“Shine in/Shine on”
June 29, 2008
Boredoms – “Super Going” from Super Ae [1998]
Here is some mind-expanding minimalist drone punk to laze away a summer Sunday with. Boredoms at 2006 Intonation Festival (pictured above) blew me away with volume and rhythmic attack, but they lacked the tunefulness (albeit in the loosest sense of “tune”) this song soars with. Enjoy.
Posted by Glenn
July 30, 2008 at 12:31 am
Glenn-
Explain to me how this is minimalist?
Sincerely,
Phil
August 7, 2008 at 7:05 am
Phil,
It’s the same thing over and over, with minor variation. Even though it’s noisy, for me it achieves some of the same a/effects as, say, Steve Reich.
Okay, I just listened to it again, and maybe it’s not minimalist. The chord changes are repetitive, but there’s constant weird effects messing with the timbre. The splice and key change around 8:40 (accompanied by a scream) hits so hard because there has been hardly any rhythmic or harmonic variation in the prior 8 minutes. Not sure where that leaves us. I guess the song is minimalist in structure, but not orchestration – because there’s a bunch of shit happening.
August 7, 2008 at 12:50 pm
That makes sense to me. I’m probably just too accustomed to minimalism in the sense of minimalist orchestration rather than minimalist structure. Good on you for expanding my minimalist horizons.
I was in a used record store and picked up a sealed copy of philip glass’ “dancepieces.” apparently less well known, but there are some really pleasant passages.
You should also check out Nico Muhly’s newest, “Mothertongue.” That shit is mindblowing.