Japanese avant-garde: Boredoms

Takashi Miike, manga, Boredoms (and Melt Banana) and Yohji Yamamoto, examples of avant-garde, from cinema to fashion. All Japanese, bit weird and super awesome.


Picture this:

07.07.07: Boredoms free show at Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York called 77Boadrums.

Boredoms played with 74 other drummers from bands like of Modest Mouse, Gang Gang Dance, Unwound, and many, many more.

"It was a beautiful, hot-and-sunny summer afternoon, and Dumbo was lousy with hipsters and hippies, rollers and stoners and euphoria seekers and experimental music heads, friendly faces and free-show freaks, the sweaty, the scenesters, the nearly-naked, the curious, and me, all of us willing to stand for hours among the warehouses and cobblestones on the longest line of year* for a chance to hear what it would sound like if 77 drummers played 77 drum kits for 77 minutes on 7.7.twenty-oh-7."

Details and more pictures of this stunning event.

And download the full show
http://www.mediafire.com/?4bj3eprz15t

Unlike many drum circles, this drum spiral had a clear hierarchy. Along with the four Boredoms, there were drum leaders, including Hisham Bharoocha (the musical director of this temporary troupe), Brian Chippendale (from Lightning Bolt) and Kid Millions (from Oneida). The full group didn’t practice until Saturday, which meant complicated synchronization was out of the question. The batterers followed the leaders, bashing out simple rhythms while Eye used his guitar necks and electronics to push the music toward a series of climaxes.


Review by NYT

On a good day, it's about a four hour drive from Baltimore to Brooklyn, and a soundtrack of James Brown's Star Time box set seemed like the perfect prelude to 77 Boadrum. Brown's endless, yelping variations on "give the drummer some" felt like prep work for absorbing the spectacle of 77 drummers, whatever they might end up playing. And "spectacle" proved an insufficient noun, with the nearly two hour performance that mystically celebrated 7/7/07 quickly becoming the stuff of dropped jaws, stolen breath, and "damn, you shoulda been there" urban legend.

Pitchfork review