London
29 May 2006
Drones, reedy and thin, waft out in layers of rolling minimal bliss. They increase dutifully in number and density until the Empire is suffused with them, Alexander Tucker switching pedals and setting up loops of harmonic intensity, nodding like a monk at prayer into his devotional music. The huge bass tone which emanates from his acoustic guitar is a wonder to behold, though from further away than right at the edge of the stage his indistinct vocals are lost somewhere in the shining miasma.
At first, Tucker’s set sounds like it has been made in software, machine shop Blues generated without melody or rhythm: and then they arrive at last, inhabiting the stoned territories mapped out by the likes of Spacemen 3, with flittering moments of Comus-like cod mystical tripout soundtracks for movies yet to be made involving widescreen vistas and lysergic enlightenment. Self-supporting vocal loops slumber over the ebb and flow of distortion and bowed steel swarms which fizz with the murky joy of an electric shaver dealing with some particularly strong weed-grown stubble.
At its best, Tucker’s music would be enjoyed where there is no babble of a bar crowd, requiring as it does complete immersion in the thickness of the drones. When the loops cut out to the simple sound of the acoustic again, the contrast is refreshing, fragrant even, as the songs reveal themselves before slipping away in thele waves as the loops build around the melody again. Meditative and circuitous, Alexander Tucker sets the tone for Boredoms in suitably frazzled style.
Boredoms take the simply-lit stage and seat themselves around three drumkits and a rack or two of electronics. The start equally plainly, with gentle cymbal strokes and organ washes, all conducted by Yamatsuka Eye from a wheezing sussurus of waves breaking on an electonic shore. The three drummers clatter around the fringes of rhythms which trickle, roll and heave with a tidal motion. As the tempo stomps up a few notches, primed with swoops and flutters from Eye’s keyboards, he calls out a primal scream into the gathering flood of drums and bass, wrenching synthetic glides out of his gear which ascend into ecstatic explosion of heightened psychedelic Taiko-inflected drumming.Yelping into his microphone and cavorting into the space formed at the junction of the three kits, Eye is a shamanic presence on stage.
He moulds the music, taking on an atavistic role, leading while being an integral part of the Boredoms whole. When the percussion en masse hits its heights, the interlocking rhythms can be dissected into their Rockist, Jazz and hyperdelic components, all wrapped up into a surprisingly engaging avant-garde whole. It is salutary to notice the number of people who drift, then stride away from the stage – who knows what they were expecting, perhaps the full-tilt freakout bliss of Super Ae, the deranged mania of Soul Discharge – or maybe even the more poppy punkishness of Chocolate Synthesizer and Pop Tatari? Instead, the audience get something even more daring: a supercharged rocketship setting course for the ehart of the drum, a trance mission floating on rhythms not held down by the brutalist domination of the Techno machine, but instead bursting with human-powered energy.
Their excursions into samba, Fourth World electronic stye bring comparisons with (arch-gearheads, admittedly) Juno Reactor in a series of ethnological forgeries in space rock mode as Eye rails and rants once more inside and on top of the drums. At the peaks, and there are many, Boredoms summon a singular vibrancy with analogue synths spark off drumkits battered in unison. How much is composed and how much improvised is debatable, with Eye’s directions setting each new wave on a fresh course, interspersed with wails from Yoshimi or rounds of close-formation percussion from all three.
Is it tribal? Only if that tribe is called Paiste or Zildjian, and sections of the crowd respond appropriately, whirling shirts, boogieing as if possessed and generally dancing their hearts out to the febrile rhythms which set off a call and response which soon builds to an operatic intensity on repetition and counterpointed beats. Winding up into an almost unbearable frenzy of demented polyphonic magnificence, the penultimate section invokes sections of Vison Creation New Sun and is stupefyingly intense.Surely at the point of exhaustion, the finale is as different as can be imagined, with Eye manipulating samples and feedback with the aid of two illuminated controllers, with which he invokes yet further pinnacles of freakishness.
A sudden slammed-brakes coda prefigures yet further spasming reserves of percussive and glossolalial acrobatics as Boredoms let rip into a seemingly eternal groove, dreadlocks flying behind Yamatsuka Eye and the evening comes crashing down to what is without doubt now a shudderingly altered version of reality.
-Richard Fontenoy-
