This is the latest installment of the Super Roots series from Osaka, Japan's Boredoms. Super Roots 9 (finally released domestically) features a single 40-minute live recording from Christmas Eve in Japan, 2004. The CD comes in a gatefold format with a 40-page booklet containing artwork, music scores and notations.
This release is more in line with the band’s recent releases like Vision Creation Newsun than with their previous noise recordings. The impression it leaves you with is how dynamic, technical and forward-moving Boredoms are. A few choice words easily describe Super Roots 9: grand, searing and bombastic.
The track starts out with a 20-piece choir singing amidst shimmering, blissed-out, sun-filled noise. All the while, a variety of samples are thrown in to keep things interesting. The track builds into a rhythmic plateau that takes the song to a whole new level of shiny bliss-dom. Here and there, sounds of the cheering crowd are slipped in, reminding you that this is a live recording.
If you only know Boredoms from the first part of their 20-year existence doing experimental spazzy noise rock, but want to hear where they are now, give Super Roots 9 a listen and see what you’ve been missing for the past 5 years. Boredoms are truly a prolific, ever-expanding band that pushes all boundaries of all genres of music. Super Roots 9 proves that.
Super Roots 9 is out now on Thrill Jockey.
