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Boom Boom Satellites

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Let it lift

Used to be, electronica had no use for words.

A sampled one-liner here, maybe a verse of freestyle there — vocals were subjugated as music, never intended to convey a very detailed message.

Boom Boom Satellites, by virtue of its heavily electronic sound, has been lumped in with the techno crowd, but for a band filed under that genre, it certainly uses a lot of guitars.

In the past, the duo didn’t have much need for vocals either. And seriously? Kawashima Michiyuki wouldn’t give Kusano Masamune, Kishida Shigeru or Fujimaki Ryouta any sleepless nights.

But electronica in 2005 doesn’t have the kind of cachet it had in 1995, and Boom Boom Satellites are cognizant of the change in hipster taste.

Full of Elevating Pleasures, Boom Boom Satellites newest album in three years, finds the band remodeled for the new indie rock world order. Yes, the band still relies heavily on electronic effects, and yes, it still integrates a healthy dose of guitars into its highly kinetic music.

But now the band is writing actual songs.

“Let It All Come Down” sees Kawashima singing verses and choruses. He almost delivers a scream worthy of Mukai Shuutoku on “Moment I Count”, while “Dive for You” could almost eschew its electronic components to be a straight-forward rock song.

Some tracks effectively employ some soulful backing vocals. A gospel chorus blares out during the chorus of “Rise and Fall”, while “Back in the Night” goes so far as to “testify”.

A few tracks still fall back on the heavy-handed rhythms of its past work. “Spine” gets batshit crazy with the drum machines, and Kawashima doesn’t have much to offer aside from the one-liner, “Wake up and check your pulse.”

“Anthem” is not much more than an exercise of echo effects, but a compelling one at that, while “Echo Tail” goes so far as to use a lot of found sounds.

“Stride” concludes the album with a guest vocalist delivering a spoken word piece over the band’s more ethereal music.

Full of Elevating Pleasures is both Boom Boom Satellites most mainstream album and its most daring work. Of course, to fall back on traditional song structure after avoiding it on its first few albums is something of zag to the normal zig.

But the ease with which the duo flexes its rock muscle — while still maintaining its juice as far as electronic wizardry goes — reveals depths to the band’s music only previously hinted.

Boom Boom Satellites asserts itself as the rock band it always considered itself to be, but with Full of Elevating Pleasures, listeners will be very hard pressed to file them back under electronica again.

Boom Boom Satellites releases new album in March

Source: Bounce.com

Boom Boom Satellites will release a new album, titled Full of Elevating Pleasures, on March 24. It’s the band’s newest album of original material since the release of Photon two years ago. Last year, Boom Boom Satellites worked on the soundtrack for the anime Appleseed and released a single, “Spine/Dive for You”. The electronica duo is scheduled to appear at the Sonic Mania festival in February, with a nationwide tour following.

Boom Boom Satellites releases new single in December

Souce: Bounce.com

Boom Boom Satellites releases a new single, “Spine/Dive for you”, on Dec. 1. The single is the electronica duo’s first new work in 2 1/2 years. “Dive for you” served as the theme song for the anime Appleseed, to which Boom Boom Satellites contributed four songs for the soundtrack. The band appeared this past summer at Summer Sonic and the Rising Sun Rock Festival.

Bizarre sound triangle

There’s no denying Boom Boom Satellites makes some of the hardest, freaked-out electronica anywhere.

Between stuttering backbeats, buzzing guitars and dissonant improvisation, the Japanese duo’s music is a distinct collage, uncomfortable as it is fascinating.

But with all that activity, sometimes hooks just can’t fit.

On the band’s debut album, Out Loud, a single-minded concentration on texture translated into a loss of momentum by the end of the disc.

Boom Boom Satellites made up for those errors with Umbra, an album that maintained the duo’s triple threat while making room for some melody.

With the band’s third album, Photon, the hooks are once again squeezed out but not completely.

Rather than let the backdrop be the star, Boom Boom Satellites invites spoken word vocalists and improvisers to provide some interesting foregrounds to their busy work.

“Light My Fire” is packed full of repeated motifs, special effects and even a guitar solo, but a female guest vocalist delivers some arresting lyrics in a breathy, seductive voice.

“I can make money by selling my organs,” she tells us, non-chalantly.

