Ten years ago it would have been ridiculous to use the word "formula" when talking about the music of Osaka's Boredoms. In 1999, they were riding a wave of creativity the likes of which most bands can only dream about. In the year prior they'd released both Super Roots 7, which on better days sounds like the final word on the visceral power of rock'n'roll repetition, and Super Ae, on which they revealed themselves as masters of playful trance-inducing psychedelia with spiritual underpinnings. And they were about to put out Vision Creation Newsun, boasting a gentler but no less immediate vision that seemed, especially after Yamantaka Eye's Rebore Vol. 0 re-working a bit later, to suggest that the musical possibilities in the decade to follow would be endless. All of this came after 10 previous years of painful noise, bad punk, hilarious song titles, pointless screams, and occasionally unmatched rock power. You couldn't pin this band down.
But in the decade since Vision Creation Newsun, Boredoms have interrupted long periods of quiet with absurdly grand gestures (the 77 Boadrum and 88 Boadrum events) and a couple of records that referenced or expanded upon past glories but never came close to matching them. Seadrum/House of Sun, from 2005, had two 20-minute-plus tracks that were not nearly as beautiful as the advance word made them sound, even if they managed to summon inspiring amounts of energy. (We heard talk of Eye leading his percussion-toting followers to the edge of the sea to record, conjuring images of the greatest drum-circle jams since the twilight of the Pleistocene.) And then 2007's Super Roots 9 was a 40-minute monster for drummers and pitch-shifted choir that took one thing the Boredoms did well-- gradual builds to ecstatic climaxes-- and let it play out forever. Tracks going on for far too long filled with ideas that were beaten into the ground 10 times over has always been part of the band's M.O. But when releases are so rare, they don't serve the same prankster function that they once did. Now it kind of sounds more like the Boredoms doing that one thing the Boredoms do. Again.
Which, if you happen to freaking love that one thing, isn't so terrible. A new Boredoms release is still an event, even if you no longer feel the need to rush out and tell all your friends about it. Super Roots 10 snuck up on people when it appeared for sale on a website in Japan earlier this year (by which time it was already sold out-- I'm reviewing this from downloaded mp3s). It is, with one huge exception I'll get to in a second, just the Boredoms being their post-VCN drum-happy, DayGlo-streaked, build-up-and-breakdown selves. After a short intro of bassy static, we hear a track called "Ant 10", which exists in a nine and a half-minute original mix and is then spun off into four different remixes that mostly flow one into the next. So it turns out to be essentially another 40+-minute track. The main features of the original version are layered tribal drums, an analog synth out of early-70s Tangerine Dream running scales, and Eye, sounding as joyful as ever, singing/shouting /chanting "Ah-u!" and "Hey!!!" and layering his voice in all sorts of fun ways. Toward the end there's some tape manipulation and huge cymbal-rushes, and then everything breaks down to silence, leading into "Estero 10", a remix by Japanese producer Altz.
The Altz remixes (another of his called "Mineral Dub Break" closes) and a remix by someone called DJ Finger Hat (my guess is it's Eye, which would be pseudonym number 1,328) offer an expected range of theme and variations-- drums get a bit housey, voices are extended into drones, Yoshimi's voice is added and layered to sound a little like an interlude from Einstein on the Beach, a guitar pattern is chopped into tiny pieces and sequenced. Even though it's now become so familiar and-- hate to say it-- formulaic, this stuff still has the capacity to thrill.
The huge exception to the Boredoms-by-numbers feel is the almost 11-minute mix of "Ant 10" by Lindstrøm. The Norwegian producer essentially takes his space disco approach and toughens it up considerably to meet the forward-leaning aggression of Boredoms. Heavy drums find their way to a 4/4 beat augmented by all manner of percussion fills, a Moog sounds for a moment like it's playing the intro to the title theme from Grease, a rubbery funk bassline for the ages folds in, and "Superstition"-style Clavinet starts bouncing around. There are a million things going on, but it still grooves. Long-time Pitchfork contributor Dominique Leone, who reviewed the last couple of Boredoms releases here and released material last year on Lindstrøm's Feedelity imprint, even drops by, adding some "Bow bow bow" vocals at the precise moment they're needed. Even if Lindstrøm's remix is 90% Lindstrøm's and 10% Boredoms, the change-up is hugely welcome. It's like all of a sudden Boredoms find themselves in the middle of a crazy party, where someone left the front door open and you've no idea who is going to wander in next. Time was when all Boredoms get-togethers felt that way.
