Born out of a fascination with Bon and Buddhist liturgies, this Moscow-based collective began work on what would become Trowo Phurmag Ceremony in the mid 1990s, the project solidifying around 2003. for the uninitiated, Phurpa is one of the five tutelary deities of the Father Tantra in Bon Tradition, and this album is every bit as deep as one might expect – and then goes deeper still.
Fortunately, esoteric knowledge of ancient religious rites and traditions isn't essential in order to appreciate the richness of 'Trowo Phurmag Ceremony', which conjures multi-layered narratives and evokes powerful imagery simply within the context of itself. It begins with 'Fundamental Mantra of Bon', a cavernous, rumbling meditation, with bass vocals ominously droning as though performing an ancient rite in the bottom of an immense cave. This sonorous grumbling continues for some seven and a half minutes, by which time one feels as though one has been sucked down into the underworld. The sense of chthonic entrapment is rendered all the more intense during the eerily quiet 'Introduction' which follows as distant clanks and drones are punctuated by occasional and unexpected groans and unidentifiable yet monstrous sounds.
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The wordless subsonic vocals return on 'The Visualization', and it's all a prelude to the two-part centrepiece of the album, 'Conferring Empowerment and Self-Transformation'. Together, parts one and two occupy a space over half an hour in duration, during which time those deep, dark notes resonate and vibrate and echo off the dark walls, with only the briefest flickers of candlelight for illumination. The ceremony is a creeking organic mass, rich and earthy and yet not of this plane.
Ultimately, the darkness becomes all consuming as the yawning drones swallow all light and all other sounds save for sporadic clanks and chimes, a sonic black hole that stretches down, down, down into eternity, through 'Emanating the retinue of the Deity' and 'The Charge to Action. By the album's conclusion, 'Puja Offering and Praises', everything has been sucked from the atmosphere, to the last particle of oxygen. Terrifying.
Phurpa Online
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