Love Letters is a new series of posts where I intend to re evaluate some of my favourite records of all time, and see whether my rose-tinted glasses need a polish these days. The focus of the first of these pieces is to be Japanese psych/drone/stoner/rock/experimental icons BORIS, and their 2003 classic ‘Feedbacker’, an album that has grown and grown in importance for me over time.
First, a little about the record. Released in December 2003 on Japanese label Diwphalanx it followed ‘Akuma no Uta’, released in June that same year and widely regarded as one of the band’s finest works. ‘Feedbacker’s album cover depicts guitarist Wata lying in a pool of blood; a stark contrast to the Nick Drake inspired ‘Akuma no Uta’, and it continues the visually arresting style that matches their heartstopping music. ‘Feedbacker’ is a single track according to the rear of the CD, but it is split into five sections on the disc that flow into each other.
‘Part I’ shimmers into existence with a quiet hum, before the first tantalising taste of distortion drifts in and the volume begins to build. The multilayered songwriting is something we’ll touch on liberally in this record, as you have to pay attention to the droning guitar as much as what is happening underneath it. I love the walls of distortion coming off the simplest strum of the guitar, slow and hypnotising they approach the limits of uncomfortable and then drift away, never quite making it. A tranquil drift on a distorted, droning sea of feedback that leads perfectly into…
‘Part II’, which gives you a much more subdued and delicate experience. Crystal clean guitar melody weaves its way throughout the occasional splurges of feedback, but even that seems less pronounced here than in other parts of the record. It feels like a precursoer to what drone doom legends Earth would perfect in their slow motion country drone record ‘The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull’ a few years later. Mesmerising clean guitar eventually plays up to a fuzz drenched slow-lo of unimaginable beauty, and the first appearance of ghostly vocals that drive us into…
‘Part III’, a thrust of psychedelic stoner rock BORIS with wailing, feedback drenched guitar solos and that real memorable nature of soon-to-be released classics like ‘Pink’ and ‘Smile’. This is where I want to really give a lot of credit to drummer Atsuo, whose linchpin work I often forget to credit as much as Wata’s alchemic guitar lines. He knows where to step back, where to drive in with a frenzied performance behind the kit and when to disappear entirely behind the more ethereal moments. ‘Part III’ is also full of swaggering, wandering bass giving us a thick, dense anchor to the spiralling melodies.
‘Part IV’ crashes in dense feedback and noisy swirls of static, building an agonising crescendo of noise that you can just about make out a grumbling bass behind before the halfway point where it fades back a little into a dissonant hum. Boris rarely disappear entirely into Merzbow territory, always maintaining some tenuous level of connection to more conventional song/instrument paradigms; more often that not with a single resonating note trembling in a sea of droning ambience as here. It provides somewhat of a blank canvas for projection, if only one for more uncomfortable thoughts.
‘Part V’ is the come down, the shortest part that takes us from screeching feedback wails into a soft drum beat, twanging strums and a still omnipresent wailing note that threads its way throughout this track. A return to the calmer nature of ‘Part II’, with an elegant stroll to the inevitable fadeout, it is the perfect close to an album that takes you many places and teaches you everything, and nothing.
One of the first records by the band I discovered after my introduction to them on ‘Pink’, I was initially blown away by the way Boris created such evocative soundscapes using what felt like simple methods. Since then I have realised how hard a task that is, wailing feedback and buzzing static alone does not a classic noise record make. But this is as much drone and noise as it is post rock and ambient soundscape; like most Boris releases it defies easy categorisation. I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember in my life, but this was the record that taught me to appreciate SOUND, and what sound can do that music simply cannot. ‘At Last: Feedbacker’ remains a pivotal, life changing record.
Thus ends the Love Letter
The Killchain 