The diary entries of a little girl who is now 30! ~ Part 2 - Page 353

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Originally Posted by Idsynchrono_24 


I wasn't aware of any of that. I just heard in passing that a new Boris album was dropping. Heck I don't know if it's a "Boris" album or a "BORIS" album I was anticipating. Hopefully more in the vein of Heavy Rocks or Feedbacker as opposed to Rainbow or Smile.

And man... I've always wanted to catch these guys live. Between them, Sunn O, and Acid Mothers Temple, it must feel like the plates beneath your feet are coming apart.

Well, last time they released three albums simultaneously. Attention Please was more along the lines of mellow alt rock with Wata singing on most tracks. Heavy Rocks 2011 was more of their older style filtered through Smile. Then there was New Album which was weird electronic-processed J-pop / J-rock and sounded like a bunch of anime intro songs. It was New Album that was the only really interesting one of the bunch. The others just did nothing for me. Not bad, but just forgettable.

Smile was pretty unpleasant, with the exception of a few bits and pieces. But then it came out at a rather tumultuous time in my life, so I tend to associate it with unpleasant memories (along with Harvey Milk's Life The Best Game In Town).

Oddly I really liked their weird-ass collaboration with Ian Astbury, BXI. Some folks whose opinions I respect panned it. They typically felt Ian's crooning about castles and forest monsters and witches was laughable, but to me it had this awkward sincerity that is right at home with metal. It was actually one of the most genuine things Boris has done since Pink, which is incidentally still my second favorite Boris album (the first being Flood; third being Amplifier Worship). Don't even get me started on Flood and how amazing that album is. Feedbacker is cool as hell too, and Wata is always inspiring when she's in full-on Hendrix mode. I also really liked Rainbow, as it has some utterly fantastic songwriting courtesy of Ghost's Michio Kurihara. It was riding the tailwinds of Pink's greatness.

To me though, they hit their apex with Pink. Their take on shoegazer in the opening track is still so amazingly inspired... when the haze lifts for a moment, and you're left with that bullet-in-slow-motion guitar riff droning away, the vocals kick in washed in reverb, and the bullet simply bursts into a cloud of flower petals when it impacts your skull. Through the rest of the album, they offer their own unique Borisification of various subgenres, and it all fits into this beautiful cohesive whole. With Smile, it felt like they were trying to push that Ween-like rock pastiche to another level, but they ended up incorporating too much of their experimental Vein and Merzbow collaborative streaks into it, and it all just falls apart with no real glue to bind it. It's just a jumbled mess of walkie-talkie noise and overdriven samples.

That's the joke I was getting at before: with Smile, they compounded this schizophrenia by releasing literally six or seven different versions of the same material. We had the Japanese vinyl and CD versions, the US vinyl and CD versions, two different singles with alternate versions, and a live album of the same material. Oh, and then another live album with most of the same material, only featuring Merzbow blasting his tape reels in the background. Yeah, Boris has always been a little ridiculous---okay, really ridiculous---when it comes to the super-deluxe-limited-edition releases and screwing over their fans (Vein anyone?), but they just took it to another level during Smile. It's like what happened with Stereolab who alienated their fans through the same kind of milkmaid behavior.

Seeing Boris live was... immense, as you might expect. Their amp stacks liquify your skeleton. I haven't seen Sunn O))), nor would I particularly want to unless they were playing with the right guest musicians (who pretty much make or break them IMHO), but I did see Khanate and wow was that a boring show. No energy whatsoever, just four grizzled dudes looking bored and deigning to play their instruments every five minutes before letting the amps take over. And yeah, I "get" doom and drone. Stuff like Black Boned Angel, Nadja, Corrupted can channel the right energy. Khanate was always too glacial after their S/T debut; though ironically their last album composed after their breakup was pretty good, which goes to show you how unimportant their actual chemistry was despite the stories of visual cues and hateful gesticulations. Hmm... they weren't as bad as Wolf Eyes live at least. That goes down as the second worst show I've ever seen after Daughters. Which is kinda funny because I enjoy Wolf Eyes' albums. They just suck live.

AMT's shows are always a fantastic experience however. I've been able to go to four of their shows and meet Kawabata, and he just has this amazing presence both on and off the stage (though no one tops eYe of the Boredoms for intimidating shamanistic aura). Toward the end of one set, I still have fond memories of Kawabata freaking out on his guitar for ten minutes before hanging it from the rafters above the stage and walking off. Great guy. Knows his troubadour and minstrel music like no other and can play a mean hurdygurdy.

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Originally Posted by Idsynchrono_24 

I actually skipped over their latest trio of releases, but perhaps that was for the better, because it doesn't seem like I missed out on much. When one of your fans distills an album of yours down to: it's basically a collection of anime intros, it doesn't really bode well. Do you think New Album would sound rockin' on Suyama's Monet though? Is Wata capable of channeling the essence of moe? Important questions those.

Well, it's Boris' take on a collection of anime intros. Which sounds pretty awesome to me, but maybe that's just me.

New Album is a really good, heavy pop-rock album. Done by Boris. I guess how you feel about their more low key and/or straight forward moments will dictate whether you like it. To me it's the good side of their genre hopping weirdness.

As for Wata, I think she'd just as soon bite your face off than do anything particularly cutesy. Unless you find getting your face bitten off cute, of course. I'm sure she'd chew it into a heart shape if you asked nicely enough.

