Japan's legendary lunatics of sound Boredom's have a bit of a misleading reputation in America. Due to their association with Merzbow and the praise heaped upon them by noise rockers Thurston Moore and Justin Broadrick, music fans seem to want to peg them into the harsh noise/power electronics category.
The reality is that Boredoms come as much from A Saucerful of Secrets as they do Metal Machine Music. Besides their early Boretronix releases, Boredom's releases fall firmly into the avant-rock category, with much of their music being extremely distorted ppsychedelicand kraut-rock.
Their fourth album, Chocolate Synthesizer, released in 1994 in Japan and 2004 in America, is a perfect example of Boredom's ability to transcend genre without falling into free-form territory. It bounces among psychedelic rock, minimalist drum and bass, chanting, punk, powerviolence, kraut-rock, and synthpop with little regard for any kind of formality.
With that said, miraculously, Boredom's manage to always come back around, no-matter how much they stray into freakout jams, to the poppy psychedelic rock that make up the core of their music. This quality ads to Chocolate Synthesizer's woozy, bizarre sound.
The song Voredoms is a good example of this. Over its six minutes, it blasts through MC5-esque fuzzrock, walls of noise, groovy, ritualistic funk, gypsy-folk, minimalist prepared guitar, and krautrock, before looping back in on itself. Surprisingly, it works brilliantly.
Turn Table Boredoms is another highlight, a dirt-rock jam that sounds like Yoko Ono fronting the 13th floor elevators.
Vocals, provided by Yamantaka Eye, are nothing short of bizarre. They flit between grunts, gurgles, shouts, yelps, and, in occasion, clean singing. Oftentimes they are so buried under layers of tape delay that they're barely audible at all.
Perhaps the most interesting quality of this album is its childishness. Now, I don't mean this as a bad thing. Childishness is joyous. Childlessness is experimentation. It's childishness that makes it's genre-experimentation work. Professional musicians, Miles Davis or Hendrix types, wouldn't have been able to make this music.
The album, originally very difficult to find, was reissued last year on 1972. Unfortunately, the label has since shut down.
Listen to it below. If you can find it, buy it. It's well worth it.
Cool review.
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