BOREDOMS!!!!!!! (?)

Confession time: I never really understood the insane love affair that the indie world at large has had with Boredoms. Sure, Super AE and Vision Creation Newsun are pretty great records. Incredibly original, often fun, very cerebral, but… it just doesn’t stick with you after the record finishes spinning. Trying to decode their variety of releases is even more confusing than the ideas contained in them, there’s the Super Roots series (which doesn’t seem to really have a central idea, as far as I can tell), various side projects, the Rebore series, and God knows what else. So I’ve definitely committed the “crime” of being perplexed and wary of Boredoms but following on the advice of the entire independent music world, I decided that the live setting was a much better path for approach. And slap me if everybody and their super-hip mother wasn’t right! GOD DAMN! This is a live show and a half!

Boredoms have picked up their touring pace in the last few years and reminded everyone of just how incredible they can be with the 77 Boadrum event last summer in Brooklyn. The super out-there mind fuck of their early records has given way to a new sort of live show built around lots and lots of drums. We didn’t get up into the double digits of drummers with this show but the three provided were more than enough, especially when led by cutie Yoshimi P-We (who also played a couple different instruments sporadically and laid down some backing vocals even more sporadically. Three drummers marks the obvious focus of the band but the most important ingredient is always frontman Yamantaka Eye who handles the required experimentalism with vocal yelps, tons of processing and effects, and… a drum made out of guitars? I don’t know quite how to describe the thing but it’s several guitars stacked together, all tuned to make different notes when he hit them each with a stick. Occasionally he’d get out a big stick and just hit several of them at the same time! Oh, and it sounded awesome.

It’s a little difficult to get the full picture of the concert with just those few descriptors but honestly the devil is NOT in the details, it’s in the whole presence of the noise. The rolling rhythms put the whole audience into a trance that let up only two or three times during the show, I couldn’t even tell you how long it was because the laws of time and space do not apply to this band. Unfortunately though, gravity remains inescapable and Eye had hurt himself on the tour and had to use crutches to get to the stage. Now any other frontman for any other band, yeah they might take that as a sign to slow down, take er easy, maybe not go completely apeshit just this once. But ho! this is Japan’s smelliest, craziest, most dreadlocked performer and he was all over the stage! When not manning the controls of his noise machines and vocal-fucker-withers, he was jumping about, throwing his hands to the heavens, and of course getting out his big stick to make some big guitar noise! The enthusiasm was absolutely inspiring and combined with the brewed force of the swirling percussion thunder, it was devastating.

If you ever have the opportunity to see Boredoms, GO. Cannot stress it enough. Don’t know their discography through and through? Hey, they’re not going to play any of it anyways! Never heard them before in your life? Well, accessibility isn’t a problem in the slightest unless you demand 4 minute pop songs from everyone. There’s nothing in the world like a Boredoms concert and you will never forget it. It’s a given that the experience will change your concept of live music, if not life and music itself.

More photos!

I apologize that I didn’t go for a press pass or nothing like that. I was in the corner of the drinking section closest to the stage and my camera is point and click, not slr with tripod, laser sight, and grenade launcher attachment.

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