Boredoms
Meet the Boredoms or, as they prefer to be known in Japan, V∞redoms: a noise collective based in Osaka but almost perpetually, it seems, on a global mission to deliver the gospel of righteous Japanese love-energy to ineffectual Western youth still transfixed by the ‘Capitalist savagery’ of approved alternative rock offerings.
Let’s stop right there. If you don’t know who the Boredoms are, you wouldn’t be here. Since you are here, why don’t you do the decent thing and stand for this year’s State of the Boredoms address?
The first major news to report is that the Boredoms have signed with Thrill Jockey outside Japan and the label will finally give 2007’s Super Roots 9 a proper worldwide release. This is the band’s first official live release and an essential document of the Boredoms’ transformation from the sometimes puerile, guitar-abusing ‘alternative’ act of the ’80s and ’90s to become arguably the world’s greatest percussion ensemble. Here’s that ensemble on a humanitarian mission to Copenhagen last summer to pummel some much needed love into once-tolerant Danes. The tree-shaped object at the back is Eye’s seven-necked guitar: the one he plays with, what else, a stick:
According to Thrill Jockey: Singles, special limited editions, along with albums will all be packaged in special custom designs by the Boredoms. Our focus will be to deliver ther records and the concepts behind the music in highly collectable formats of the band’s design. We will do so while also making the records available at a domestic price, and on formats, such as 320 bit-rate DRM -free downloads, not previously explored by the band.
The ‘domestic price’ promise is interesting as it would appear to clash with the promise of ’special custom designs’ by the band for their own releases. Here’s what you can really expect: last month the Boredoms released Live At Sunflancisco on Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Commmons label in Japan. It consists of a DVD of live footage that you’re unlikely to watch more than once plus a bonus CD featuring eleven minutes of new music that happens to be utterly essential. The list price? ¥4200, or around US$40.
So the Boredoms, like many a band that has reached middle age, find they have to somewhat shamelessly milk their core constituency to survive. Even that mountain of cash tipped over the band by Warner Music in the early ’90s doesn’t buy many seven-necked guitars! It can’t be much fun being the world’s most awe-inspiring, all-drumming juggernaut if you have to borrow money from lesser acts on the bill to fill up the tank.
For once, I’m willing to look the other way. In fact, more than that, I want to start the Boredoms Relief Fund. Listen to this eight minute excerpt from Super Roots 9: the only album to marry a celestial space choir to punishing taiko madness in 2007. The void that unfolds in your heart as the music fades out could well be the compulsion to go out and buy the album:
January 29, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Back in high school, I quit my first band for a variety of reasons that included an argument over the album “Pop Tatari”: they thought it sounded like a bunch of meth psychotics turned loose in some ghetto recording studio. I agreed, BUT that this was a good thing.
By the time everyone else got turned on to “Vision Creation Newsun” and started talking in reverent tone’s about eYe’s sprawling catalogue, I’d become, well, bored with Boredoms. To my ears, it sounds like they’ve been making increasingly monochromatic versions of the same album for the past decade - but now without Yamamoto Seiichi’s six-string maelstrom, which is a HUGE loss.
“Super ae” still has some of the most euphoric music committed to tape, but they lost me after that. Honestly, there’s only so many times I can listen to the same bloody drum’n'bass beat with some post-Magma, Cornelius-esque, shiny new age chorus over top.
January 29, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I only half agree with you, Seb. Super Ae (199
and Vision Creation Newsun (1999) were both awesome records but the Boredoms’ album output was frustratingly bad for a long time afterwards and - crucially - before that too. In recording terms, they’ve been in the wilderness for the last eight years. But 2007 was the year that their true genius was finally committed to disc, eclipsing, IMHO, all their previous work. I wouldn’t swap a minute of their current live incarnation for the whole of Pop Tatari or Onanie Bomb… however cherished those albums may be. Clearly you are the true custodian of the onchi spirit here! A contribution?
January 30, 2008 at 7:57 am
A contribution? No kidding. I’d love to. Who said being a contrarian conoisseur of skronk wouldn’t get me anywhere in life? HA!
Back to the Boredoms… indeed, “Super Roots 9″ is the best thing they’ve put to tape in nigh on a decade. But one of the things I found so exhilirating about their early ’90s no-wave shambles was how quickly they’d evolve from one record to the next. There were already audible steps from the ADD spazcore of “Pop Tatari” towards their later meditative motorik by “Chocolate Synthesizer.” So it’s the relative stagnancy of their work as whole over the decade that kinda saps my excitement.
(I’ll get some kinda post in the works ASAP. Thanks for the shot, boss!)
March 2, 2008 at 7:24 pm
[...] these humble pages, I confer special attention on bands that have gone post-guitar: like the modern Boredoms, these bands are obviously onto [...]