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Rick Nielsen, Eddie Van Halen, Prince–Michio Kurihara too has a custom guitar pick. You might recall seeing them packaged as a bonus with his excellent Sunset Notes CD when he toured with Boris and Damon & Naomi way back when. These days he’s selling them to benefit safe energy in Japan. Too bad the shredder’s paperwork got stolen in the U.K.and he was stopped at the border coming over to the U.S. with D&N, but he sent picks along with the acid folk duo with the hopes of raising some money nonetheless. Look for them at D&N’s merch table as well as at his future gigs with everyone’s favorite psychedelic ambient doom rockers. More on Damon & Naomi to come…
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The two new releases by Boris, Heavy Rocks and Attention Please, are amazing pieces of work that reinforce how much the Tokyo trio can totally rip as well as well as how they refuse to be chained down to one genre or style of music. Psychedelic shredders, droning sludge, and even some ambient noise are present–and how–but what about straight-up pop? Hell, yes. (Longer reviews are here.) I hit up the drummer/vocalist Atsuo with some questions about the band’s latest earth-shakers as well as Japan’s recent activity, receiving big help from Nao with translation. MW: Were you envisioning two albums from the start, or were you simply out of your minds recording? Can you talk about your intentions going into the studio and what you emerged with? A: While supporting Smile on tour in many countries starting in 2008, we took time to keep recording and finished what we called New Album [totally different from the current Japanese release] in May 2009. It began with the idea of making music to be put on hold so we wouldn’t have so much pressure performing as Boris, and could work with free minds. Meanwhile, from 2008 to 2010, the circumstances surrounding music changed. It became something that is viewed as merely data, our music was illegally shared, and new songs got leaked before their official release. So we didn’t know what to do with New Album and literally gave up on releasing it, in the end. Then we made more songs, split up the original New Album, and, heading into the next ones, could see two directions. One was typically heavy; the other featured our guitarist Wata’s voice on all the songs. Then we had two albums: Heavy Rocks and Attention Please. MW: There is a number of friends who appear on Heavy Rocks. In addition to Michio Kurihara, there’s Ian Astbury (The Cult), Aaron Turner (ISIS), Faith Coloccia (MAMIFFER)… How do you work them into your sound? For example, are they in the studio working out their contribution or do you envision their part beforehand? A: When we collaborate, we basically give guest players as few directions as possible so that each person’s world can flow naturally. Words can be an obstacle. We like to see and hear what happens and how the songs grow. We listen to the songs, which tell us their directions.   MW: There are parts of Attention Please that seem like they’ll be hard to pull of live–or at least will require some new gear on the road. Do you think about stuff like that when you write songs or do songs just happen and you figure them out? A: Playing live is totally different from recording, where we are lead by the music. Our live set is meant not to recreate the sounds we recorded, although we do think about how to translate it. MW: The terrible earthquake struck not too long after the albums were finished. Do you think you could have made the same albums afterward? Has the experience changed your...
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Damon Naomi Van

In the van with Damon & Naomi (and Helena and Bhob)

 

When I was selling T-shirts for Damon & Naomi on tour with Boris back in 2007, a lot of the audience didn’t understand the pairing. Especially fans of the latter band. Why would the red-hot heroes of stony, noisy doom rock from Japan hit the road with the acid-folk offshoot of slowcore pioneers Galaxie 500? I told the black-shirted vinyl freaks that the answer wasn’t exactly right before them, but rather on the side of the stage.

Michio Kurihara with Boris

Guest guitarist Michio Kurihara would stand in the shadowy outskirts during either band’s set and add his mostly understated but always intense flourishes and effects, adding nuances to the Tokyo rockers’ explosive set and noise to the Cambridge duo’s understated arrangements. In fact, both Boris and D&N had released albums in conjunction with the insanely talented shredder from Ghost and Stars. And they’re also all just plain friends. Coincidentally, both Damon & Naomi and Boris are releasing new music this month–with Kurihara.

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