The PhiLL(er)



Super Roots 9 Cover
Boredoms

Super Roots 9
Thrill Jockey Records

This is the most exciting record of 2008. It consists of a single track, "LIVEWE!", which is more or less organized on sonata principles, or at least my understanding of the sonata principles based on something I read yesterday. It starts with a jingle of bells, and then strung-together-whole-note aaaahhhhs from a chorus. Bells jingle back in. It's a live performance from Christmas 2004, after all. Cymbals swell and it all drops away. The aahs resume. This is all in the first two minutes. There's 38 to go. The instrumentation, according to the booklet, is three drum sets, one turntable, two CDJs and a 24-voice choir. The audience is moved to a swell of applause and cheering just before four minutes. Cue big percussion explosions in time with the chorus. Cue the explosions getting faster. Cue the audience one last time. You're not going to hear the audience again, because like you, as the percussion motifs gradually build, accelerate and complicate, they'll be stunned into silence for the remaining 30 minutes. Frenetic percussion is juxtaposed with lengthy aaahs, which then get swirled into frenetic patterns themselves by those people on the CDJ decks. You'll be surprised how subtle tone and volume changes can be when three drummers are flailing at hyperspeed. In fact, shivers will run down your spine before you have a chance to even consider the surprise. Those shivers will continue as the same patterns and riffs phase in and out, varying, repeating (as riffs do), and building until you realize that the dizziness you're feeling is because you've forgotten to breathe for the past ten or twelve minutes. And still the record is only half over. Everybody gets a chance to breathe (and those who inhale quickly, to cheer) with twelve minutes left on the clock. Things drop to half-time, but soon enough we're back up at speed and then the final variations reach this piece of music into entirely different directions, without losing—and before returning to—the central percussion melody that's been propelling it into the stratosphere since the opening. And the end reinvents the beginning.

I've described a fraction of what is actually going on here. This music is so profoundly thrilling that once you've heard it, you have to prepare yourself to listen to it again; it demands energy of the listener. It's music that reminds you, even on a recording, that music isn't just notes or performance of notes, but an act of participation between musicians and listeners in a space that lies between them. Oh God, listen to me, using semicolons and fancy ideas; my vocabulary doesn't contain enough superlatives to do Super Roots 9 justice. Buy. It. Now.