Budgie

Budgie is known internationally for his unique style of self-taught drumming. His first major label recording was for Island Records in 1979, drumming on The Slits’ debut album ‘Cut’. He then became the drummer of the influential band Siouxsie And The Banshees (1979-1996) and its side project, The Creatures (1981-2004).

In a career spanning more than three decades, Budgie has travelled extensively throughout Europe, North and South America, Canada, Russia, Asia and Australia. Since 2009 he’s toured as a member of Juno Reactor, and in 2012 he played with Danish group Efterklang on their ‘Piramida’ orchestral tour, which included concerts at the Sydney Opera House and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In December 2013, Budgie joined CocoRosie at the Louvre in Paris, performing a live improvised soundtrack to the Sergei Parajanov film ‘The Colour of Pomegranates’, as part of theatre director Robert Wilson’s ‘Retrospective’. In 2014, he resumed a long time collaboration with Japanese Taiko master Leonard Eto, performing live improvised drum duets in Berlin, Paris and Tokyo.

As a writer, arranger and all-round instrumentalist, he’s been described by John Cale of The Velvet Underground as a “musician’s musician” and Stewart Copeland of The Police defined Budgie's playing as “very economical and offbeat” saying: “Budgie didn’t play your standard hi-hat-kick-snare; there were a lot of tom-toms and a big throb.” High kudos indeed!