How NOT to write about music – 73. Otoboke Beaver

Overwhelming consensus demands that I feature this extreme noise terror from Japan. I do not have the slightest problem with that, indeed can only stand a few feet back from the action in a respectful daze and applaud with all my might.

They are fun. They are furious. They are in places quite disturbing. Several years back, I would have been moshing hard down the front and parading them around on my shoulders – yes, it was a thing – but these days the distorto-party takes places firmly within my head and the occasional twitch of an arm. It would be tempting to put this up against decades of serious white boys with their serious white beards pretending that an ability to shred is an ability worth getting serious over, but fuck it. Otoboke Beaver shred so hard they don’t have time to take it serious. Not when there is more serious enjoyment to be had and lines to cross. Fuck the sound, the performance, the song. Dynamics. That’s what this all about. Mistressful use of dynamics. But hell yeah! What great sound, performance, songs too. Both these videos are serious genius fun. Demented. Deranged. Dee-lightful. Mischievous. Maddening. Maverick.

Magic.

Makes me want to go listen to my favourite band I saw at ATP in Mount Buller (let’s leave The Laughing Clowns out of this for a sec). Not cos the music is the same – it ain’t. Just for the rampaging wrongness and righteousness of it all. In some ways Otoboke Beaver play Boredoms to Afrirampo’s Acid Mothers Temple but… jeez, you anal fuckwit, what an asinine glib comparison to throw in just when you thought the going was getting good and you could get outta here.

Bang fucking bang. The mighty fall.