Title: Derriere...pourquoi? Label: Self-released File Under: Macbeth's madness come to life via free jazz potion. RIYL: Coltrane, Coleman, Bitches Brew, Allscars 17 musicians, 5 live tracks (the shortest clocking in at just under 9 minutes), 1 stage on fire and an uncredited number of dwarves and pot-smoking grandmothers howling cheers from the crowd - welcome to the BUM, or Melbourne's Bohjass live. And dangerous. And mad. Bohjass have never been known for their respect towards tight structure or genre - their last release, Chocolate Ice, saw them blending glips and other forms of electronica with their emphatic saxophone-led cacophony - yet Derriere, for all its insanity, is as tight as (insert your own animal/virgin/actress joke here). Recorded earlier this year at the Planet Cafe, you can hear the audience responding as saxophones are strangled (6 of them), trumpets are pushed towards the heavens (3 of them) and the other menagerie of mescaline-fuelled instruments squeeze and release, breathing fire and ice and all sorts of other wickedry. Who knows what hell was opened up in rehearsals, but this expanded Bohjass pulled it off on stage, and when what you're doing can sometimes sound like 50 Mack trucks colliding, taking a willing audience with you into the inferno and bringing them out hollering for more is nothing to be sneered at. As for the tracks themselves, "rex-o-lube", number 2, is my favourite. It begins with a noirish trumpet, all Mulholland Drive, and builds, slowly, monstrously, into a behemoth that stalks, seizes and then guttles for almost 18 minutes. About 10 minutes in, you can feel the blood oozing out of the horns and I swear there's a cow bell being anally violated. That might just be my hearing. You decide. But you will not hear BUM on the radio, nor in the elevator on your way to work, nor in the faux-hip jazzy slut-supplier cafes that ooze their credibility like a gonorrhea river. This type of sound caters only for those intent on blocking out the sound of white trash neighbours fucking and fighting, or for those at 3am who have run out of Camus and are tossing up whether to move onto Nietzsche or just slash their wrists. It's music that gives sordid old cynics sitting in their sweaty summer filth hope, or at least something that resembles it, and reminds us that out there, behind the 7-11s, fake pizza stands and window displays frothing with rabid consumerism, there is meaning and comfort to be found. Sure it's in madness. But like Bohjass Upas Militia's brand of jazz, the best things in life and death are free.
|
Artist: 
