Label: Very Friendly Format: CD
The Super Roots series is an epic series of compilations containing previously unreleased material from the Boredoms. Previously unreleased in the west, at least. The series is as ever shifting and hard to pin down as the band themselves, which makes Super Roots a good introduction to the crazy noisy creative genius of the Boredoms. There are some absolute gems in the series, which contains a broad spectrum of material from the Boredoms. Rock, dada, noise, tribal percussion, more psychedelia than is good for you, remix CDs, full length albums, and epic CD long monster tracks.
Being new to the Boredoms I made the fatal mistake of asking the question: what do the Boredoms usually sound like? What would be a good reference to judge the Super Roots against? So I immersed myself in Seadrum/House Of Sun, Super Æ, and other albums. I pretty quickly saw that I was wrong. Very wrong. The Boredoms are hard to pigeonhole. Sometimes referred to as Noise Rock or Japanoise, their sound is ever shifting. I didn’t know what to make of the Boredoms at to begin with. I probably won’t be the first or last to say that. It took a little while to get into them. They grew on me slowly, then “GO!!!” and “Cosmic Karaoke” clicked 100% in two huge jolts. It was worth the wait. I got a feel for what they were doing. The brilliance of the Boredoms stood right in front of me. Unique, inventive, flippant, intense then mellow. Always surprising. Fantastic and contrary.
The Boredoms are quirky idiosyncratic, always shifting, always inventing and reinventing themselves. As I’ve said, taken as a whole the Super Roots series is a good introduction to the diversity and quality of the Boredoms. Every CD in the series shows a different direction they move in.
Super Roots #1 – This is absolute chaos. Think Butthole Surfers, Troutmask era Beefheart … or even the Daughters but a whole lot more loose and shambolic. The inane collides head on with the insane. By turns Super Roots #1 is humorous, tongue in cheek, silly and savage. Friendly tunes struggle to fight their way through tortured screams and wails. This album sounds like the end product of demented nihilist dada antimusic that has collapsed into entropy. Easy to see why this material wasn’t published by Warner.
Super Roots #3 – The third album is a totally different dimension to the Boredoms than Super Roots #1. This is where it all started to click with me. “Cosmic Karaoke” is the ultimate intro track. 33 minutes of monolithic manic pulverising powerful riffs. A full on headlong assault. This is essential stuff. The Boredoms are more rock and thrash than … well, rock and thrash.
Super Roots #5 – “GO!!!” is just as epic, and lengthy, as “Cosmic Karaoke”. It begins gently enough: a nice ambient bubble bath of electronic textures that lulls you into a false sense of security then kicks you in the guts. The bubble is burst by Yamatsuka Eye‘s voice screaming GO!!! (and it does require lots of exclamation marks) followed by a huge wall of harsh aggressive electronic noise. It slams home and keeps going and going and going and going with the same insistence and singe mindedness of Super Roots #3. Another absolute classic. Both are indispensable Boredoms numbers.
Super Roots #6 – Before I’d heard the Boredoms people had told me that they could be more Hawkwind than Hawkwind. #6 sees the Boredoms in that frame of mind. Add NEU! and Amon Düül to the food processor … and the Boredoms, of course. That should give you an idea of the resulting psychotic psychedelia. The tracks lurch between being gentle, chaotic, and noisy … occasionally drenched with infinite tunnel phaser guitar. Moments are reminiscent of Seadrum/House Of Sun. The track names are great. They are all numbers, but not the actual track numbers. For instance track 3 is called 5. Confused? Track 6, which is called 9, stands out as a personal favourite. The Boredoms noise and psychedelic trends meet head on – always the best way for a meeting. It begins with a life support machine bleep in front of a wash of electric noise. The beep slowly gets longer and longer transforming into a tremolo synth with a backdrop of lush ambience. This is the kind of electronic transformation that we all dream of. I do, at least. 9 is gorgeous psychedelic electronica. Elsewhere Boredoms are back in the single minded frame of mind. Track 8, called 7 (you get the idea), consists solely of a drum roll. It has the intensity of “Cosmic Karaoke” fused with the increasing love of tribal drumming that the Boredoms have these days.
Super Roots #7 – The Super Roots series varies in length. 7 and 8 are the shortest. Both contain mixes of a single track. #7 contains 3 remixes of 7, appropriately. “7-> (Boriginal)” is by far the longest at 22 minutes. The Boredoms are in a full on motorik mood here. More NEU! than NEU! “7-> (Boriginal)” is very, very space rock, smothered with infinite phaser at points. Monolithic chunks of riff get more and more intense, and more and more insistent, before finally reaching burn out. Another Boredoms epic. The other tracks bathe 7 in the electronic glitches and synthetic bubble bath that the Boredoms do particularly well. “7+ (EY∃ Remix)” ends the CD on a humorous note. A microwave ping followed by someone taking their meal out of the oven.
Super Roots #8 – This CD contains three mixes of “Jungle Taitei”: a great tribal sing along. This is a wall of percussion and vocal layers. Insistent and active, as percussive music tends to be, but definitely one to sit back and relax to.
It would be wrong to think of Super Roots as a collection of off cuts or odds and sods. They are not. The Super Roots series were released in Japan quite a while ago; Super Roots #1 was released in 1993. However, they have only been released in the UK by Very Friendly records now. Warner chose not to release the Super Roots CDs in the West. Knowing this I found myself comparing the series with Seadrum. Perhaps the Boredoms’ are a little more anarchic or nihilistic at points. Or maybe a little less polished. There is always the possibility that these comparisons are just down to hindsight, though. It’s always tempting to think that a big label would favour the less wild, but with that type of thinking the Boredoms would never have been released at all! And Seadrum/House of Sun is a very recent release which would favour its release in the west. Add to this the fact that the Boredoms are hugely prolific. It is almost inevitable that some material would get over looked. Very Friendly have done a great job in redressing the balance.
Sing along. Super Roots!. Yeah! Yeah!
-Alaric-
