Thursday 4 October 2012

Eyelid-peeling kosmische heaviness from
Japan-via-E8's Bo Ningen

First published in Loud And Quiet

Bo Ningen 
Line The Wall
Stolen Recordings
Out 8th October 2012


Any Dalstonite who knows their Acid Mother's Temple from their elbow should recognise this quartet of Japanese psych rock spacemen – their bum-length black hair and 26-inch waists can often be seen prowling the piss-stained pavements of E8 when they're not savagely molesting speakers in underground clubs across the same postcode.

London has been a fertile incubator for Bo Ningen's Sabbath-gone-kosmische sound, what with The Horrors spearheading a revival of esoteric psychedelia and loping krautrock in recent years, so that Line The Wall's frenzied jumble of heavyweight riffing ('Daikaisei Part 1' and, er, 'Daikasiei Part 2'), stabbing math rock ('Nichijyou') and even drifting electronica ('Ten to Sen') sounds surprisingly cohesive. While their debut suffered from a plug-in-and-play live sound that lacked the energy of their eyelid-peeling performances (see video above), this album has the dynamic elbow room to make it more than just a souvenir of the live experience.

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