THE SPECIALIST

Opens The Seven Gates Of Transcendental Consciousness (reissue, 1972) NUMERO GROUP

7/10 Esoteric, private-press electroacoustic mysticism, reissued SELF-TAUGHT guitarist Master Wilburn Burchette exemplifies a strain of mail-order magazine mystic that could only have existed in the California of the 1970s. The majority of his guitar and synthesiser music was released in small numbers on his own label Burchette Brothers, advertised in the back pages of occult rags like Fate magazine, Beyond Reality and Gnostica News. Thanks to Numero Group, a number of these albums have been reintroduced into the world. The latest is Opens The Seven Gates Of Transcendental Consciousness, subtitled ‘A Transcendental Ballet For The Mind Of God’ to drive home the point of Burchette’s vision.

Burchette was obsessed with the esoteric from the age of 12, immersing himself in books about the fundamentals of Tibetan mysticism while practising guitar. What he learned, he incorporated into his music, creating tonal pictures and patterns that seemed to unlock another reality. Out of six different woods he built his own guitar, with a neck that was inlaid with abalone shells. An apt creation for a man who did virtually everything on his own, with a little help from his chemist brother Kenneth. Burchette dubbed his instrument the Impro guitar, named for a supposedly ancient form of music he claimed to have discovered.

The music of Open The Seven Gates… is a head-spinning mix of arcane folk and electric fingerpicking, American Primitive guitar gone New Age with kaleidoscopic vibes and an ontological viewpoint that purports to connect listeners to planes beyond our own. Did Burchette really believe his music could induce the very same transcendental consciousness that practitioners of Tibetan mysticism could only hope to achieve after a lifetime of studying? It’s impossible to know for sure and frankly irrelevant, though if feelings are anything to go by, one does get the sense that all of this felt deeply true to him. At any rate, the music is unquestionably an otherworldly experience on this particular plane of existence, a satisfying expression of one man’s idiosyncratic electroacoustic explorations that rewards close listening. Numero has also reproduced the full-colour instructional booklet that came with the original album, which features not only seven gorgeous psychedelic illustrations to go along with each song but also Burchette’s instructions for said transcendental breakthroughs.