The Boredoms

PLUS



EQUALS

CHOASMAGICLIGHTCONTROLSPHERES

Just writing to let “you” know about a show I went to last week that was one of the top five live music shows I've ever seen. The Boredoms. Or, apparently “V∞redoms” is what they go by now. I didn't show up until 10 or so, so I didn't see any opening acts or anything before them but I was early enough to stand around amidst the mounting tension and chirping noises for a good 20 minutes beforehand, which added a certain power to the beginning of the show. On stage were three full drum sets and a pile of electronics in one corner. Some people were wandering around the stage adjusting microphones and twisting knobs that may or may not have been adjusting the skittering, stereo-panning, ambient sounds.

After a while, the lights go out and a man appears at the very front of the stage with a glowing sphere the size of a softball in each hand. The events of the proceeding 15 minutes are a bit of a blur for me, but it was soon clear that each of the spheres was controlling lights as well as a separate sound source (most likely through MAX/MSP, I would imagine), one was bell-like and the other was white-noise-like. Also clear was that they each had accelerometers and other sensors in them because the pitch, volume, gating, filtering, and various other audio effects (as well as light fades and strobes) were being controlled by how fast, in which direction and on what axis the spheres were being manipulated. Then he started howling like he was from another planet and had a very, very important message.

My friend Ethan called the singer (Yamataka Eye) a "Chaos Magician" in an only partly joking, awe-struck, D & D playing, 7th grader's voice. I feel the same. It was by far the most visually stimulating music performance I've ever seen. Butoh, anyone? He was riveting on stage as he thrashed and spun and teetered and twitched. I had, just prior to the show, gone around the block to "find a windy doorway" if you know what I mean, so that may have contributed to the degree to which my mind was blown, but regardless, the Glowing Spheres of Yamataka were quite a spectacle in any state... which reminds me, while I was in line, right before I actually showed the guy my ticket, who should walk up but a small, delicate Japanese man with raunchy dreadlocks, saying, in a timid, if urgent, voice (almost a stage whisper) "I am band... I am band..." in order to be allowed to enter the venue. True that.
True. That.

After the initial implosion, the drummers entered one by one with an intricate combination of wild improvisations and dizzyingly interlocked compositions. There were endless buildups, instantaneous drop-offs, Reich-ian phases back and forth between incomprehensible garble, stomping funk beats, weird elliptical time signatures, and the occasional rock interlude. All of which was variously complemented, subverted and overwhelmed by Y. Eye's playing his synthesizers and processing his voice and the drums through unknown electronics. One of drummers, Yoshimi (she who played on the most recent Flaming Lips album), also sang a little and added some electronic textures, including powerful, more-felt-than-heard sub-bass eruptions, from the Korg BPX-3 and PK-13. I don't really have a sense of how long the songs were, but they didn’t play very many, and it was not a short concert.

Somehow it seems relevant that the only other time I have seen the Boredoms play live was during Lollapalooza in 1994, at age 18, the day after suffering a concussion. I can only say I wasn't ready for them yet. And they were wearing goggles. Also worth mentioning was the fellow standing to my right, who was wearing a Rastafarian hat and yelling "Eye-Jah" every song or two. It seems Eye ("I"?) is carrying the torch for some people's religious convictions. There are rumors of sun worshipping (note the presence of the word “Sun” in the titles of their last two albums) and it’s pretty much impossible to avoid the words “primal,” “tribal,” and “psychedelic” when reading reviews of their albums.

I was really struck by how present they were and how completely and in some ways simply they occupied the space. They played in a circle and with no curtains anywhere (either before or after they entered the stage), just a brick wall behind them. They were very informal, also, entering and leaving the space and preparing it beforehand. They seemed not to be “putting on a show” (not to say it wasn’t spectacular) so much as giving us their hard-won performance practice. They were showing us this thing they’ve been working on, but in a humble way, not trying to impress. The most impressive kind of performance artist.