BBJR “Pareidolia” C40 (Already Dead Tapes)



My familiarity with BBJR, aka Bob Bucko Jr. of Personal Archives fame, has been limited to his releases as guitar/drums jazz freakout duo Sex Funeral (with Matt Crowe) and his more abstract solo material, so it was with great surprise and joy that PAREIDOLIA conformed to none of my preconceptions about Bucko’s work. Tapping into mad psych and towering interstellar ambient, BBJR punches holes in space-time with guitar and sax alike until he’s created, like, a bunch of new black holes. I can’t even count them, it seems as if they just appear throughout PAREIDOLIA. Not surprising, then, is the density of these compositions, each a heavy isotope (not to be confused with a heavy metal, of course) that will decay as soon as it ends, with radioactive material all that remains. So, a public service announcement: wear lead suits when listening! Anyway, there’s lots to love here for the psychic space traveler, ready to wrap your mind around concepts that make very little sense on Earth. Each of these four astral blasts explore the outer regions of the mind and the universe and make connections of one to the other as if it were as simple as direct observation – no complicated mathematics required. BBJR clearly imposes patterns and ideas on PAREIDOLIA that make perfect sense when all is complete. Wait, I’m getting a message here … seems as though “pareidolia” is a phenomenon where order is perceived when there actually is none. So … I was probably way off on suggesting that Bob Bucko is some sort of theoretical genius. Still, he’s pretty good at this improv stuff, and it’s not TOO crazy to impose some order upon it … is it?

Already Dead Tapes

-- Ryan Masteller