60. Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun (2000)

One of the greatest live music epiphanies for me, was witnessing a then unknown to me & pals, Boredoms on a baking hot hazy Friday morning, opening the Other stage (then the NME stage) at Glastonbury in 1995. An unexpected outer space mix of free jazz, Napalm Death, and early Sonic Youth, performed with utter precision, power yet complete abandon by this Osaka Japanese group. One possible future music stood before us, making sense of the noise, Krautrock, thrash, electronic elements that our generation had been absorbing via underground record shops, John Peel. All of a sudden the leaden Britpop mob sounded duller than ever, and contemporary exploratory groups like the post rock Tortoise, Mogwai and Godspeed seemed painfully naval gazing and self conscious compared to the exploratory, outward looking, and joyous Boredoms. This is how music would be in the new millennium. Battles, Animal Collective, Black Dice, Lightning Bolt, Fuck Buttons, the embrace of trance within the rock jam, these have Boredoms to thank.
Perhaps Super AE (1998) is the more experimental album, certainly it has more post production, it's more fragmented, and more immediately thrilling. Vision Creation Newsun however completed Boredoms new direction. The whole album is really one long percussion jam (although not really a jam, as there is little improvisation, the whole thing is massively detailed and precise, a Japanese trait?), set around complex and uplifting grooves, Amon Duul II type chants, electronic effects, melodic touches from synths, guitars, all aimed straight at the sun.
Japanese groups such as Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple, Melt Banana & Boris often get criticism for lack of originality, that they are essentially highly skilled pastiches of classic styles of music. Often these groups have gone one stage further, by venturing far beyond what their musical ancestors were able or prepared to do. They will ask questions like what if King Crimson were punks who liked raving, or imagine if the stooges had heard death metal, or imagine Alice Coltrane jamming with Hendrix and Ya Ho Wha on the moon....on ketamine.
These exploratory avenues appear like uncompleted bridges in the sky, and perhaps only when these bridges are complete, will the future again await us.