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Boredoms + Michael Gira @ The Lemon Tree, 24th October


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The Lemon Tree & interesting music promotions present:

BOREDOMS + MICHAEL GIRA

Wednesday 24th October 2007

The Lemon Tree, 5 West North Street, Aberdeen AB24 5AT. Phone (01224) 642230

Doors 8pm | Entry 15.50 | 10 Lemon Tree Concessions & Regulars

http://www.lemontree.org/music-boredoms.html

http://www.myspace.com/interestingmusic

BOREDOMS

Celebrating their 20th anniversary, the legendary Japanese avant-garde rock band Boredoms bring a visceral live experience to Aberdeen for the first time and Scotland for only the second. Comprised of three drummers and a keyboard-playing turntables-mashing vocalist, they have wowed audiences the world around for the best part of two decades, playing to sell-out crowds, garnering much critical acclaim and becoming firm favourites of Nirvana and Sonic Youth as well as performing regularly at the All Tomorrow's Parties festivals.

Boredoms' experiments in post-rock, kraut-rock and space-rock have led to them to being called "the most out-there band in the world", with their record Super Ae described as one of the best albums of the 90s by Pitchforkmedia.com. However, their live performances are where they truly shine - bringing their beautiful, melodic, sometimes tribal music to life on stage, with an absolutely unparalleled live show. Aberdeen, meet Osaka.

http://www.myspace.com/boredoms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boredoms

MICHAEL GIRA

Also on this superb double bill is Michael Gira - owner of Young God Records which spawned Devendra Banhart amongst many other luminaries. Michael also founded the influential Swans. Now armed with a sombre voice and an acoustic guitar, he makes bare and direct folk-tinged, song-based but still crucial music.

Recently performed an utterly thrilling acoustic set (The Independent) at Indian Summer. Not to be missed. Seriously

http://www.younggodrecords.com

http://www.swans.pair.com

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  • 2 weeks later...

from pitchfork...

There seems to be loads of excitement brewing over this weekend's 77-drum circle put on by the Boredoms at Brooklyn Bridge Park (going down 07/07/07, naturally). Is it the numeric synergy? A show of support for Japan's premier noise-rockers? Either way, expect the opposite of boredom at what's being billed as 77BOADRUM.

Sure, Boredoms could've chosen any djembe-dragging Joe off the street to fill in their 74 vacant spots (we presume the other three-- and the mysterious "0" spot-- are going to Boredoms members). But no; they had to get members and friends of Modest Mouse, Lightning Bolt, Man Man, Gang Gang Dance, Soft Circle, Oneida, Excepter, Aa, Blood on the Wall, Pit Er Pat, Unwound, Enon, Arbouretum, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Sightings, White Magic, No Neck Blues Band, Panthers, Celebration, Negative Approach, Tall Firs, and others, turning this into a veritable Traveling Wilburys of avant-garde percussion.

Something tells me, despite the 76 other maniacs pounding around him, Andrew W.K. will come through loud and clear. From note one. Something also tells me an enterprising production company could turn this into one of the cooler live albums/DVDs we'll see in a while.

In other Boredoms news, they've got quite a few regular tour dates after the drum thing. Scope those and the complete enumerated list of drummers below.

Drum leaders:

01 Hisham Bharoocha (Soft Circle / Pixeltan)

02 Tim Dewit (Gang Gang Dance)

03 Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt)

04 Dave Nuss (No Neck Blues Band / Under Satans Sun)

05 Jaiko Suzuki (Electro Putas)

06 Jesse Lee (White Magic)

07 Ryan Sawyer (Tall Firs / Stars Like Fleas)

08 Kid Millions (Oneida)

09 Andy McLeod (Howling Hex / Modest Mouse)

10 Aaron Moore

11 Robin Easton

Other drummers:

12 Sara Lund (Unwound)

13 Jim Black

14 Andrew W.K.

15 Butchy Fuego (Pit Er Pat)

16 Miggie (Blood on the Wall)

17 Brian Tamborello (Psychic Ills)

18 Andee Connors (A Minor Forest / Lumen)

19 John Moloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man)

20 Taylor Richardson (Sunburned Hand of the Man)

21 Chris Millstein

22 Abby Portner (First Nation)

23 Aviram Cohen (Soiled Mattress and the Springs)

24 Allison Busch (Awesome Color)

25 Warren Huegel (Tussle)

26 Nathan Corbin (Excepter)

27 Clare Amory

28 Jonathan Lockie (Sightings)

29 Josh Bonati (Aa)

30 Nadav Havusha (Aa)

31 Aron Wahl (Aa)

32 Jeffrey Salane (Panthers)

33 Jim Sykes

34 David Aron (Koi Pond)

35 Michael Catano

36 Spencer Herbst (Matta Lama)

37 Jim Siegel (Cul De Sac and Damo Suzuki)

38 Mike Pride (MDC, FUSHITSUSHA, John Zorn, Otomo Yoshihide)

39 Nick DeCarmine

40 Marianne Kozlowski (The Punks)

41 Than Luu (M. Ward)

42 Dave Bergander (Celebration)

43 Michael Evans (God Is My Co-Pilot)

44 Andrya Ambro

45 Justin DeRosa

46 Hart Mingus (Negative Approach)

47 Matthias Schulz (Enon / Holy Fuck)

48 Josh Madell (Antietam, Other Music)

49 Matt (No Neck Blues Band)

50 Jim Abramson (Dymaxion)

51 Oran Canfield (Child Abuse)

52 Adriana Magaa (Crash Worship)

53 Keith Connolly (No Neck Blues Band)

54 Travis Harrison

55 Jared Barron

56 Jason Kourkounis (Delta 72 / Hot Snakes)

57 Eric Cohen (Caroliner)

58 Daniel Franz (Arbouretum)

59 Christopher Brokaw (Codeine)

60 Jared Burak (Wet Cement)

61 Christopher Powell (Icy Demons / Man Man)

62 Sadie Laska (I.U.D.)

63 Pete Vogl (Koi Pond)

64 Barbara Schauwecker

65 AJ Edminson (Favourite Sons)

66 David Grubbs

67 John McSwain (VICE)

68 Dave Abramson (Climax Golden Twins)

69 Alan Licht

70 Rick Prior

71 Kayrock

72 Dave LeBleu (Prefuse 73 / Mercury Program)

73 Lizzy Bougatsos (Gang Gang Dance)

74 Alianna Kalaba (We Ragazzi)

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Review In Today's Guardian...

A timely tribute in Brooklyn | Rock | Guardian Unlimited Music

A timely tribute in Brooklyn

Andrew Purcell

Friday July 13, 2007

The Guardian

It was seven o'clock, on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year, and the announcer sounded rattled: "Drummers 47 and 48, where are you? Drummers, we need you to get out of the queue for the pissers. Now."

Live Earth was not the only show in New York last Saturday. The Japanese experimental rock band Boredoms threw a party in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, a party featuring a performance by a who's who of the US rock underground - but only their drummers. There were no sermons, no tickets and no need to worry about the carbon footprint of the 77 drum kits arranged in a spiral. "The 77 drum group is one giant instrument, one living creature," declared the band's leader, Yamataka Eye. "The 77 boa-drum will coil like a snake and transform to become a great dragon."

On a perfect summer evening, it seemed like all of lower Manhattan wanted in. Around 4,000 people filled Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park and hundreds more crowded the bridge or perched on the banks of the East River. Boredoms have had a profound influence on the American art-punk underground, and working with Sonic Youth, the Beastie Boys and Nirvana has lent them an unlikely crossover appeal, but no one expected this: a frustrated queue of skinny jeans, tank tops and tattoos stretching half a mile down the waterfront.

Hisham Bharoocha was the event's musical director. "It always amazes me that Boredoms have such a big following, as an incredibly avant-garde band," he said, "but the new music that they're doing is a lot more friendly to the ear."

When he posted on a message board, asking for volunteers, more than 3,000 drummers replied. "Some people were so intensely excited that I just had to let them do it. It wasn't about who you know or which bands you've played in or how amazing you are at technical stuff. It was all about having the same relationship with ideas that the Boredoms have, and about being able to take part in a big project without having an ego."

John Moloney, of the freak-folk band Sunburned Hand of the Man, was one of 15 drum leaders charged with keeping his section in time and alert to rhythm changes. He said: "I'm a huge Boredoms fan, so I told them 'I will drink rat blood to do this thing,' and in a very gracious gesture on their part, they put me in." Moloney had been drinking free Sapporo all afternoon.

The performance began with a swarm of cymbals, like livid bees flying closer and closer, as drummers joined in one by one around the spiral. When the toms thumped, Eye began to howl, approaching the microphone from below with his head tilted back, like a dog. He summoned the whine of a cargo plane from his synthesiser and struck seven guitar necks tuned to different chords. Facing him on the riser, Yoshimi P-We, his long-term partner in noise (and the inspiration for the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots), was uncharacteristically silent, smiling as she pounded out the beat.

A few minutes into the collective trance, Eye raised a silver trident in the air and the drummers attacked their kits like heavy-metal soloists. The D train rolled silently past over Manhattan bridge, its familiar rumble drowned out by the hammering snares. A committed group of ravers by the water's edge bounced up and down, hands in the air, urged on by a woman on stilts wearing a gold jumpsuit. The five-year-old Japanese girl to my right grimaced and pulled on her Hello Kitty earmuffs.

The battery lasted almost two hours, and towards the end, many people drifted away to continue their Saturday night elsewhere. The sun dipped behind the downtown skyline, and a few wispy pink clouds reflected what little light was left. It felt like a fitting celebration of the Japanese festival of Tanabata, when two stars align across the Milky Way. "When this is over, please hug a drummer," came the announcement, and finally, the dragon slept.