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Originally Posted by Idsynchrono_24 

Walkie talkie noise is a pretty apt description of Smile actually. I blame Merzbow really.

LOL. It's so easy to blame Merzbow though, isn't it? I do it myself. Everyone does. If an artist you like collaborates with him, the record invariably isn't very good, and it's that damn Masami Akita's fault! *shakes fist*

...But who let's him out of his cage? I seriously doubt he's banging on everyone's door begging to be allowed to synthesizer-fart all over their live albums. People idolize him, and not in a genuinely  respectful way either, but more like that weird guy who vacuumed his bowels on stage in the early 90s, Georgeorgeorgeorge (which is incidentally the Japanese onomatopoeia for vomiting and defecating at the same time! ---- the more you know).

There's actually a handful of Merzbow's catalog I really like. I mean, if you produce thousands and thousands of records over the last few decades, you're bound it hit upon some random combination right? Also he looks like a Japanese Ozzy Osbourne and is obsessed with pigeons. Ballin'.

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Originally Posted by Idsynchrono_24 

And yes, what a monolithic opener "Farewell" was on Pink. Hearing that wall of sound roar from my stereo was probably the only time I'd ever use the word "gorgeous" to describe Boris' sound

A few more pretty Boris moments:

The track "Kuruimizu" from Amplifier Worship. Starts out fast and angry, slows to a Melvins-esque stomp, and finally collapses into silence. Over the next 11 minutes or so they build up a delicate structure of plucked, echoed melodies that shift into various nested arrangements before fading out into a singular drone.

The track "Naki Kyoku" from Akuma No Uta.

A good deal of Rainbow. In particular however "Rafflesia," "My Rain," and "...And, I Want."

Basically all of Flood. The crescendo in part III is just spine chillingly gorgeous.

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Originally Posted by Idsynchrono_24 

Lucky duck. I got a kick out of reading about your experiences with the bands. One day, I hope to be able to have my own. And man... Eye... I remember way back, I walked into this record store in CA asking if anyone had heard of Chocolate Synthesizer or Pop Tatari cause I wanted to give those two albums a whirl. The clerks at the store were indeed familiar with it, but unfortunately neither album was in stock. Fast forward about 6 months to the heyday of Soulseek - what a time that was, discovering the JIR room with its mysterious spanish speaking denizens sporting curious handles like "data embargo." I was 19, Netzero was my service provider, and I was coming across the likes of Melt Banana, Naked City, Bleach and the aforementioned Boredoms for the very first time. Words couldn't express that feeling of utter bewilderment upon hearing those bands for the first time. Melt Banana was like tossing Elmo, a screeching dial up modem, and Tom Morello into a particle accelerator. Naked City was like trying to drunkenly unscramble a UHF station playing a David Lynch flick, complete with the random blackouts. And Boredoms? That was like being trolled before I knew what that even meant. ("Give me a B!" indeed. I can definitely see why Eye hung out with John Zorn.) I'm not sure whether I enjoy Boredoms or not, but I've always been taken by the myth surrounding their live shows. 88 drummers and a frankensteinian 7 neck guitar that would make Rick Nielsen blush sounds like something akin to a religious experience for sure. 

Melt-Banana is (...was?) so talented. They just became this sort of novelty export for people who wanted to frighten their parents which is a shame.

You know who was really talented? Like, in a scary way? Ruins. First time I heard Tzomborgha, I felt like throwing up because it was so bewilderingly beyond my comprehension at the time. Like getting a glimpse of a higher dimension or something.  Not that I really comprehend it now, but I can at least keep up with Yoshida's drumming in my head. I miss the old days of Skin Graft records, with bands like Ruins and US Maple.

Boredoms / VooREDOMS in LA in 2005 was pretty much the greatest live show I'd been to ever. It was a transcendent experience. Maybe I'll be able to work up the nerve to write about it some time.

I wish I could have gone to the 2012-2013 New Year's show featuring OOIOO, Saicobaba, and eYe's new multiple guitar orchestra project thingamajig.

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Originally Posted by barleyguy 

That must be like how the eskimos have 20 different words for snow.  I think you have to be around a lot of snow to start categorizing it into different words.  Much like you'd have to be around many lesbians to come up with 12 distinct types.

 

I have had several close friends that are lesbian over the years, and they have all ended up in "one femme, one butch" for their long term relationships  Like one that could be described as beautiful, and one that I wouldn't challenge to a fistfight.

 

I'm not stereotyping, just giving anecdotal evidence from a small sample set.

When you're part of a certain "scene" that's relatively small and insular, but not particularly personable, roles can often take on huge significance. You end up getting type-casted for better or worse.

I'd also argue that roles are a major facet of most women's lives from an early age, regardless of their orientation. That's why I have to laugh at von Balthasar who claims "woman can only be herself; only man can play the part of someone he is not" when he argues why women shouldn't be priests. History is filled to the brim with women playing the part of someone they're not; there is no "inner woman" and the illusion of feminine mystique comes to be the reality: when you remove the mask at the masquerade, there's nothing underneath. In a perverse way Weininger's Sex and Character got it right.

Even when women are rebelling against conventions, they fall into choreographed, pre-definited cultural expectations for that rebellion. Same with men. It's all in the same frame.