Ibuki

On Ibuki, Kodo worked with Bill Laswell to pump out an album of intense Taiko drumming, as usual. This time around, they reworked a few pieces that had been done on previous albums, including a piece from the soundtrack to The Hunted and "Zoku" by Leonard Eto, which shows up here and there in the Kodo collection. The driving force behind Kodo is the perfection and precision of all of the drumming taking place. This is what separates the drum troupe from your average hippie drum circle. Usually, with this many percussion instruments collected together, any piece of music quickly transforms itself into a sloppy, roundabout loop of mushed patterns. With Kodo, however, every stroke on every drum and every vocal or handclap that takes place is carefully planned out and executed crisply. The end result is what you can hear on Ibuki: pure ecstatic drumming. The beats can easily move a person to move themselves, through the sheer energy driven through the speakers (even better is seeing Kodo live). Any aficionado of world music or percussion should already have the full Kodo album lineup in their collection, but those outside the loop could consider Ibuki a decent opening foray into the style. ~ Adam Greenberg|