mp3: OOIOO grow tree sound
this post closes the recent mini-japanese season. there’s still a great deal more to post from japan, but there’s a whole heap of other great tunes backing up – so time to move on. however, i couldn’t let japan go without a mention of my other favourite band besides the boredoms, namely ooioo (pronounced oh-oh-i-oh-oh). they both share a member in yoshimi p-we, whose fame took a stellar leap when the flaming lips name-checked her in the title of their album ‘yoshimi battles the pink robots’.
yoshimi, who has now been the core drummer of the boredoms for nearly 20 years, started ooioo as a joke. she was due to be photographed for a japanese magazine, and – not wishing to captured alone on film – took her girlfriends with her and they promptly pretended to be a band; yoshimi playing front-woman and lead guitairst. they enjoyed the session so much that they decided to form the band for real – the only issue being that ai (the drummer) was the only one who could play their designated instrument. in true yoshimi style, such a small matter didn’t stop them from supporting sonic youth on a japanese tour in 1997. says yoshimi: “we had to put stickers all over our guitar fretboards because we didn’t know how to play the chords. it turned out the stage lights were so bright that we couldn’t see the stickers, so we played all the wrong notes. it was so messed up that it became interesting. i still have stickers on my fretboard.”
the above mp3 is taken from 2002’s ‘gold and green’, which finally received a long overdue international release last year through thrill jockey. the album, which features contributions from other boredoms members along with yuka honda (from cibo matto) and sean lennon, blends the familiar tribal sensibility of the boredoms with a more varied mix of influences – ranging from pure pop and psychedelia to krautrock and free jazz. ‘gold and green’, like the band themselves, willfully avoids being pigeon-holed – when you take an innovative musician like yoshimi and provoke her to both play and sing outside her percussive comfort zone, the results are never less than compelling. there are no bands like this outside of japan – in fact, there are no bands like this, period.
a new album, the follow-up to 2004’s ‘kila kila kila’, is due to drop later in 2006.
mp3 from betterpropaganda.com