Boris: The Thing Which Solomon Overlooked 3

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.