BORIS: THE THING WHICH SOLOMON OVERLOOKED 3 (2006)
1) Leviathan; 2) Dimly Tale;
3) No Ones Grieve Part 1; 4) Sola Stone.
Uh.. okay. Once again, I am probably not
qualified to discuss this because I listened to it in MP3 format when you're totally
supposed to consume it on vinyl. Moreover, if you think you're getting away
easily by consuming it on orange vinyl, having laid your hands on one of the exclusive
700 label-distributed copies, think again — there is also an exclusive exclusive light blue vinyl
pressing, of which there were only 300 copies and they were distributed by the
band themselves while on tour. And maybe there's a lock of Wata's hair included
in that one exclusively exclusive exclusive copy that is currently owned by
the luckiest Boris fan in the world, but don't spread the word around too much
or you'll stir up the bounty hunters.
Naturally, the included «music» is Satan's
shite incarnate (or, rather, «immerdate», to be on the safe side of the
linguistic business), but did I even need to tell you that? This is, after all,
the third installation of stuff that
Solomon overlooked, and this time the list of said stuff includes: (a) 17
minutes of bubbly lo-fi guitar/electronic ambience with an eventual droning
crescendo that still sounds unbearably lazy (ʽLeviathanʼ); (b) two and a half minutes
of surprisingly clean, but not very informative bass feedback (ʽDimly Taleʼ);
(c) seven minutes of very dirty,
almost grimy feedback (ʽNo Ones Grieve Part 1ʼ — of course, ʽPart 2ʼ was on
the previous album, because since when were numbers meant to mean exactly what
some stupid Indian jerks assigned to them thousands of years ago?); (d) thirteen
minutes of equally dirty feedback, but this time overwhelmed by almost as many
minutes of mad drumming (ʽSola Stoneʼ) — if this was actually a live jam, poor
Atsuo probably had to collapse at the end (and no, I am not going to express any empathy here, even though I had to
collapse as well).
Anyway, this is all such an apparent toss-off
that I am not even going to compare it to Bardo Pond this time — this stuff
suffers even in comparison to Boris themselves. ʽLeviathanʼ and ʽSola Stoneʼ
probably have some potential, but the dynamics are so trivial that I'm guessing
they probably just concocted them on the spot, when in reality this kind of music
requires very careful and meticulous planning (think post-Barrett, pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd, for instance). But
yeah, by all means, feel free to join the exciting hunt for blue vinyl — if
this is Wata's way of telling you that this is art, what choice remains to us
other than kowtow and acknowledge? It's not as if my thumbs down is going to get
Japan thrown out of the League of Nations again, anyway.
All three of the Solomon albums were released on CD in a box set a few years ago, with a brand-new fourth one included as a bonus.
ReplyDeleteJust looking at your tags and I'm struck that these guys have twice the discography of Boston. Then again, given Scholz's septennial release schedule, I'm not surprised. Could you imagine if he produced Boris' albums? GAAAH!!!
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