Boredoms Super Roots 3: Absurdly Interesting

Originally posted on August 25, 2008

The impossibly diffuse Japanese avant-rock band Boredoms and their re-release compilation “Super Roots” (Vice) have been the subject several times on these pages. We turn today to volume three, Hard Trance Way (Karaoke of Cosmos). It’s one thirty-something-minute cut with a heavy drum pulse and guitars thrashing away on the same one or two chords without pause, the only changes being a modulation of key every couple of minutes.

This is extreme music, head-banging stuff, and it certainly took some amount of nerve to record and release it. It fascinates me because it is so empty of anything but one gesture. It captures the banality of some metal and sets it up as a pared-to-the-core model to be questioned, emulated, dismissed, or idolized. Your choice. I think it's one of their best but it may drive some people nuts. Signing off—It’s my vacation and I am dropping junk off at the dump!

Japanese Avant Rock from Boredoms

Originally posted on November 13, 2007

What goes on in the rock scene in Japan does not often get much attention here in the United States. A guy I used to work with who spent time there turned me on to j-pop and that was interesting, but what about the more “progressive” bands? I found out some of that when I fell heir to a number of CDs recently released in the states by a long-lived band called Boredoms. They have what looks like six releases out on Vice CDs now. The one I am listening to is Super Roots 7. Recorded in 1998, it is an EP (thirty-something minutes) of a stylistic phase they were then in (they have gone through a number of them). Here the bulk of the CD is devoted to some guitar-based trance jams. There isn’t much in the way of vocals, and the sound they get is almost like the climax to a Yardbird Rave Up of the sixties, only it goes on for ten or so minutes. It is quite interesting.