Imagine if that gold-plated record in the Voyager probe ever gets picked up by aliens who figure out how to play it, but don't really pick up on the fact that the different musical styles are in fact supposed to be different.
Mo Boma produces the late tech sort of digital primitive sound that someone from another planet might call world music. And they'd be right.
Covert Culture Handbook
Mo Boma take delight
in fusing a wide range of percussive rhythms with some of the softer aspects of jazz and rock. The album begins with "Ituri
Spaceman", in which the ebow guitar solos over a pleasant mesh of Caribbean and African percussion styles. Songs as "Ah Bobe" mix
Arabic
patterns with the tones of the Indonesian Gamelan, while "The Drums Must
Never Stop" sounds like Jean-Luc Ponty during his African phase.
Strong as the percussion element is on this record, the guitar is also omnipresent. Rapid acoustic leads and fuzzed rhythms are the fuel for "Go Sneak It". Hillage-like glissandi crying over synthetic clouds raises
the "Invocation" to its heavenly destination.
Whereas percussionist/guitarist Carsten Tiedemann is obviously the backbone of Mo Boma, he is effectively augmented by synthesist Jamshied Sharifi and bassist Skuli Sverrisson. Their work allows the various ethnic and contemporary styles to flow smoothly and to fuse seamlessly.
And, like the Buddhist Jijimuge doctrine, it shows that "all the parts are parts within the whole".
Michael C. Mahan, Alternative Press
Impressive amalgamation of primeval and futuristic styles. On Jijimuge, ethnic percussion instruments bubble up from steamy atmospheres featuring long, yearning sweeps of electric guitar, aquatic fretless bass and richly blurred synth textures.
The sound is simultaneously organic and metallic, with more aggressive tracks approaching something akin to a Third World Weather Report. Though unsettling at times, Mo Boma's voyage through alien landscapes is luxurious and dreamlike.
Linda Kohanov, PULSE!
There are always those artists that exist, that thrive, on the edge, hovering on the precipice where mind and genres bend. Mo Boma's debut of techno-tribal music (the correct coinage for music of such sweeping vistas and mysterious lands still is debatable) is perhaps the best unknown record of the year. Mo Boma crosses cultures both identifiable and undiscovered, resulting in music immensely far-reaching and difficult to categorize.
Various surreal percussions often set up dense patterns of rhythm over which guitars and bass chime and dance and electronics provide a wide spectrum of tones and colors. The vessels of Hassell, Byrne and Eno, Roach, gamelan music and sundry middle eastern philosophies no doubt haunt the proceedings, but Mo Boma are far too skilled to simply ape what has come before. From the gently beckoning of "Go Sneak It", with its slightly jazzy flavor, to the electrified ebow guitar and infinite electronic realms of "Invocation", Mo Boma defy and ultimately trash the fecund trappings of mere jazz, space, and ethnic fusions.
Transmogrifying and provocative in its scope, JIJIMUGE is true progressive music for the 90's and beyond, possessed of sounds that grip the inner vacuum of human light and darkness, despiritualized prayers for the pantheon where the gods of both machines and ghosts reside.
One of the essential albums of the new decade.
Darren Bergstein, I/E Magazine
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