London’s cold, wet and a little miserable this evening as I enter the Scala and have all of my fruit confiscated from me by a bigger boy in an armband. Tonight Boris will perform alongside Joe Volk for the next-day release of their new split 12″ record on Invada. The venue is excellent both internally and externally, with a much more intimate concert hall than expected, especially when considering the huge appearance from the street.
As the crowd trickles in and fills out, Volk shuffles onto stage, unannounced and preoccupied. After a rapid tune-up and a bizarre vocal introduction (dropped a couple of octaves courtesy of a harmonizer pedal), Volk begins.
The first thing to note is that there’s a certain tone and behaviour in the singer’s performance that doesn’t come across in the recordings: Volk seems impatient with himself, strumming and slamming mid note, or cutting himself off to talk or apologise. A good comparison would be that of the perfectionist writer who crumples up another page when he’s not satisfied with a sentence, then slam-dunks it over his shoulder into a large pile of earlier drafts. It could also be that Volk, who does come across as a bit of a man’s man, is unconvinced by the sentimentality and romanticism of his own delicate songwriting when facing other people.
I previously compared the music of this former Crippled Black Phoenix star to a sunny autumn afternoon: warm and serene. On stage, this is not the case; Volk is swamped in deep and crystal blue beams of light as his aquatic guitar ripples with delays and tremolo… the setting is now a quiet evening by the lake, drinking wine and swanning like nobody’s business. But do not read this as criticism! In this exact moment on stage Volk gleams of Buckley (Jeff) with his pristine, gentle voice.
Like Buckley, Volk‘s solo presence is not bare either: as well as the use of various guitar effects we’re treated to silky, full vocal harmonies courtesy of another floor-based device which is used more or less as a song requires, but always complements and never grates. Drawing to a close with yet another new/unreleased song (nothing from the split 12″ is performed) we’re cut off mid-chord once again before the mood can linger for too long. It’s clear that we’re not to be seduced by this music and Volk, like everyone else, is pumped for the leviathan ahead.
And so we find ourselves lost in fog. This isn’t London’s fog, this is Boris‘ fog: a thick surging cloud, oozing out in every direction from every corner of the stage. This is the sort of fog you expect to carry a ship full of ghosts, or some huge grotesque monster… and it is!
Opening with ‘Huge’, from 1998’s ‘Amplifier Worship’, the wall of guitars screech and squeal whilst gong smashes blast though everything. In a radical change of tone, the group cut without indication into the title track from their collaborative album with Michio Kurihara: ‘Rainbow’. The half-jazzy, downtempo track doesn’t actually feel so abrupt with ‘Huge’ being so much longer than in the recording. The vocal performance is blissful and soothing, whilst the guitar solo later into the piece is not dissimilar to someone shredding documents through a wah pedal.
Following quickly on from this the group blast ahead with ‘Pink’, a burst of pure energy which has everyone moving and screaming suitably for the next few songs, all of which feature the frantic whoops of drummer Atsuo via headset mic.
We’re lucky enough to be treated to a new track during the set, reminiscent of post-rock gods (also made in Japan) MONO, ‘One Step More and You Die’ era. Unlike their supporting act, Boris do perform their contribution to the recent split, ‘Cosmos’. Much like the recorded version, the performance is huge, melodic and incredibly powerful – something that is displayed across the entire hour-and-a-half set. Drawing full circle, Boris close their set with the colossal ‘Flood III’, a seemingly endless hulk of heavy riffs and booming drums. As the wall of fuzz and noise rises, so does the fog and before we know it Atsuo’s smashing the gong once again, shattering through everything and mesmerising every single person in the room.
