BORIS "FLOOD"
2000, MIDI Creative
If you were to ask me a Boris album to reccomend that kind of comprehensively sums up their sums up their output, I'd say Amplifier Worship... surely a masterwork of our time...
But THIS album is the one that just makes me think this band is full of fucking geniuses. I don't even know what to say -- there is a sound to this album that is just unbelievable. The production and the playing is incredibly inspired, whether ranging from doom style riffing to noisey outbursts to extended minimal solos......
But special recognition needs to be mentioned for the first song. Play this one on some amazing speakers full blast. When I first put it on, I was like "Oh shit, that's a cool riff." And then it kept going and going and going, becoming more delayed every 20 seconds or so, until the layers of the riffs are repeated on itself, making new structures as it goes along. Strangely, it seems to be more influenced by someone like William Basinski than any of Boris's "doom" contemporaries.
And I think that's what truely makes Boris special: They are intelligently employing artful leanings with their heavy sound, failing to make the same album twice. Though they may have some similiar albums (Heavy Rocks and Pink both rock out; Amplifier Worship and Absolutego are both mind-melting doom drone blasts, etc), their body of work is filled with so much intelligence and imagination that it's hard to imagine any band toppling them soon in their crowded genre. They constantly reinvent themselves yet remain themselves no matter what they are doing.
This album is amazing. I dunno if it's for everybody, as I'll be the first to admit it technically doesn't go "anywhere" -- but to me, it goes everywhere. A classic!
And if anyone has a tab for the first song on this, lemme know!
A little trivia that has nothing to do with this post but I was just thinking of it as I listened back to all the stuff Boris has recorded: I first heard Absolutego back in 2001 while at school. I had two study halls in a row at school, and I think it was the southern website that had Absolutego in streaming Real Media format. Their description of it made me check it out... "it starts with 20 minutes of feedback" Sounded cool! I put it on and listened to all 63 minutes of it on headphones full-blast and was like "the fuck was that?" Then, I didn't hear anything by Boris for a few years after that. Weird eh...