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Guest Phantomsmasher

The mp3 of 77boardrums is amazing, even though it was an ameteur recording, it's pretty much as good as a professional take. Makes me all the more jelous for anyone who actualy attended the event.

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bump up to confirm Michael Gira... :up:

MICHAEL GIRA

Also on this superb double bill is Michael Gira - owner of Young God Records which spawned Devendra Banhart amongst many other luminaries. Michael also founded the influential Swans. Now armed with a sombre voice and an acoustic guitar, he makes bare and direct folk-tinged, song-based but still crucial music.

Recently performed an utterly thrilling acoustic set (The Independent) at Indian Summer. Not to be missed. Seriously

http://www.younggodrecords.com

http://www.swans.pair.com

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  • 5 weeks later...
its going to be magnificent, majestic & magical :rockon:

hell yeah! :gringo:

pitchfork review of the latest Michael Gira 'Angels of Light' album...

Angels of Light

We Are Him

[Young God; 2007]

Rating: 8.0

A year ago, writing for Perfect Sound Forever, Brian Hell buried himself in a series of questions about lyrics with Michael Gira. The Angels of Light Sing "Other People"-- the fifth album from Gira's prime project since Swans' end in 1997-- had just been released. The most telling question and answer refer to "Simon Is Stronger Than Us", a playful song with Akron/Family, then Gira's backing band, teasing his broad baritone with yelps for harmonies. Hell inquired if the line "And Francis did that, too, though Francis drawed London and made no excuse" was a reference to Irish painter Francis Bacon: "Well yes, I am referring to Francis Bacon there, very astute of you," the singer replied.

Of course Gira would reference Bacon, call him by name even: Articulating with screams, something Bacon specialized in while painting, has been paramount to Gira's aesthetic for a quarter century now. On We Are Him-- his sixth and arguably most engaging album as Angels of Light-- he lands some of the best of those complete releases. Gira seems more empowered and commanding than he has in a decade, the emotions he's conveying coming in huge fits that, like Bacon's, are as powerful as they are draining. He's backed by one of the most impressive guest lists of the year (Akron/Family providing the basic tracks, plus new friends or longtime collaborators Larkin Grimm, David Garland, and Bill Rieflin), but one must understand that this is Gira's album. He lets it all out and wastes little time: Four seconds into the colossal opening track, "Black River Song", for instance, a thick electric bass knock pumps against every heavy drum hit and compacted guitar sinew: "Black river runs/ beneath this ground/ Black river flows forever/ But he makes no sound." The chorus-- some variation of the series, "Fading, growing, breathing, flowing," sung by Gira and female voices-- is sinister, challenging and almost sexy.

A track later, a rocking-chair rhythm moans beneath Gira's snarl. He's rarely sounded this foreboding: Prodded by a scathing, raw violin drone and a daring chorus of sirens, it's an escalating dirge for the collapse of society, full of floods, blood and mouths too stupid to scream. Beneath an electric guitar twitter, heavy drums and furious strings on "My Brother's Man", Gira hands down these imprecations: "I walk through the thick black mud. I walk with my brother's blood. I see with my brother's eye. I scream at my brother's sky." Swans, anyone?

But this record isn't so simple. "My Brother's Man" notes that the brother is capable of murder and so is Gira. But it embraces the relationship, vowing to crush god "in my fucking hand" for the sake of fraternal legacy. It's protective, triumphant. The subsequent "This Is Not Here"-- a dark duet with Gira's wife, Siobhan Duffy-- offers the lovers choices and endings: Will the world steal the sun, or will the lovers touch the light? "Will you dream that we breathe?" It's not about anger or fatalism. In 1984, Gira screamed about burning and eating hearts on "Raping a Slave"; in 1995, he sang about supplication to God while witnessing the fragility of the world during "Our Love Lies". We Are Him is a near-perfect, totally committed summation hammering at the same unresolved archetypes from someone who's now a father.

That's not to say that this album is without its share of misses, or at least the occasional artistic anomie that has, by now, become a requisite of Gira's work. Those songs aren't better left unsung: "Goodbye Mary Lou" has a purpose, its rhythm an uneasy country twitter that leaves Gira little room to do much but say exactly what he's feeling. The first verse ends "Mary Lou, I renounce you"; the second, "Mary Lou, fuck you"; and in closing, the indiscretions of young anger that have been boiling for a lifetime come crashing down with a wink: "Oh Mary Lou, I forgive you."

We Are Him is ultimately about getting by, about trying to survive with a family and a faith at a time when "the dogs...howl as the street fills with blood." Gira, at 53, continues to evolve, to challenge himself, to question his beliefs. As long as he does that, every song won't roar like the perfect first two tracks of We Are Him or have the brilliant gospel insistence of the title track. The slight, charming chamber pop he tries won't always work as it does on "Sunflower's Here to Stay", a song that pushes for persistence. Luckily, doing otherwise has never been an option for Gira.

And as a taster, download 'Black River Song' HERE

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