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Super Ae

Between the chaotic noise of Boredoms' earlier material, and the percussive 'tribal' grooves that followed, lies the band's remarkable 1998 album Super Ae. I didn't find my way to it until about 2006. I would have ordered the CD from Amazon: it's a repress of the US release on Birdman Records. It seems that none of the Boredoms albums have ever been issued on vinyl.

The CD booklet is decorated with colourful childlike drawings which include some handwritten snippets of text - in English, more or less - such as 'They said "SUPER æ"'; 'We RAH THE ☼'; 'WE CAN SUN' and 'HUMAN is BIRD / TO THE SUN / WiTH / PYRAMID / ACTION'. The CD itself is bright pink, with a stylized rising (or setting) sun motif in yellow.

Of the music, the 25-minute stretch including the third and fourth tracks 'Super Going' and 'Super Coming' is my favourite part of the proceedings. The gear-change at the 8-minute mark of the former number is particularly exhilarating. The latter is largely a sustained barrage of tubthumping rhythms and croakily indecipherable lead vocals backed by chanting. "Boredoms are like a moon on a lake," frontman Yamatsuka Eye is supposed to have said, "Only there is no moon and no lake".

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