row row row
By tuck 01 May 2002
Boat.
<p>you know, im always struck by how easy it is for me to latch on to music from overseas. actually, overseas is too general a category; every example im thinking of comes from somewhere in asia. mostly japan. i could elaborate on why i think this is, but it would take some serious writing and exploring of my inner-self which im too afraid to do. (i once tried figuring out why i like eating <b><a href="http://www.lavasurfer.com/cereal-quakeroats.html">Capt n Crunch with Crunch Berries</a></b> by such exploration and suddenly found myself in bed covered with slinkies, pound puppies and asking a giant, stuffed, papa smurf for advice about which g.i. joes i should allow to die as bystanders in the upcoming Decepticon invasion of my star wars base.)</p>
<p>in any case, imagine <b><a href="http://www.bunglefever.com/">Mr. Bungle</a></b>. now, while keeping bungle as a background, add the <b><a href="http://www.spe.sony.com/tv/shows/sgn/pf/">Partridge Family</a></b> (try not to discriminate too much just yet.) render both of those (as you would in, say, a musical Adobe Photoshop) and spread a very, very fine layer of <b><a href="http://www.boingo.org">Oingo Boingo</a></b> (all the way out to the edges mind you.) copy this into a new window. now, in a separate bowl, take one of those Fathers of Funk or similar Funk All-Star type of compilation cds and blend all the songs together into a thick funky custard. i recommend <b><a href="http://www.wolfstoves.com/Mixers.htm">KitchenAid mixers</a></b> . oh what machines they are. now not-so-carefully poor this funk over the rendered and smothered copy you made.</p>
<p>now were getting somewhere.</p>
<p>youll need to have the following:</p>
<p><b><a href="http://www.punkbands.com/nofx/"><span class="caps">NOFX</span></a></b> (chunky is preferred)</p>
<p><b><a href="http://members.tripod.com/~Sara_loves_grover/sara.html">grover</a></b> </p>
<p>a couple of female anime characters</p>
<p>slash and bb king </p>
<p>the deftones</p>
<p>ok. take the <span class="caps">NOFX</span> and give it some <b><a href="http://www.esake.com/">sake</a></b>. now castrate grover to raise his vocal key an octave. also add sake to grover. in fact, just poor sake over all the other ingredients for a while. keep going with the sake. throw the castrated grover into the <span class="caps">NOFX</span> which should mix nicely. now toss bb king and slash into the microwave and nuke them until they melt into a rifty, bluesy, but downright catchy and, well, just a very pleasant puddle which smells kind of like grilled cheese relaxation.</p>
<p>dice the castrated grover-ized <span class="caps">NOFX</span> and pretty much dump the whole thing into the puddle. let this congeal overnight. fortunately, i was clever enough to prepare some ahead of time.</p>
<p>youll notice the gel is kind of like putty. thats what you want. begin sculpting a giant statue of <b><a href="http://score.sega.com/games/sc5/sc5_main.html">Ulala from Space Channel Five</a></b>. make sure her mouth is opened because youre going to cram the custard covered copy thing from before in there.</p>
<p>add some sake again.</p>
<p>now take the deftones and separate the distortion and most of the electronically generated audio and load what youve separated into an airbrush clip and spray over most of Ulala in a giant, flannel schoolgirl/field-hockey skirt pattern.</p>
<p>and there you have it: Boat.</p>
<p>heres a smattering of particulars:</p>
<p>songs move all over the place- some carry a nursery rhyme melody which is first played marching-band style, then with kazoos, then with metal guitars, then have robotic monster voices before returning to the kazoos. others jump from folk to industrial… its hard to imagine such a jump working well at all. but it does.</p>fuck/you/summer/baby is a tune which, well, its fuck/you/summer/baby.
<p>another favorite begins with one of the female singers breaking into this highly japanesey-anime-gal-cutesy-teenie-bopper sound which has intermittent screams of <span class="caps">KILL</span> <span class="caps">KILL</span> and eventually, after some nice jazzy guitar action and another verse of anime-theme-sounding music, the chick hits the chorus a bunch of times which is also the songs title: I want to kill you, whatchu want. the entire band then ends up screaming insanely for a while in front of a nice metal riff.</p>
<p>the band experiments with creative vocal sounds, both self and electronically distorted. most of the tracks have some sort of catchy chorus involving the whole band in song. in most of these instances, youll find some of the members are singing in a genuine, natural voice, and some use voices that come from someplace else entirely. i really like the amazing range of the two female singers. they go from Hikaru sounding j-pop to muppet war-cry. the band has an amazing ability to mix drastically different styles together in such a seamless way that you cant imagine them apart. youll have very fast, 1950s doo doo de doo doo doo dede behind a heavily distorted, demonic, screamy vocal lead- yet it has a natural feel to it. what i mean is, it doesnt necessarily seem like they are trying particularly hard to be outrageous. their experimentation does not compromise the quality of their sound. </p>
<p>each song is complete and satisfying and theres enough variety in style to keep each of their four albums interesting and the song-to-song progression smooth yet sparky. the songs themselves are unpredictable in the sense of melodic progression- the tempo changes frequently which is matched up with various instrumental interludes (mostly guitar) which often pass through some chaotic states. but generally they do return to the original theme-sound of the song and finish with a slow completeness. most of the songs wind down to an end, so in this sense, there is some predictability i guess. its pleasant though.</p>
<p>there are some very mature and typically japanese sounding tracks- like Blue blue moon which sounds like it should be the opening for a college-based soap-opera type anime series. for me, however, this is not as a problem as i can easily sit for hours listening to j-women sing any words containing the letter L. </p>
<p>there are times, however, when the front most melody and overall sound of a song has influences which are a tad too clearly identifiable. some songs are clearly folk, some are Jackson Five jazz guitar chkachka-breee-chkachka 70s based, some are pink floyd etc. i mean, maybe its not a bad thing- but i prefer when they they stick with Boat sound.</p>
<p>this is all.</p>