Search - Master Musicians of Bukkake :: Visible Sign of the Invisible Order

SO AWESOME.

jen | mcconnellsburg, pennsylvania | 08/25/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"this album is even more awesome than the best sex you have ever had. in fact, scientific research has proven that it is twenty-seven thousand times better than your best orgasm. so, obviously you should buy it."

Er... Yes, quite. What ever you say...

Sera69 | 10/28/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Basically this is traditional Chinese music as played by a group of out-there indie Westerners. And yes, hands-up, I bought it because of the name but it's not actually all that bad. Think in the realms of the `Hero' soundtrack and you won't be far off.



Some people think it's genius... (props to the interweb!)



The Master Musicians of Bukkake take their name from the famous 2,000-plus-year-old Moroccan band, replacing the traditional "Joujouka" with "Bukkake," a Japanese term for a particularly vile form of[...], which I won't describe here, except to say that in involves a large group of men doing something rather humiliating to one woman.



This particular musical collective hails from the Pacific Northwest, and has close ties to the Sun City Girls; both Alan Bishop and Charlie Gocher make guest appearances, and the album is released on SCG's own Abduction label.



Like a lot of bands lazily being lumped in under the heading of New Weird America, MMOB focus on free improvisation and play with the idea of a hippie drum circle, moving between areas of dissonance and chaos, to long passages of cohesive ensemble playing. The Visible Sign of the Invisible Order comes in 15 separate tracks that have been joined together into one long, amorphous musical ritual.



And the emphasis here is on ritual, with much of the music drawing from a Westerner's conception of Middle and Far Eastern ceremonial musical forms, from Moroccan joujouka to Japanese taiko, from the most hidden Sufi order to the most profane and obvious ethnological forgeries. Like much of SCG's best work, there is no distinction made between high and low art here, and a shambling sense of joyous group improvisation negates any sense of that sleazy cultural imperialism often found in the "World Music" section of your local record store. MMOB achieves a righteous sense of psychedelic, ritualized improvisation that is dynamic, hypnotic and substantive, as if the musicians on Paradieswarts Duul had decided to channel the entire Sublime Frequencies catalog into one hour-long improvisation.



Schuller and the collective (which includes the superlative Eyvind Kang on electric violin) attack a multitude of instruments, largely percussive in nature, with all players utilizing their voices in a nonverbal, intuitively Eastern way. Though I doubt any of the mantric recitations and chanting found on the record represent anything other than meaningless glossolalia, the MMOB are incredibly good at building tension and drama with their melding voices, creating an invisible ritual chamber in which the music exists. Much of this music was recorded outdoors, with the coastal and interior forest acoustics lending an ancient, timeless quality to the music.



Scattered among the 15 tracks are several well-placed moments of climactic explosiveness, most notably on the slyly named "Access of Evil," which reaches a hair-raising crescendo of ululations and monolithic tribal percussion. "Pillow of Green Light" apparently attempts to recreate the Dogon tribe's creation myth, with a terrifyingly chaotic swirl of noise and electronics, the soundtrack of a pre-Babylonian alien abduction deep in the heart of Africa. The repetitive firing of a 9mm firearm on "Custody's Last Battle/Secret Wars" evokes the slaughter of Native Americans, forging a secret jihad. The album ends with absolutely lovely "Circular and Made of the Earth," which combines high-lonesome steel guitar (or is it sitar?) with female vocals, floating on a rich backdrop of deep, reverberating aums and harmonic drones.



My only complaint with this album is the botched packaging job, piss-poor four-color process having rendered the cover photo and liner notes completely unintelligible. Musically, however, the MMOB have created a true masterpiece, one that entirely transcends the collective's unfortunate choice of name.



-Written by Jonathan Dean 08/Jan/05-"