 Let's
just take a second and take stock of what we've got here, concerning
the Boredoms. They are quite possibly the single most unlikely success
story imaginable: starting off as a noisy, trashy punk band, early
works...it's a bit of a stretch to call them "songs"...were obsessed
with confrontation and scatolology (sample titles: "Bite My Bollocks,"
"JB Dick + Tin Turner Pussy Badsmell," "Born To Anal"...you get the
idea.) Through countless personnel changes, they evolved from punk band
to noise terrorists to art rockers to what they are now, a kind of
shamanistic, transcendental happening
that is less about musical goals and more about achieving elevated
states. They've only got one original member, the multiple-monikered
Yamatsuka Eye (although drummer and OOIOO leader Yoshimi P-We has been
a key member for long enough to render that point moot.) How did they
get from making constant butt jokes to...this?
And what exactly is "this," anyway? This...this is an inevitability. As
the band slowly wormed their way out of the primitive goofiness of
their early works, they grew to embrace a totally different kind of
primitivism, one which blends ancient societal elements: sun worship
and drum collectives, specifically. Starting with 1998's "Super
æ," the band started dropping their ADD inspired, fragmented
noise collages and started down a very different path, drawing from the
same pool of trancey hyperfocus that informed many of the best
Krautrock bands that were just starting to receive recognition at the
time (Can, Neu!, As Ra Tempel, etc.) 1999's "Vision Creation Newsun"
was an unqualified masterpiece, a euphoric meditation that ignored
navel gazing in favor of staring into the sun, metaphorically speaking.
Then...
Then, not silence exactly, but the progression does seem to have been
put on the back burner. They'd play out occasionally, and there were
some remix albums. There was also "Seadrum/House Of Sun," a decent if
unexceptional release that had the feeling of treading water. Then in
2007, they released "Super Roots 9," the newest effort in a series of
EPs. This one track, live workout was different, though: it showed that they've outgrown
songs. Now, the Boredoms don't perform so much as achieve states,
rising and falling like a single, musical organism.
Which brings us, finally, to "77 Boadrum." This recording, featuring
the core band plus 74 volunteers (totaling 77 drummers, plus Eye on
electronics,) is a natural conclusion of this move towards collective
energies. Recorded live on July 7, 2007 (7/7/07) in the Brooklyn Bridge
Park in New York City, it's less a concert than a party, a full blown
happening that uses music to channel energy more than to simply
entertain. In a purely musical sense, the Boredoms haven't "progressed" much at all. Spread
across two CDs, there are two distinct pieces: both tracks (rather
arbitrarily titled "Sevener" and "Sunload") simply take the "Vision
Creation Newsun" formula and do it again, this time with more people,
and in a different setting. That's the point, though: compositional
novelty, although present, is singularly unnecessary in the headspace
the band currently inhabits.
So why bother with new material? That's like asking why bother eating
when you'll only get hungry again: the Boredoms right now are about
elevation, and today's elevation is necessarily different than
yesterday's, even if the destination is the same. "Sevener" begins with
what is essentially a bonding exercise. The 77 drummers were arranged
in a spiral, with core Boredoms member Yojiro Tatekawa acting as
"number 1." He starts, number 2 follows, then number 3, etc. until the
cycle leads to drummer 77, Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale. From
that point, "Sevener" begins its inevitable climb to the peak, a
glorious explosion of simple, euphoric bar chords. Musically simple,
emotionally transcendent. "Sunload," while ostensibly a different
track, simply takes another path to the same peak.
Apologies for the wall of text above, but when a band bypasses (and
ultimately transcends) common musical forms, the context...the
journey...is often as important as the sound, and much of the true
power of "77 Boadrum" lies in understanding what exactly took place,
imagining the pure electricity of being in the presence of the
situation. This release plays to this, consisting of a full sized,
hardbound book with 24 full color pages illustrating the event, two
CDs, and a DVD. The accompanying DVD is not of the entire performance,
but rather a small handful of snippets illustrating how group
interaction was engineered to create the pieces. It's tempting to be
disappointed by its brevity, but the
short films are indispensable, adding depth and understanding to the
gloriously massive, soaring sounds on the two CDs. Next week sees the
release of "Super Roots 10," a collection consisting of two new tracks
and more remixes. While this more typical format is a bit
frustrating, considering what the band accomplishes in its visceral,
natural state, it's only logical: the Boredoms are in a place where the
happening, not the album, is the thing. "77 Boadrum" is a singularly
brilliant release, one which sees the iconic band reach for the sun and
touch it...again.
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Available from Amazon Japan
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