Boredoms: Super Roots 9 (Thrill Jockey)

by planbmag on Tue, 2008/11/25 - 5:04pm Post to Twitter

The Super Roots series of EPs, spanning 15 years of Boredoms’ history, is usually accepted as being the best introduction to the various guises the band have taken. From the skronky exhibitionism of their early work, through their mid-period acid rock, to the lush soundscapes they currently inhabit, Super Roots marks out the various territories Boredoms have traversed. This eighth release in that series captures a performance on Christmas Eve 2004 which saw the band joined by a live 20-piece plainsong choir, performing a single, 40-minute piece. Of the EPs so far, this is the most generous yet: a gorgeous offering both musically and as an artefact, with a bound booklet of the score and suitably psychedelic artwork by eYe himself, all wrapped under the tree and heralded by reindeer. Hoofbeats clop. Sleigh bells ring. Are you listening?

It’s been argued that to read the Super Roots EPs as a progression is to denigrate the band’s previous incarnations and impose a false sense of evolution, and it’s true that Boredoms’ early work stands up independently; but there is such movement in their current sound, such a sense of propulsion, that some notion of momentum cannot but suggest itself. This recording, however, works carefully to subvert expectations of forward motion. It begins by ending: the choir introduces itself with a major arpeggio over two octaves, repeating and extending until, urged ever faster by cymbal crashes, it becomes an exaggerated concerto finale, almost a musical joke. It’s not until the choir has thoroughly bidden a farewell that eYe swirls in sythesisers and shouts a demented greeting in response, and Yoshimi, Yojiro and Muneomi start the unstable tattoo, so far removed from the steady motorik of Super Roots 7, that signals the beginning of the first movement proper. The effect is of being folded back into the tonal heart of the chorale; of moving backwards or towards a centre, rather than outward into space.

To match this false beginning, there’s also a false ending, 27 minutes in. With explosions, phased reverb and shouted encouragement from eYe, as the choir moves ever further up the scale, the drums begin to pass a pattern around their circle in a manner suggestive of imminent climax; the synths referencing the language of classical finale, and the piece shudders to a temporary halt. It fools the crowd, in any case, until their shouts are interrupted by the resumption of the drums’ central, deconstructed theme, this time in half-time, following eYe’s delayed synth into the full-on freakout that dominates the last movement.

Super Roots 9, then, is far too careful and referential to fit easily into the critical expectation of FAR OUT SPACE RACE. This is not the Sun Ship that John Coltrane conjectured in 1965. Nor does it ape Steve Reich or Jon Gibson it’s just too abundant, although it owes its repetition and variation, its manipulation of classical motifs, to the minimalist tradition. Rather, Super Roots 9 maintains a sense of ecstatic celebration. The plainsong here suggests a pastoral rather than ecclesiastical worship, a celebration of all things, everywhere at once; the celestial made personal, the affirmative beaten out of a thousand hearts.