Boredoms - Super Roots 6 (CD)

The 17 numbered tracks of the album Super Roots 6 were issued in 1996 in both Japan and America, the band’s U.S. office likely heaving a collective sigh of relief to have allowed the band to run out its contract with this full-length. Aside from a harsh noise buffer in opener “01,” some slicing cymbal in “13,” and some squeaking ape stomp in “14,” Super Roots 6 is the gentlest of any Boredoms release, a collection of static and minimally fucked-with beats, sometimes juxtaposed with world music loop overlays. Eye, Hira, Yamamoto, Yoshimi P-We, and ATR/Atari are credited as performers here, though it is likely that 6 is Eye solo. The similarities between Super Roots 6 and the Eye/BORE-related Shock City Shockers compilations are striking enough to warrant notice; they seem to have been both been created in the same headspace, meditative, self-aware, and pregnant with breaks and beats yet to be unearthed by the cratediggers of the world, and cooled out to by yoga classes from Brooklyn to Bombay. Super Roots 7 and Super Roots 8 are both Japanese-only EPs of cover material. 7 will sound familiar to Mekons fans; ostensibly, it’s an extended cover of the group’s second single, “Where Were You?” The gods and goddesses of the rave had their way with the Boredoms by its 1998 release date, particularly in its exuberant, 20-minute “Boriginal” mix (numerologically helping to celebrate the Mekons’ 20-year anniversary as an active band by proxy). Both this version and the two Eye-sanctioned remixes that bookend it lock into the mekano-heartbeat of Krautrock and embrace synthesizers more fully than any previous releases. These are joyous chords that ring out with precision and abandon alike, when warranted. Super Roots 8 finds the group tackling the theme to the Japanese TV show “Jungle Taitei.” It would seem that they took the title literally, as the otherwise majestic track is sliced into thousands of pieces by 250 BPM beyond-gabber drum programming. Yann Tomita’s blissed out “Laughter Robot’s Hemp Mix” helps to bring the track back to earth, with spacy, phased percussion and heavy electronic dub passages. It’s the only selection in the entire collection touched by outside influence, a trend that would surface again with the Rebore series of remixes that followed the Super Roots recordings.

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