By Will York

CONFIDENCE MEN: Seattle's Master Musicians of Bukkake mine -
and undermine - the folk tradition. Photo by Mark Sullo.

Either way, The Visible Sign of the Invisible Order (Abduction), by Seattle collective the Master Musicians of Bukkake, is a sleeper of fairly epic proportions. –Adorned with a somber, sepia-toned cover shot of a dead-calm lake, The Visible Sign of the Invisible Order begins quietly and reverently – the album sounds like a study in ceremonial third-world hillbilly music. It's nice, pleasant, and a little odd, but it kind of fades into the background. About halfway through, though, this peaceful ethno-folk recording goes completely nuts: the dam breaks, giving way to an orgy of bestial percussion, chanting, and what sounds like a wolf in heat, topped off with the sound of someone firing guns in the distance. What the hell is going on there?

"We recorded about half of that record deep in the woods of North Bend, Wash.," MMoB multi-instrumentalist and ringleader John Schuller says. He explains that – despite the effort involved in dragging their equipment, accompanied by a caravan of what sounds like about a dozen musicians – this method has its advantages. Along with perks like being able to shoot guns, he adds, "You also take the musicians out of their normal environment, which is great when you want to channel some new stuff."

That voodoo you do

The stuff the MMoB are channeling may be the same sort of voodoo neo-hippie collectives like Sunburned Hand of the Man and other supposed acolytes of "new weird America" are conjuring. But the MMoB are no hippies, and the weirdness these experienced players bring isn't exactly new. Schuller, for one, has been playing in Seattle-area bands since the late '80s. Vocalist Brad Mowen drummed for doom metal band Burning Witch, alongside Sunn O)))'s Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley, in the mid-'90s, while multi-instrumentalist Randall Dunn has been lending his production skills to Washington experimentalists such as violinist Eyvind Kang and guitarists Bill Horist and Tim Young (all part-time MMoB contributors) for years.

MMoB are the first to admit their music has its antecedents, as fellow Seattle dwellers the Sun City Girls have been mining similar territory for years. Not that the two bands necessarily sound alike: they're both constantly shifting sounds and personae, rendering easy "sounds like" comparisons futile. Still, Schuller readily acknowledges the SCG as "mystical mentors," and The Visible Sign of the Invisible Order brings him full circle with one of his inspirations: the SCG's Alan Bishop runs Abduction, the label that released The Visible Sign of the Invisible Order, and he also appears on a few tracks on the album, playing Burmese banjo and chiming in as a guest vocalist.

"I like their confidence," Bishop writes, praising the band via e-mail. "They don't hesitate, but they also listen to each other and understand that improvising is about respecting the moment, not abusing it. But they can abuse within that respect if they need to, which is the most righteous fuckin' weapon a musician/performer can employ."

'Like a Ouija board'

The issue of respecting versus abusing tradition is a sensitive one with many listeners when it comes to Americans involved with age-old folk music traditions, and rightfully so. Plenty of experimental and underground rock bands have tried their hands at the same "ethnoforgery" route the MMoB sometimes travel, many with dreadful results. As avant-garde guitarist Derek Bailey wrote in his book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music, such casual appropriations tend to result in music that's "about as far removed from the directness and dignity of ethnic music as a thermo-nuclear explosion is from a fart." Even the SCG, masters of the so-called ethnoforgery genre, have been known to fall flat on their faces in this pursuit. When the risk pays off, for the SCG or the MMoB, it's usually because the musicians have managed to get into the spirit of whatever sort of far-off inspirations they're tuned into, and not because they're producing accurate reproductions of a certain type of music.

"Nobody in the Master Musicians of Bukkake is an ethnic music scholar by any means," Schuller confesses. "If I was told to play an Indian raga, I wouldn't have the guts to do it, because, for one, I wouldn't know what the hell it was, and two, I'd just probably butcher whatever I would try, and it would be very disrespectful. We'd rather create our own make-believe music rather than try to play Asian music or Indian music or anything like that."

"One thing I've always said about the band is that it's very much like a Ouija board," he adds. "We just kind of pick up our instruments, and the music itself will tell us where it's going."

Who knows exactly which instruments they'll be picking up for the Hemlock Tavern show April 2, although the tentative plan is for them to appear in their electric rock band guise. Having seen them perform, though, in addition to hearing their CD and Schuller's perplexing solo album Lesser Angel of Failure (World Misery Recordings) – an MMoB release in all but name – I think it's wise to avoid making any concrete predictions about anything they're going to do. Like the Melvins, one of Schuller's favorite bands, the MMoB pride themselves on their unpredictability, and it's perfectly fine with them if audiences wind up a little confused.

"Confusion is great," he says. "I really think it's important for the listener or the audience member to make up their mind on their own as to what everything is about. Confusion ... lets people just figure out for themselves what the hell's going on, and we all have to figure it out for ourselves too." Master Musicians of Bukkake perform with Sequel 4000 and Pusser's Pihn Sat/2, 10 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. $8. (415) 923-0923.