When boohai first discovered the word that would later become his name he had no idea that he would still be working on his debut album some 25 years later. Life happened. Cue the wilderness. Maybe simply the process of choosing the word ‘boohai’ manifested this quarter century of being musically adrift? Boohai is a maori slang word meaning wandering, searching or lost and many people would regard 25 years as more lost than wondering and certainly more lost than found.
After many false starts, the late 90’s saw the creation of the fiery three piece indie band, ‘Boohai Soul’. The band blazed a unique but short lived musical path and attracted a cult following. After the bands split boohai was born as a solo artist, eventually he retreated off-grid way up in the hills of Snowdonia to continue piecing together the album of a lifetime. Slowly the collective that would become known as ‘The Gustav Chekhov project’ came together and the album now entitled ‘Entropy for beginners’ was created.
‘The Gustav Chekhov complex’ (GCC) has to be one of the most unusual super groups of all time. A collective of almost 50 musicians from many different genres, backgrounds and countries, multi award- winning global artists are joined by indie artists, members of cult bands from times gone by, friends , family and studio first-timers. Some of the the GCC have never met whilst other have toured the world together or played in bands many years ago. A chunk of the debut album ‘Entropy for beginners’ was recorded at the legendary welsh cottage ‘Bron Yr Aur’ where Led Zeppelin famously retreated back in 1970.