|
 Feel
the Japanoise
By
Josh Potter
The
Boredoms
Super
Roots 9 (Thrill Jockey)
It
can be exciting to watch a pop ular band turn their collective
back on the musical establishment to drift, risking disdain
and obscurity, into the realm of abstract experimentalism.
More interesting, though, is to see a band crawl from the
primordial soup, swallow it down, and evolve into manic greatness.
Birthed by a dada-slinging ’80s noise-scene in Osaka, Japan,
and reared by American grunge-rock, the Boredoms are the kind
of band who can get away with pretty much anything. However,
having already traded no-wave nihilism for Kraut-rocking sun-worship,
we might have seen this one coming. (The band did play
a 7/7/2007 Brooklyn show with 77 drummers, after all.) On
“LIVWE!!,” SR9’s sole 40-minute track, the trio’s three-set
tribal drumming is wrapped in a 24-piece choir that swells
and modulates over the meticulous score, inspired by minimalist
composer Jon Gibson. Augmented by swirling turntables and
a reaching sense of climax, this stuff probably is best left
untitled, but it sure sounds the way cellular division must
first have felt.
 |
 Hadouken!
Music
for an Accelerated Culture (Atlantic)
Meaning “surge fist” in Japanese, and a reference to a special
fireball move in the Street Fighter 2 arcade game, Hadouken!
also is the moniker of a group of rowdy young grimey dance-punks
from Leeds, England. There is really only one thing you need
to know about Hadouken!: They like to party. Their style—highly
influenced by grime, a style of two-step breakbeat techno
that runs at more than 135 beats per minute and uses video-game-style
keyboard sounds—is punctuated by their snarling, half-Johnny
Rotten, half-soccer-hooligan-on-ecstasy vocals. This is Atari
Teenage Riot for kids who are less interested in nihilism
and revolution and more interested in, well, banging, drinking
and doing drugs—or as they put it so eloquently in their song
“Liquid Lives,” “I wanna drink drink drink smoke fuck fight/I
wanna shout, drink, scream, I wanna die!/I wanna be arrested/I
wanna be molested/and my head’s in pain, next weekend let’s
do it again!” Hadouken! aren’t against destroying 2000 years
of human culture; they just want to make sure they have a
good time doing it.
NME
described the band’s first single “That Boy, That Girl” as
“a savage, snarling work of genius,” and although the boys
in the band don’t ever really let on their smarts, it had
to take someone with brains to dare to be as big and dumb
as Hadouken! allow their smash-mouth techno to be. Sometimes
they get sensitive and Justin Timberlake it; other times they
get thoughtful and talk about the man holding them down with
their high-interest credit cards. The best moments come on
songs like “Get Smashed Gate Crash” where the band are thinking
and singing about nothing: “Let’s get this party started/And
rip the place apart/Cut the brakes, text your mates/Let’s
tear this house apart!” Sounding something like a roid-rage
Happy Mondays, Hadouken! have likely made Tony Wilson smile
in his grave.
—David
King
Nisennenmondai
Neji/Tori
(Smalltown Supersound)
Noise, like jazz, is a self-renewing genre. Not only is the
idiom’s vocabulary virtually infinite, but it also tends to
be an equal-opportunity employer. It shouldn’t surprise you,
then, after listening to the band’s dual EPs (compiled here
on one disc), that Nisennenmondai—named after the Japanese
term for the Y2K bug—consist of three slight women. There’s
nothing cute about the fuzzy, postpunk, garage vamps the band
dispense. They’ve already won the admiration of Lightning
Bolt, Hella, and Battles with nary a Hello Kitty. Simple,
metallic guitar motifs circle, like a child repeating a new
word, until they shed all representational meaning for a swelling
sense of sound. Far from a swarming or droning regard for
noise, everything about Neji/Tori is cyclical and deliberate.
If visceral music can also be subliminal, then here it is.
It will seep through your ears and scour the auditory cortex
directly.
—Josh
Potter
Icy
Demons
Miami
Ice (Ice Cream Demons)
There’s nothing noisy or remotely Japanese about Icy Demons,
but six degrees of separation in the international DIY music
world is enough to link the Chicago/Philadelphia band to Japanese
brethren by way of Prefuse 73. (Bassist Josh Abrams guests
here on a number of tracks.) Drawing on the better part of
Man Man, “Miami Ice” is a neon, macramé vacation of Midwest
whimsy to warmer climates. With vintage keyboards, delicate
percussion, and Tortoise’s Jeff Parker on guitar, the band
sound at turns like Talking Heads, Chromeo, and a more soulful
Devo. Panning synthesizers splash plastic gemstones across
8-bit live-tronic beats so tight you’d swear this was the
work of one producer, not some post-rock, tropicali band.
There’s a shirtless dance-party in there; it just happens
to be in celebration of the Wild West, time travel, and alien
paranoia.
—Josh
Potter
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