We’ve covered a lot of ground with Heavy Vanguard, from improvisation to sound art, and nearly ever genre someone has ever played around with, but you might notice there

7 years ago

We’ve covered a lot of ground with Heavy Vanguard, from improvisation to sound art, and nearly ever genre someone has ever played around with, but you might notice there isn’t a whole lot of diversity in terms of nationality. Most of the acts we’ve gone over have been American or European. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course—good art is simply good art, and we shouldn’t put so much emphasis on the person creating the music as opposed to the music itself—but music knows no borders or boundaries, and this counts exponentially so for the avant-garde. There are free jazz scenes all over the world, and radical music being created in every country. This is why we finally decided to cover one of the countries best known for their experimental music, Japan, with one of the country’s best experimental rock bands ever, Boredoms.

If the name sounds familiar, it’s probably because of Yamataka Eye, who’s an integral part of the band, and whom I’ve name-dropped quite a few times for his relation to one John Zorn. Boredoms is anything but what its name suggests, however—they’re a group who are constantly evolving. Vision Creation Newsun is their latest album (despite being released in 1999), and is probably described best as a caffeinated, Japanese interpretation of Krautrock, blended with noise rock and shoegaze. Really, I wish that somebody had turned me onto this album years ago, because this is what I always expected/wanted/prayed for Sonic Youth to sound like.

We have some gripes with this album (namely its runtime), but overall it’s a great listen, and it’s a good gateway to checking out more “out there” Japanese rock.

This Week’s Episode:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8N0wt16D17MbEhUejRhbG5rM2s

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This Week’s Album:

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Published 7 years ago