*ALBUM REVIEW*

Boom Boom Satellites - Photon

Three or four years into the new millennium (depending on your point of view) and the now-established musical principles of eclecticism and mix'n'match inclusionism have been twisted and manipulated into ever more challenging shapes. Why stick to one solitary genre – bo-ring! – when today's audiences are quite prepared for an onslaught of sound-splicing. And of all the countries pumping new music into the willing ears of the sonically adventurous, Japan in particular has for years been relied upon to provide the world with new and exciting strains of refined, cross-pollenated multigenre mash-up spazzrockdubversionism.

Enter Tokyo-based duo Boom Boom Satellites, named after a Sigue Sigue Sputnik song and happily mucking about with metal, breakbeats and "thoughtful" jazz noodling for the past 13 years. Tunnel vision be damned, as Michiyuki Kawashima and Masayuki Nakano go wild in the country with admirably loopy widescreen excursions into the more, ahem, experimental edges of chuck-it-all-in-a-big-pot catholicism. I have it on good authority – the internet is a wonderful thing – that Boom Boom Satellites' raison d'être is less the recorded "unit" than the more freeform electro-psychedelia of the live arena, and after repeated listens to Photon (a UK-only compilation of highlights from their last two Japanese albums, Umbra and, somewhat confusingly, Photon), such an observation makes more sense.

Condemned as they are to pander to the mere two ears of the listener, Kawashima and Nakano struggle to make the leap from the no doubt inconceivably complex, unfettered alchemy bubbling in their brains, to the limited confines recorded music offers. This is not to say that Photon is a worthless artefact undeserving of your attention – anyone with even a passing interest in the more outré metalwork of Cornelius or The Boredoms' psyche-jazz wig-outs will find plenty worth savouring here – just that for all their efforts to confound and astound with daring attempts at latching fretless Primus weirdity to, say, Sheep On Drugs' gooey industrial rumblings, Boom Boom Satellites may have painted themselves into a corner. Still, I'm sure the irony of a band with such an eclectic approach inadvertently backing into a stylistic cul-de-sac won't be lost on them.

Originally published on Playlouder September 2003