May 26, 2008

It's A Box Social!!!

The Whale has found a friend in the ocean. His name is The Electric Eel. He will help the Whale and contribute to his blog!!!! His first act is this Boris Live review (I post it because he hasn't got an account yet).

The Thing Which I Overlooked The Past Years

AKA

The wonderfull build-up of events before, on and after the 20th of may.


I’m proud to announce that I can say that Boris HEAVY ROCKS. This last week was amazing and will never be forgotten ( well at least I won’t). I have to say it all went by so fast. Last month I started looking up things about Boris, a band that the Whale said, kicked ass. And as I promised him to go along to the next show, mostly because I was the only one with a driver’s licence, I thought that I didn’t want to go there half-cocked. So after a few songs, I thought I knew what I could expect from Boris. I expected it to be very very good. I expected it to be one of the best shows I would have ever seen. But I never expected it to be …. Awesomeness on a stick !

The actual review of the show:

First things first, the first show of the evening : Growing

A duo from Brooklyn, New York that, and this is how it is described on wikipedia, brings a sort of drone / ambient music. Well I have to say, they didn't. I never leave shows even if I don’t really like it. I only leave shows when I’m forced to listen to repetitive techno-like beats, with effects just thrown in there at irregular intervals. At some point, when the repetitive beat continued, the other part of the duo, the one in charge of pressing random buttons, wasn’t able to hold the same rythm of stroking his guitar. Which caused the whole part to fall down in a puddle of it’s own musical diarrhoea. So I left the show, hoping that I wouldn’t become insane, and I saw I wasn’t the only one. I could make a list of things I like more then Growing, but I don’t think that list would ever end…


And now to the main event : Boris

Allthough I think they sucked, I’m still happy that growing did the warming up, because everything could follow that and sound good, and when you take a band like Boris , you get great.

This Japanese trio is known for jumping between different genres, every now and then. These are some :stoner-, doom-, sludgemetal, experimental, noise…
They were also accompanied by Michio Kurihara (ex-White Heaven/GHOST ).

Well this was new to me , never saw Boris live, and now the moment had finally come.

Tracklist:

1. Sun Flower Rain

2. BUZZ-IN

3. Laser Beam

4. Pink

5. Statement

6. Floor Shaker

7. My Neighbor Satan

8. Rainbow

9. Ka re ha te ta sa ki - No one's grieve

10. You Put Up Your Umbrella

11. [ ]

(You wonder why I didn’t include a setlist from Growing. Well that’s easy, because I didn’t know what they were doing and they probably didn’t have any setlist.)

From the moment the first note that rung through the speakers reached my unprepared ears, I just knew this was a well spent 12 euro’s. My first impression was a a rythmic wall of sound. While I knew this was bad for my ears , which other people in the audience seemed to know ( they were wearing earplugs), I was already looking forward to the next day when people would have to yell at me ‘till I can hear them.

The show was as themselves , everchanging. From faster rock songs to slower drone and sludge metal. And while Atsuo pounded the drums, Takeshi linked one heavy drone-chord after the other and Michio Kurihara provided the psychedelic riffs, Wata unleashed loud, high-toned solo’s which you would never expect when you see her standing on the stage. Allthough the big stack of Orange amps was a small clue.

And the amazing combo went on. And I can tell you, if my ears could cry, they would’ve. The rest of the songs raced me to different states of mind. From downright feeling stoned to energetic to respect for the amazing contributions from Michio Kurihara to an already amazing trio. I could go on and on, but it’s time to finish.


Verdict : Awesomeness

I went home, satisfied, and I fell asleep dreaming about the next Boris gig.


“In your Eye”

-The Electric Eel

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

YESS! Terrific review! Not much beats Boris+Kurihara live when the amps are melting and the feedback's disintegrating eardrums. Great write-up.

The Electric Eel said...

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you enjoyed the review, and I'll to post some more in the future...

"In your eye"