After an eight-year hiatus, Japan's loose-limbed Boredoms update their Super Roots series of EPs with their first-ever live recording. Captured at a blissfully frenzied show in their home country on Dec. 24, 2004, Super Roots 9is just more than 40 minutes for single track dubbed “Livwe.” It's also another notch of credibility for Thrill Jockey, which scooped this up after Vice reissued the rest of the Super Roots series in America. Boredoms recently did a short stateside stint promoting the record, a rare treat for fans who have kept up with the band for the past two decades, from tours with Sonic Youth and Nirvana to leader Yamantaka Eye's collaborations with John Zorn in the noir-ish, mindfucking Naked City.
Those fans know what to expect here: The manic screech of punk and noise that defined the band's early work has been replaced by cosmic psychedelia, tribal percussion and rippling shoegaze, each of which can still make for mighty bouts of rapture. Anyone expecting to hear a famed noise band, on the other hand, might be surprised by how lush and pretty most of this concert is.
The disc unfolds in phases in which a single element or two grows in dominance, peaks, and allows a new element or two to follow the same path. First, it's an angelic 20-person choir that joined the band for the concert. Then it's squiggly synths and breakneck drums with the choir ghosting behind. From there, the band goes cosmic, then tribal, and then whips everything into a blender before falling back on the drums and heavy effects.
The music later breaks down into skeletal bareness, only to build back up into an energizing yet ominous flurry of sounds that finally dissipates in a fog of voices, percussion and, of course, applause.
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