Mark and Jeff Johnson of The Hunnie Bunnies aren’t brothers, but they might as well be. It’s often assumed as they coincidentally sharing the same last name. They slightly look alike, enough for Mark to be complimented for Jeff’s bass playing in garage-psych monsters, Doomstar! on several occasions, whether they both happen to don beards or not. They’ve even played along with the brotherly misconception for a while. For what it’s worth, they also finished each other’s sentences a lot, so we may still have one of those separated-at-birth 20/20 specials just waiting to happen.
The two Hunnie Bunnies met about a year ago while performing their solo projects at the Wonder Bar--Mark as power noise act, Rat King, and Jeff as the ambient and experimental, Ghost in Salad--and immediately formed a partnership over Mark mishearing a Ghost lyric, “Your skin in the sun/skin on my thumb.”
“I thought he was saying ‘Yo shit! Your’ll gonna die.’ I was like, ‘Oh man, that song’s awesome. We should jam.’ I didn’t know anything he was saying,” Mark said of their start. What began as a “straight noise‘” project with Mark and Jeff positioning themselves on the ground kneeling over their collection of keys, loops and sound generators quickly found its natural evolution. Says Mark:“One day we stood up, got off the floor--” “and that’s when the party tunes started,” Jeff finishes.
Their sound now defined, the Hunnie Bunnies developed a live presence as insane and focused upon as the music. They bring in strong visual elements like wild costumes or lack of costumes, set the stage with draping white sheets and get down and dirty in blood and glitter before unleashing into total fucking fits. Above, the Hunnie Bunnies deliver an absolutely surreal underground performance of “Never Been Here Before” this past weekend from their Yum cassette release, but only serves as a mere sample to the first-hand experience.
Both Johnsons agree that they’re always looking to further enhance their visual elements and are working on new ideas like multiple costumes and more elaborate stage dress, and--if only to switch it up--even some possible intimate performance art based shows opposed to the now standard insanity based performances. Past craziness once included a little friendly horse play and the exchange of brotherly punches until that occasional practice turned into a nightly escalation on tour.
“It was in Charlottesville, North Carolina. I gave Jeff a slap in the face,” Mark recalls with a laugh. “He immediately came and hit me as hard as he could. Everything went black and after it was like, ‘Oh man, great set. Yeah. We’re not hitting each other anymore.’” Now both chuckling, Jeff interjects, “I just kept hitting him. I couldn’t stop.”
The Hunnie Bunnies are about to begin working on their Yum followup and first full=length tentatively titled Period Pussy, as side A, and side B titled Lady Boys. The album is due sometime this summer, but don’t miss Boston’s most insane live act and dance noise craziness as they’ll be tearing the adjoining Room 181 of MassArts’s Pozen Center apart at this years Get Together, the Together Festivals signature day time event. They’ll be joined by fellow hyper-local electronic experimentalists Main Fader, Gobby, and Milk Toast, not to mention the not to be missed fashion performances presented by Deconize, Lady Charlie Lamb and Tess Aquarium; unique independent artists like the PENCAPCHEW collective and Conscious Minds Ink t-shirts and local record vendors. Oh, and all simultaneously presented with the Cyber Arts Festival. All of it Saturday. All of it at MassArt. All of it Together. And all of it free!
[The Get Together at MassArt presented by Together and Boston Cyberarts, Sat 5.23.11. Pozen Center , 621 Huntington Ave., Boston. 12pm-6pm/all ages/free. togetherboston.com]