It’s somewhat ruinous to your well-being when the first band you ever saw in a club was the Boredoms. Such is my dilemma. It was the fall of 1992, and they were opening for Sonic Youth on the Dirty tour in Pittsburgh, which would have made that set one of the first three–if not the first ever–for the legendary Japanese group on American soil. I was 15 years old at the time, and down with Sonic Youth, but nothing could prepare me for what the Boredoms unleashed. Imagine Krakatoa erupting once again and P-Funk jamming with Satan himself in the flow of molten lava, decimating everything in its path while throwing fountains of laced Pez through strobe light arcs into the open, gawking mouths of bystanders. Never have I seen human beings freak out so intensely for so long; the tension emanating from the noise they were creating in the room made it feel like everyone at the club was seconds away from beating each other senseless. This was not some opening-strength band. Sonic Youth got their asses handed to them that night, and graciously accepted defeat. But no one was left to claim responsibility for the psychic scar I wear to this day as a result of that show. How do you cope with every band you see afterwards failing to hit the mark the Boredoms jumped to?
This thought goes through my head every time I’ve seen them since. The group has gone through so many changes since my first time, but never failed to reinvent themselves in a new and enlightened way, from full-on funk/noise blowouts to lightning-hurling rhythmic trances, all the while making time for special circumstances, like a 77-person drum circle last summer in a Brooklyn park. Tonight proved to be a bit more special than most of their shows, however: Manhattan record hub Other Music presented the group in an in-store appearance, with attendance limited to the first 50 people who bought the group’s new Thrill Jockey release, Super Roots 9. (Full disclosure: I work in a freelance capacity for Other Music.)
Select shows on the Boredoms’ current tour have been presented “in the round,” allowing ticketholders to walk around the group as they play, offering a heretofore unseen view of their stage set-up and personal point of view. They were back at four members for this tour, as with the last few, consisting of three full drum kits, a simple rack of outboard gear, a hot-rodded Magical Musical Thing, and the Sevener, a seven-necked guitar custom built for Boredoms leader Eye Yamatsuka. Sadly, the Sevener was out of commission for tonight’s set, but the band threw down a two-song, 45-minute set of unmatched intensity and fascinating musical interplay. Even with his foot in a cast boot, Eye went off in ways that would cripple most performers, throttling the mixer and cracking out thick guitar samples with wildman-in-a-pressure-cooker antics. Screams of throat-peeling rage ran through delay and phase-shifting effects, while the drummers pounded away in syncopated fury. The second and final cut relied almost solely on rhythm for the first movement, as three drummers managed to play individually around the same beat. When put together, it sounded like one groove with six arms and feet banging away at it. Metal percussion jutted in until Eye brought the whole groove into a streamlined, worshipful blast of melody and pure light – one so strong that Other Music’s power cut out three times. And while it didn’t fully cure the blow dealt to me over 15 years ago, every time I see the Boredoms reminds me that I’ve been healed by sound a little bit more, and reinforces why I stayed with music this great in the first place.
There’s only two more dates left on the tour, so hit them up if you have the chance:
Wednesday, April 2 – Philadelphia, PA @ Starlight Ballroom
Friday, April 4 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
If somebody had tried to explain to me what HLLLYH sounded like before I heard it, there is a good chance I would never have listened to it. The combination of Los Angeles art-punk, 8-bit retro-electronic experimentation and youthful lyrical harmonies covers a whole mess of indie-rock micro-genres that I generally don’t–for lack of a better word–“get.” Fortunately nobody had warned me when I slipped the disk into my CD player for my first listen. Within a few tracks I was hooked. To my increasing amazement the Mae Shi managed to take all these indie-rock idiosyncrasies that tend to separate the die-hard hipsters from the skeptical and sometimes nauseous masses (i.e. me), throw them all together with a healthy dose of pop sensibility, and create a surprisingly accessible concept album without sacrificing their experimental edge.
Though HLLLYH (their 3rd official album) has been my introduction to the band, the Mae Shi are no strangers to the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink school of music creation, having garnered a fair amount of infamy in certain circles for a mixtape cramming their favorite segments of 2,000 tracks into a 70-minute set. And after reportedly terrorizing any birthday party or bar mitzvah in the Los Angeles area for $100 with their raucous live sets and a side gig constructing their own custom effects pedals and synths (available on their website), the band is clearly nothing if not experimental. Since the 2006 departure of founding member and lead singer Ezra Buchola and Drummer Corey Fogel (who went on to form Gowns) the band has regrouped with a new singer, Jonathan Gray, and has brought a level of egalitarian order to the experimental chaos that once defined them. With all members now singing, writing, and playing the Mae Shi have created a loose-fitting pop structure perfectly suited to their diverse collection of influences.
One of HLLLYH’s greatest strengths is that it is one of those rare albums in this day and age that begs to be heard in its entirety. The disparate musical styles, from the cacophonous attack of “Pwnd” and “Party Politics” to the 8-bit antics of “The Melody” and beyond, are shot through with glitteringly catchy pop hooks that provide a perfect antithesis to the pervasive and borderline apocalyptic lyrical themes that solidify the album’s conceptual unity. The conflicting aesthetics in these two major unifying elements of the album are illustrated in the upbeat delivery on tracks like “Run to Your Graves,” in which they chorus “Don’t bury your body with your diamonds/Because you know they’ll dig up your grave” and “Scream, cry, pray, confess/God will do the rest” to head-bobbing hand-claps synths that will have you alternately rocking out and scratching your head as you ponder their meaning. Ultimately, the juxtaposition of the apocalyptic lyrics with the unabashed catchiness of the music leaves the implications of the blatantly biblical themes tantalizingly open to interpretation throughout the album, and gives the whole project immediate appeal as well as an intriguing consistency.
Frank Tovey: A Retrospective in Sound and Vision
To describe Frank Tovey, aka Fad Gadget, it’s best to start with the things the musical explorer wasn’t. Born in 1956, Tovey began his career in the late-1970s and remained active through the ’90s (passing away suddenly in 2002). Though he kicked around London during the heyday of punk and post-punk, his 10 albums–four as Fad Gadget, six as Tovey–aren’t quite angry or angular enough to fit inside those categories (not neatly, at any rate). More often, he’s presented as a synth-pop pioneer, even as he turned towards folk and trip-hop in his final years. Compared to label mates Depeche Mode and Mute founder Daniel Miller’s The Normal, Tovey is a trickier figure–a trickster, if you will. Some selections may be dark or experimental, but they’re unusually warm for such synthetic creations. They’re not quite gloomy enough for the goth crowd, and not quite slick enough for commercial radio–though signature number “Collapsing New People” deserved to conquer the airwaves. Tovey also collaborated with Non’s Boyd Rice and Wire’s Robert Gotobed and developed a reputation for highly theatrical performances.
Ultimately, his new four-disc compilation, A Retrospective in Sound and Vision, is as accessible as it is eclectic. It’s also a model retrospective in that Mute compiled the set with affection and an unprecedented degree of archival access. On the two CDs, singles mix with demos, side projects, and fan favorites, while the DVDs feature videos, a pair of concerts, and a documentary (the booklet includes liner notes from Marc Almond and photographer/filmmaker Anton Corbijn). By dodging every designation around, Fad Gadget may be difficult to describe, but Frank Tovey’s music has hardly aged a day. Highly recommended.