CUZ | |
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Background information | |
Origin | Brighton, England [1] |
Genres | Indie rock |
Years active | 2008 | –present
Labels | Bleeding heart recordings |
Members |
Sam Dook Mike Watt |
CUZ is an indie rock band formed in 2008 featuring Sam Dook of The Go! Team and Mike Watt of Minutemen and fIREHOSE. [1] Their debut album Tamatebako was released on May 14, 2014. [2]
In 2006, Watt met Sam Dook of The Go! Team at Big Day Out. [1] Watt was intrigued by The Go! Team's use of samples. [3]
I was kind of naïve or something, I wasn’t familiar with that technology, right? I actually didn’t know, I thought they were playing all that stuff. To me, tape recorders—you play music and the tape recorder captures it. But this whole idea of samples…it’s a pretty creative tool and, you know, I wanted to explore it. [3]
Dook and Watt began corresponding via email and decided to form a band. Watt visited Dook in Brighton while The Stooges were in London and they jammed for three days. [4] Watt suggested Dook use pieces of those sessions as samples to create new songs. [4] When Watt returned home to San Pedro he sent more bass tracks to Dook. Eventually, they finished the album over email [5] and named their project "CUZ" based on a zine Richard Hell put out decades earlier. [3]
Their debut album, entitled Tamatebako, was released in 2014 [1] and features guest vocals by Charles Plymell, DJ Scotch Egg, and fellow Go! Team member Kaori Tsuchida. [1] The album title references the mysterious box of Japanese legend. [6]
A tour in 2015 followed. [7] [8]