Super Are

With their 1997 opus "Super Are", Japanese avant-rock band The Boredoms took a large departure from their distinctive noisy punk-ish roots of their previous 9 albums.

Instead of the abrasive thrash that had made them popular and won them the acclaim of bands like Nirvana and Sonic Youth in the early 1990's, Super Are focused heavily on rhythmic, krautrock explorations and walls of guitar, ala Neu! or Amon Duul. While their earlier, fast paced punk sound made a brief appearance (see the song "Super Are You"), for the most part this album marks the transition the Boredoms made into a more listenable, groove-oriented psychedelic sound.

The album starts off with a massive, mind bending guitar chord, and these powerful chords are repeated over and over again and played off of for the first three songs, as the bands tribal instincts begin to manifest themselves. Yamatsuka Eye, Yoshimi P-We and the others engage the listener in fantastic chanting and singing in broken English, first on "Super Are" and then on "Super Coming" and the positively monstrous, 13 minute "Super Shine".

The album, like the work the Boredoms would eventually follow the album up with, feels much more epic in scale than their previous work, and the driving rhythms, unique vocals, powerful guitars, and studio and tape trickery combine for an album that not only sounds nothing like "traditional" Boredoms, it sounds nothing like any other album out there, period.

The Boredoms would expand on this trippy, rhythmic sound that they cultivated on Super Are with 1999's "Vision Creation Newsun".


Here is the tracklisting for Super Are:

1. Super You
2. Super Are
3. Super Going
4. Super Coming
5. Super Are You
6. Super Shine
7. Super Good

Errata:

There seems to be a good amount of confusion as to whether this album is named "Super Are" or "Super Ae". This stems from the fact that there is no clear name on the liner notes, and the "Are" is penciled in so that it could possible look like "Ae". Most sources call it "Are".
There is a limited edition, import only version of this CD which comes packaged in a clear, soft, red cover filled with some kind of clear liquid. The regular version is also distributed and is not import only.