Calling Boris “prolific” has been tautological for quite some time now. If the count is right, W would be the 27th studio album of these explorers of the Land of the Rising Sun. Fifteen collaborative albums can be added to this total. The era of their great pioneering forays may be over, but the now thirty-year-old trio is not content to break through open doors. Thus, Wata (vocals, guitars, keyboards, accordion, and other surprises), Atsuo (drums and percussion, electronic devices, and vocals), and Takeshi (bass, guitars, and vocals) make us rediscover places that we took for granted. In “I Want to Go to the Side Where You Can Touch,” we’re floating in a supersonic troposphere where a repeated guitar motif quite resembles the end of the intro of “In the Evening,” by the Zepsters. “Icelina” and “Invitation” fall into the dream-blues-shoegaze category for general audiences; we don’t know exactly what Wata is singing, but it certainly is bewitching.
If there is a connection between the noise-rock of “Drowning by Numbers” and Peter Greenaway’s film of the same name, we haven’t figured it out yet. “The Fallen,” “Beyond Good and Evil” and “Old Projector” serve to remind us that the Boris also make post-rock with a neo-doom tendency. “You Will Know (Ohayo Version)” quite corresponds to the definition a music geek can have of drone-metal. Then, “Jozan”‘s ferruginous riffs close the album in beauty; and we have our fill of Boris until their next release, in just a few months.
