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Jeff Moehlis: Bring in the Noise, Bring in the Folk
Shortly after taking the stage at Muddy Waters Cafe on Wednesday night, Ben Chasny, the leader and guitarist for “noise-folk” headliner Six Organs of Admittance, joked, “I don’t know where you guys in this town get those crazy bands that play around here. I think they were terrorists.”
Chasny was referring to the opening band, the Master Musicians of Bukkake. (Bukkake is a sub-genre of Japanese pornography. Really! I had to look it up. I’ll refer to them as MMOB from now on.) The name is presumably based on the Master Musicians of Jajouka, a Moroccan ensemble playing age-old, hypnotic music that first became known to the outside world because of recordings made by Brian Jones from The Rolling Stones.
MMOB has an interesting onstage image, which led to Chasny’s comment. The band was wearing red Moroccan-style head dresses and black robes, and the lead singer was completely covered in fake, hanging moss. The stage area was full of smoke, courtesy of a slow-burning cone that the singer flicked around, sending sparks flying.
Musically speaking, if you prefer La Monte Young to Neil Young, then MMOB might be the band for you. Their music consists primarily of effects-heavy droning, with singing ranging from guttural growling to echoed falsetto. The instrumentation used was standard rock fare — guitars, drums and keyboards — plus exotic primitive wind instruments, horns and bells. For the enlightened among you, their sound has resemblance to the first albums by the Krautrock bands Agitation Free and Ash Ra Tempel.
After MMOB’s sonic assault, it was time for something completely different — Chasny’s low-key, folk-tinged guitar playing. It started with Chasny playing a long, contemplative finger-picked solo guitar instrumental with a gently distorted sound, one of the show’s highlights. Other highlights in the same vein were the next piece, which had a Western feel, and a later Leo Kottke-esque finger-picked folk guitar instrumental.
In this quieter part of the show, Chasny also sang the somewhat dark songs “Strangled Road,” “Take Shelter from the Ash” and a cover of the Coil song written by the late John Balance called “Fire of the Mind,” which includes such cheery lyrics as “does death come alone or with eager reinforcements?”
Chasny was then joined onstage by MMOB, sans costumes. At first, I enjoyed hearing the much fuller sound that it provided, but it quickly seemed to make the music more cluttered than transcendent. How about having MMOB stick with drones, with Chasny playing guitar over them? Think Fripp & Eno’s “The Heavenly Music Corporation” but with darker drones and Chasny’s unique guitar stylings.
One can dream, right?
— Noozhawk contributor Jeff Moehlis is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UCSB.
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