dawn adds.

Daniel is equally enthused. “I didn’t start listening to any music that was out of the ordinary until I was maybe in my early 20s, and I’m fairly certain one of the first LPs I bought was Stoner Rock.” he explains. “I then proceeded to buy any of the other Bong records I could find too.  It was a huge new world to discover for sure, and I hadn’t even played in any bands at this point.  So it’s a pretty wild full circle thing to be able to play with Mike and Dawn now, definitely quite surreal and not something I would have ever expected to happen all those years ago when I was listening to those records.“ 

It’s early days for the reborn band, with one demo broadcast on BBC 6Music last month and a handful of shows planned so far. In terms of how they’re approaching the band’s sound, Smith explains that things are freer this time round.  “Even though it’s always been improvised, there’s still a lot more freedom this time around. Dawn mentioned it having more of a triumphant vibe and I know what she means.” Dawn adds “There are no hard and fast rules regarding the music… I want it to continue to be simple and powerful, and it has definitely become much more triumphant! Actually, maybe ‘Not too many notes’ is a hard and fast rule..” Dawn goes on to explain that it’s all very much in the moment. “It’s all worked up with the three of us in the practice room. We have just had a lot of extended jams around the idea of only ever playing one ‘song’ or variations of it, rather than rehearsing separate tracks. I will probably get around to including some lyrics at some point… We are hoping to make Bong II more of a collaborative effort so someone else doing vocals is entirely possible.” she adds.

All of which is a radical change of approach for Daniel, who has run Smote as a primarily solo project for several years now, and directs everything in the expanded live incarnation. “The Smote set is exhausting.” he concedes. “ Everyone in the live band works so hard to coordinate everything, we’re all together in it.  As joyous as it is, it is knackering.  Bong II on the other hand is like some sort of spa, I remember I said to Mike and Dawn a few weeks ago that I felt like I was fresh out of the bath after we played! The Bong II sets are looking like a single long track affair too, so that is something I have less experience with. It almost takes on its own sentient form, you can let the track play out and breathe its own breath, there’s no need to try and wrangle and control it.  It’s an extremely liberating way to experience music.”

Bong II returned to live action last Saturday with a packed gig at The Lubber Fiend and it was frankly astonishing. The air was heavy with incense as the bass made your nasal hairs quiver. Everything in the room was vibrating, pulsing, throbbing as the bass plunged and the guitar roared and wailed. The drums were often interjections, emphasis, brief martial stabs, No choruses or melodies, just geological events. Epochs. It’s fair to say it was a brilliant return.

As for the immediate future, Dawn explains “we don’t have anything fully planned but we have one track recorded that we are happy with and plan to record some more soon for a debut release.”

Bong II have some more dates planned, including an appearance at Supersonic next month.