On “Beluga”, trumpeter Igarashi Issei provides layers of haunting improv, while Bryan Wrightsom fades in and out with a few couplets of his own. It’s not the most hummable improv, but it certainly keeps a listener’s attention.

There’s an almost fright-fest kind of feel throughout Photon, a sense of menacing behind the band’s fractured beats and guitar bursts.

At first, “Piper” sports little more than a creepy organ and a spoken word lyric that advises, “Get yourself some real help to wake up from the nightmare.” Then the drums kick in, and the mood turns manic.

And just when all the bizarre textures starts getting overripe, Boom Boom Satellites brings everything back down to earth with “Let It Lift” a straight-forward rock song with a rock beat and simple guitar hook. It’s the most normal-sounding song in the band’s entire catalog.

It would also make for a damn fine single.

Photon doesn’t quite match the appeal of Umbra, but it’s a definite progression for the band. They have their jazz-rock-electronica aesthetic down pat; now, it’s just a matter of finding collaborators to bring something new to the mix.

Out there

Boom Boom Satellites’ previous album, Out Loud, was remarkable for successfully incorporating guitars the Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy didn’t do back in the major label electronica bidding war of 1997.

But as time progressed, Out Loud revealed itself to be sonic wallpaper — interesting in the details but pretty boring in the big picture.

Umbra, however, takes far more many risks Out Loud ever dared.

The guitars are no less prevalent, but this time out, Boom Boom Satellites are showing off their jazz chops.

“Brand New Battering Ram” is pure be-bop — just heavily processed and accompanied by a stuttering drum ‘n’ bass beat having an identity crisis as a jazz drummer.

On “Ego”, a menancing vocal reverberates amidst clusters of piano chords, freaked-out flute solos and electronic effects that are nothing more than fancily-disguised be-bop solos.

On other tracks, the Satellites lay heavy with the effects the same way Billy Corgan would lay heavy on multitracking metal guitars or Enya would on creating a 500-member chorus of one.

“Sinker” gets dirty with a blues backbeat, but it’s those sliding sirens that give this track its edge.

Public Enemy’s Chuck D sounds totally at home amid the Satellites’ sonic tapesty on the wordily-titled “You’re Reality Is a Fantasy But You’re Fantasy Is Killing Me”.

The album reaches its dramatic apex on “Solilquy”. Over the course of 5’37”, the track builds to an incessant guitar riff hammering away till a loud thud from an echo-y snare drum brings Umbra crashing down.

Out Loud only hinted at what Boom Boom Satellites were truly capable of. Umbra realizes it.

This album goes far beyond what casual listeners may perceive as “electronica”. Although synthesizer effects lay the foundation for the album, its heart totally belongs to jazz, blues and rock.

Smack my jazz up

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Channel: a jazz-influenced electronica band with buzzing guitars.

If only the major labels were remotely successful at bringing electronica to the mainstream back in 1997, people would have Boom Boom Satellites blasting out of their car stereos right about now.

Eh, but what do major labels know? They try to shove Prodigy and Chemical Brothers down our throats, and we — or rather some of our kids — shove them back with the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys.

Boom Boom Satellites write and perform the kind of electronica major labels wanted — thundering beats and twittering effects with enough guitars thrown in the mix.

On “Push Eject,” a growling Kawashima Michiyuki gives way to a guitar solo set over a collage of feedback pings, buzzing chords and tiny, repeated motifs that sound collectively disjointed.

It’s a beautiful mess of sound.

On “Limbo,” BBS sound like the Crystal Method, with a robotically processed vocal that intones, “I’m living in limbo/No man’s land.”

But once the Tokyo-based duo start layering double-time and half-time drum beats over each other, any resemblance to the Method pretty much fly out the window.

Hints of jazz also pop up through the Satellite’s music. “Intruder” is pretty much a programmed jazz drum solo. “An Owl” superimposes frenetic saxophone and muted trumpet solos over a frantic drum ‘n’ bass beat. “Batter the Jam No. 3” sports a psychelic flute solo that’s missing a Claude Bolling piano accompaniment.

Boom Boom Satellites is a band near the far end of the pop music spectrum. This kind of smart sonic collage creation is destined never to hit mainstream radio waves, but Out Loud does set a standard by which other bands aiming to do the same kind of musical food-processor-ing will be judged.