Boredoms

Boredoms + Gravepaintings.
Barfly
Sat 27th October
£10
Details



I have a major soft spot for Japanese rock-type music. There's something about how they take Western styles and tropes, churn them through the Japanese cultural machine and spit them back out at us that excites me. With Melt Banana and Polysics under my belt the unlikely-named Boredoms seem a suitable choice to come next.

Here's the Capsule description of the gig:

Japan’s iconoclastic experimental music “unit”, redefine the words “fringe” and “Frontier.
They have long pushed the constraints of sanity to the edge and challenged the notions of what remains feasible within the musical form. Their experimentations with rhythm and noise produce collages of sound, color and chaos. They translate the most base human emotions into comprehensible noise; sometimes in a barrage of screams and drums and sometimes in slow languid mantras that evoke the quieter moments of life. Acknowledging no limits of taste or form, there are no boundaries, no ceiling on the possibilities of experience and expression for the Boredoms. Formed in Osaka in ‘86 with EYE Yamataka.

Don't'cha love that that makes no sense at all yet is still oddly alluring?

Wikipedia has some good hyperbole too:

"a head-on collision between…free-form Sun Ra's Arkestra and the scatological nihilism of early Butthole Surfers—fronted by the hollers and gibbers of a couple of guys who can't decide whether they'd rather be Beastie Boys or Residents. But even that doesn't really describe the sheer sense of otherness that pervades the Boredoms aesthetic."

To give you a sense of the scale at which these maniacs think they did a concert this summer in New York involving 77 drummers. It looked like this:



Click on the pic for details and a link to a 100mb mp3 of the concert. There's also a load of video on YouTube.

Oh, and here's a review of the Manchester leg of the tour from that wise man John Coulthart.

Tonight we had a great deal of the thundering cross-patterns of drum rhythms amended by some of the piercing extended crescendos found on VCN. Very loud and very powerful. There was some unusual instrumentation involved as well, including what appeared to be hand-held lightbulbs triggering samples and harmonised feedback, and also a rack of guitar necks (above) with what I assume must be open tunings given the way these were used as percussion devices.

So, are you going already?