Who is the master? If you’ve watched any number of
thrillers with cults in them, the master always seems to be someone malevolent
and cunning, able to pull the strings of a bunch of puppet followers to realize
his nefarious dreams. If the master speaks, you listen with rapt attention. If
the master speaks a second time, you listen but become infinitely more
terrified. If The Master Speaks Thrice …
Well.
Komeshi Trio is going to take this one for the team
and find out just what happens when the master speaks that third time, what
kind of hell will rain down upon his followers and/or his enemies. Maybe
everyone. Everyone is probably the master’s enemy if the master has to hide in
the shadows to consolidate his power until he accumulates enough to emerge and
make his move. (Oh! The master in all these scenarios really comes across as
Voldemort, doesn’t he?)
Komeshi Trio is Peter Kolovos on guitar, Patrick
Shiroishi on saxophone, and Noel Meek on electronics and tapes. The two
improvised pieces that fill one side of a tape each were recorded over the last
couple years and bear the hallmarks of occult practice. “The Books of My
Numberless Dreams” is a wordlessly incanted library of miasmic pestilence, a
slow enveloping of the listener by dark forces that leaves one a husk once the
music has done its work. Jags of each player’s instrument lash out at opportune
moments and pierce the dread, adding to, yep, the dread. It’s dangerous
listening to it!
“One Note for the Dervish” tricks you at first into
thinking it may stretch euphoniously into hymnodic rhapsody, but that spell is
broken quickly as the electronics short-circuit and set the stage for an
apocalyptic showdown. This time, around 4:15 in, hints of the “Imperial March”
from Star Wars hover at the
periphery, and Kolovos turns his guitar menacingly toward his two improv-mates,
letting it billow with menace. Shiroishi and Meek respond to the challenge, but
the stage is set for the rest of the track: we’re in for an intense tug-of-war
as the players battle each other for supremacy.
The Master
Speaks Thrice, and war and death are among you. Or, if not war and death,
then at least mild annoyance. But the soundtrack’s top notch no matter what!
--Ryan
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