Originally posted on Fat Planet.
DOWNLOAD: BOREDOMS seadrum (edit)
the history of boredoms is so tangled and complex (and rife with mis-information), that a psycho-biography might be the best place to start.
i first encountered boredoms in the best possible environment – live on stage, in a venue whose acoustics were perfectly honed for fragile orchestral recitals. this gig, in 2002, has a special memory for me too – it was the first gig i went to with my new girlfriend, who 18 months later became my wife, and 18 months after that, the mother of my beautiful daughter. we had actually gone to see john cale, on the back of the fact that having never seen the velvet underground play live, i felt i had to at least bag the solo shows while the founders were still alive. also on the bill with the cale were “some japanese noise band”, but i knew enough about them to understand that we had to get there early.
the stage was set up with three drum kits, configured in a circle, all facing each other. next to the trio of kits was a trestle table with an undefinable piece of equipment, just the one box. when eye yamatake and yoshimi p-we took to the stage with two recent additions to the touring band, little did i know that the next sixty minutes would later come to be defined as “the greatest gig i have ever witnessed”. the equipment turned out to be a tone generator, capable of emitting a lacerating squeal, wavering frantically between pitches. eye jumped on and off the table, clutching the box, himself screaming and howling as he went. all through the hysteria, yoshimi and her fellow drummers pounded out a wall of percussive noise; always tight and impeccably focussed, yet simultaneously so far off the chart that there was no hope of them ever coming back. somewhere in that sixty minutes, that sounds and fury and primal noise became a thing of amazing beauty – the likes of which i may never see again. the words were literally ripped from our mouths. after that, how could john cale compete? truth is, he couldn’t possibly begin to get a foot on the same ladder and ten minutes into his set we were out the door – a new cure for boredom firmly in mind.
so what else do you need to know? you can find a good discography on wikipedia and a solid bio on the vice recordings site – current home for boredom’s american releases. vice put out 2004’s ‘seadrum / house of sun’ (an edited version of the former can be downloaded above). yoshimi described the process of recording ‘seadrum’ thus: “we set up our drums kits on wooden boards in the sand, and we didn’t stop playing until the tide came in and the drums started getting wet. then we submerged a mic in the water to record the sound of the drums under the sea. we set up so many mics – there’s no way we could ever listen to all the tracks. but we ended up using the essence of that recording in ‘seadrum’.”
next from the boredoms is a highly anticipated set of reissues, collecting the ‘super roots’ series, originally released between 1994 and 1999 – much of which has never seen the light of day outside of japan. as good a place to start as any.
incidentally, we also got to see lou reed last year, thus bagging two out of the four original VU team. my wife didn’t enjoy that either.