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Growing up as a boy in Soviet-era Poland the young Ted dreamt not only of "freedom in the West" but of fulfilling his childhood fantasy of playing in a rock and roll band - inspired by the very very secret and very underground "unofficial concerts" given by the band that his older brother Eddie was part of. To avoid detection this band played each time under a new name - "The Bluebags", "Aktiv Eppard" and 'Vladislav TDK' among many others. A few of these gigs were recorded and smuggled out to the West as bootlegs, most notably as the band "Hamcharky". About the album called "10-ay ? Broopipka Plaza" a critic of the time wrote ".. a very exciting piece of Iron Curtain thrashcore, rocketing out of my speakers and cutting like a bandsaw through my soul. Think of Jaki Leibezeit drumming whilst undergoing Electric Shock Therapy accompanied by a team of giant tin aardvarks scraping their metal bellies with a fork then you may begin to come close to the sound Hamcharky creates"
		The first Hamcharky album
The mysterious Reek Rouh   Some Rakbug tapes ( on the Bownig label )		When the Iron Curtain lifted the young Ted was jubilant, working firstly as third assistant engineer in the studios big brother Ed had setup "Hamcharky Studios" ( run by Ed Sulcowicz and his mysterious partner Reek Rouh ). Ted eventually formed his own band Rakbug which put out several Poland-only cassette releases. Still in his early genesis his sound was "a super raunchy pyschedelic grunge pop". Not long after something rather strange took place. Big brother Ed's then band "The Koith Roe Experience" got an offer to tour "down under" - lured with the promise of supporting Men At Work around various cities of Australia. Both Sulcowicz brothers flew over, Ted intially only as a roadie but he went armed with a bag full of Rakbug releases and tapes of his new project "Barney and Horst". "Barney and Horst" was on a completely different tip to Ted's Rakbug work - it was more in a totally fucked up electronic vein - One magazine reviewed the B&H release "Lunatic Soup" thus : "After a rock and roll career where Ted Sulcowicz and company might have done better getting a job in a bar pulling beers,"Lunatic Soup" is something else. It's as though late one night whilst totally shitfaced Ted Sulcowicz had a drone-tortured dream of audio excitement - this release by his new outfit Barney and Horst is a 74 min viscous concoction of gravitational looping machine feedback with pure unadulterated noise, capering madly in the corners of your eye, twice as hard as anything Doogle Fleming can hurl your way.. 24 tracks of 345bpm madness with slo-mo synth attack and fullon HISS gain. On one track "Tim's Pickup" Barney and Horst are joined by guest vocalist Zemoanock on vocoder doing an improv technodrone piece..this is not for the faint hearted.. I'm told this turnabout in Sulcowicz's mindset is due to a stint at the Bermenk Foundation of Sound"
The reaction to Barney & Horst was enough to get Ted a few solo gigs at small venues around Sydney - slightly to brother Ed's disgust as almost as soon as his band had arrived in Australia they found their gigs had been cancelled due to a lack of interest in Men at Work. It was shortly after this that both brothers momentarily joined forces in a one-off band "Amon and the Duul Bludgers" playing an impromptu gig one night while eating dinner at Sizzler's - recording it as an "official bootleg". It was so poorly recieved in the Sydney music scene they never played together again and indeed these days the two rarely speak to each other, such are the deep scars surrounding this venture.
It was then that Ted decided to take drastic steps - he stayed on as an illegal immigrant, moving to the far south coast of New South Wales to avoid detection, ending up in a small town called Dalmeny.

next : The Dalmeny Years

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