BORIS
A Bao A Qu EP
A1. A Bao A Qu
B1. A Bao A Qu
The lyrics for song 2 are as follows: "Mure wo sute, nao motomeru, tsunagari wo, omae wa naze tooi, ima hi wa ugoiteiru, owaru koto, hajimaru koto, umare kite, kuchiru koto wo oshie", which roughly translates as: "Abandon the herd, and still desire, the relationship, why are you so distant, now the sun moves, the ending, the beginning, teach to be born, and to fall apart". Also, A Bao A Qu is a character from the Indian Jainism book. It is a semi-transparent creature who dwells in the bottom of the Tower Of Victory, and accompanies visitors to the top of the Tower. As it goes higher up, its body becomes more visible and colourful. Also, it should be noted that A Bao A Qu is also the name of the fortress / military base that appears in the Japanese anime Mobile Suit Gundam. Make of this what you will! Many thanks to Tomoyuki-san for the translation. The picture disc itself is almost completely black, save for a small white cat which features on both sides. The artwork consists of a sticker placed onto the PVC sleeve, with the writing in silver ink.
Ltd. to 524 picture discs.
Artwork by Fangsanalsatan.
Reviews
A soft and windy start that screams ATMOSPHERE so quietly that you would struggle to hear it in your own head if it was words spoken to yourself. The guitar comes in and gets to noodle around on its own for a few minutes directly against the tipy toe quiet start, then next thing you notice the guitar is on its own and the background is silent, holy shit, that was 5 minutes and 53 seconds already! It would appear Boris have invented a time/space destroyer, It seriously seems like the track has just started then it is over... Fuck.
So track two starts with the volume being built up and built up... Sounds like the band is warming up but then the vocals (slightly distorted, same level as the guitars) comes in and the song falls into a really lazy Sunday kinda groove that has me nodding along nicely. With what sounds like a bit of piano in the background it takes a couple of minutes before the guitar comes in and ends with some feedback and droning noise. YES! So, normally being an impatient bastard I would be hitting stop or fast forward to get to the next thing but Boris turn that crescendo of a ending into a lush little fade out that really has nothing going on that you would expect to keep you interested, but you are so fucking mesmerised you just sit and go... Holy fucking shit.
These two pieces of work form a 7" of solid gold and after what is only the 3 or 4th listen, it sits with feedbacker as my favourite Boris stuff. At this moment in time when everyone loves these kids, it is a fucking boon that one of the coolest DIY labels in the UK has worked with them on this release, it is a real testament to the label and how well the work and also too the band for being kool kats. Speaking of cats, this is a lovely picture disc with an acetate sticker with silver ink on the clear sleeve, yeah, it is fucking sexual. I can't read Japanese so I am unable to translate what the stuff on the cover sticker says, but if I were to hazard a guess something along the lines of...
"we are better than you could ever dream to be."
- Collective-Zine