Long before she was making films, promoting literacy amongst primary school students, or running Coney Island Studios on the east side of Madison, Wendy Schneider was creating music, both as a solo artist as Wendy Buggatti and under the banner of her band Buggatti Type 35.
While working at Smart Studios in 1995, she assembled a group that ultimately coalesced into a trio consisting of Schneider on the guitar and vocals, Per Farny on bass, and Mike Henry on the drums. Buggatti Type 35 issued a self-titled album in 1997 and followed it up four years later with their second full-length release, Traction, which received considerable attention across the nation back in the nascent days of online music fandom.
As described in one review:
Melodically, their sound is full of dilemma and resolution, at times dire and then assuaged. There is a fierce integrity and perceptiveness to Bugatti's writing, eelivering a social consciousness to her work, and yet it is tempered by a very personal sensibility. Bugatti's guitar is beautifully edgy and dissonant, just underscoring her uncompromising vocals even more. Farny's bass guitar is definitely the conduit to which the pulse of the band courses. And Henry's drums exhale and contract like a visceral machine.
The first song on Traction is titled "Trish Dresser," an aggressive and taut burst of post-punk that sets the tone for the entire album. It was subsequently adapted into a music video featuring all three members of Bugatti Type 35. This slice of Madison's recent rock past was just released online, and follows below.
