Douglas Busson has participated along the margins of the Twin Cities sub-underground music community for almost two decades. He has been in bands whose sound has ranged from muscular post-hardcore to more improvised noise drone, but these projects have been relatively infrequent and minimally documented. It may then come as somewhat of a surprise that, Yuasa-Exide, a project born out of a spinal injury Busson sustained in 2021 has become his most consistent and prolific musical endeavor yet.

After two spinal surgeries during a year that left him unable to sit or stand with a guitar, Busson recorded the first few Yuasa-Exide albums while lying in bed. From this, a compulsive home recording regimen became Busson’s only reliable way to cope with the constant pain he was experiencing, and he began recording and releasing full albums straight to Bandcamp at a feverish clip. As of October 2024, over 20 Yuasa-Exide releases are available from his Ape Sanctuary Records’ Bandcamp page, all of which have trickled out into the world with little to no promotion or fanfare whatsoever. As Busson notes, “I had no ambitions other than amusing/annoying my friends.”

Yuasa-Exide takes its name from the shadowy and mysterious battery factory compound that captured Busson’s imagination as a kid growing up in Eastern Kentucky. Yuasa-Exide’s music is imbued with a similarly shadowy quality, call it lo-fi narco-pop or arty hypno-punk. But, it’s not all “just a vibe”, Busson and his small group of close contributors know how to write proper songs with memorable hooks and melodies placing Yuasa-Exide’s music within a long lineage of notable DIY home recordists such as Guided By Voices, The Cleaners from Venus, Swell Maps, and the Xpressway Records roster to name just a few. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.