As Japanese multi-genre rock band Boris enter their 16th year as an operating musical unit, it seems as though they've been here forever. Like one of their songs, Boris have slowly shifted from primordial sludge, to blessed-out drone, to raging high-octane rock-and-roll and then back again. Their forthcoming album ‘Smile’ may finally represent the record with which Boris sew these elements together and gain the wider recognition they have long deserved.

Named after a Melvins song from the album Bullhead, Boris released early work on their own, frighteningly-named label, Fangs Anal Satan, in their native Tokyo. These recordings became highly coveted before recently being re-issued on Sunn O))) member Greg Anderson's label, SOuthern Lord. With their collaborative list boasting such avant-garde luminaries as Keiji Haino, Michio Kurihara, Merzbow, the afore mentioned Stephen O’Malley and Sunn O))), and a vast catalogue of material spanning the last 16 years, there is a lot for anyone that hasn’t yet gotten into Boris. However, the only way to fully experience the band’s transcendent, raw power is to be bludgeoned by them live.

psychoPEDIA was granted a rare face-to-face interview with drummer and vocalist Atsuo in a central London hotel. Via a translator he attempted, to explain the band's music.

You played at Cargo last night and everyone was going nuts. It was almost like being at a punk show. How do you find your music translates in different countries?
Last night it felt like there were a lot of new people there. This creates a new energy. That is the only thing that differs from place to place. The energy created in that room, at that time, by that group of people.

Having played together for over a decade and a half, how do you maintain creativity?
If you approach things by utilizing the same processes you have used before, you will soon become bored. We do not make a conscious effort to approach things differently; we just know instinctively when we must change the process.

Was this need to constantly challenge yourselves within the creative process what caused the shift from your longer, experimental work to the more conventional forms of your later work?
We felt it was actually harder on the listener to sit through those longer pieces than it ever was for us to play them. Those albums were that length because there was so much in them and so many parts, that if you actually broke them down, you would find the logical song points. The latter albums are just us taking out those parts and elements and ideas and presenting them independently of each other. Each album represents a unity of sound though, if you listen to it from start to finish, so really there has not been that great a shift. It is more a case of presentation or execution and how the listener perceives or listens to the finished album.

What inspired the recording of Smile? There seems to be a relatively extensive use of vocals.
The voice is just another instrument. Another melody line. The record itself was born as an idea two years ago around the time we were touring Pink and we were becoming disenchanted with the whole process and found ourselves obsessed with the idea of the fake. Particularly fake pop music and how that can in itself be hyper-real. Smile is our attempt to reflect the idea of the fake. It might sound nothing like those pop records, but it is our reflection of them.

You are serial collaborators. What does collaboration offer that's so appealing?
Again, the collaborations are not something that were, at the time, big deliberate decisions. Everything tends to flow naturally, like an alignment of the stars or an organic collision. They also remedy that impending boredom and broaden possibilities. When someone new contributes an idea we can follow that idea and see what becomes of it.

The live element of the band is obviously very important. How does that influence the creative process?
Strangely, no one has ever asked me this. When we perform a live show, the after image of that positive energy created stays with us and echoes through our everyday lives. We then come to record in this altered, everyday state. So yet again, it is not a conscious process– more the transfer of energy and its effects, and again, an opportunity for new experience.

~James Knight


First photo courtesy of Fangs Anal Satan
Third photo by digital_freak via Flickr
Fourth photo courtesy of Brooklyn Rocks
Fifth photo by Shiwa-Eri