BONGO
NATION are Geordie Gardiner and Tom Ludvigson playing their own roots
reggae and dub inspired repertoire.
Geordie
plays guitar and sings lead vocals.
Tom
sings support and plays melodica, Mahalo guitar, organ and assorted
percussion. Tom has dabbled in dub with past contributions to Trip to
the Moon and Dub Asylum recordings.
The
roots of
the BONGO NATION project go back to early summer 2005 when Geordie and
Tom were on tour in Northland with an Auckland reggae band. Inspired by
that experience, Tom spent the rest of that summer tracing the roots of
Jamaican dub to African drum music while writing his own BONGO NATION
riddims.
As the collection of new riddims grew Tom created the BONGO
NATION
website and started posting recordings of the new riddims on the web.
By early autumn Geordie had joined the project, the duo now jamming on
the BONGO NATION riddims and letting them grow into songs.
Towards then end of winter there was enough new BONGO NATION
songs to
record and produce an EP. Recording sessions were held in August 2006
at Auckland’s Rockynook Studios. The outcome of these
sessions was the four songs that make up the BONGO NATION EP
‘Good Vibration’.
As spring approaches the BONGO NATION project is developing into a larger performance group, fine tuning the new repertoire for touring this summer.