BORBETOMAGUS - Seven Reasons for Tears

1993 CD release. Reissue of this classic Purge/Sound League LP by Borbetomagus, recorded 12/6/1987. "Seven Reasons for Tearsbeautifully documents the most simultaneously fierce and accessible periods of the bands history. Converts and heathens can both bathe luxuriously in the radioactive improv-beauty-stream that lights up a room when the record is played at special volume. Tears is the living spirit of Borbetomagus numbered days as a quartet with bassist Adam Nodelman. Days to be cherished. The brobdignagian wall-motion of Jim Sauter and Don Dietrichs free-roving horns and Donald Millers evil-minded guitar-abuse have always had a tendency to hit me above the belt. The textured furrows their howl historically carved into my flesh began at the navel and trailed bloodily up into the aether. Nodelmans terricolous presence gave them full access to listeners aesthetic genitals for the first time and Tears proves they can wreak remarkable damage in this area. It would be the height of irresponsibility for me to suggest that any of this disks spontaneous outpourings might encourage some sorta social action. Not even the most extreme hippie-style derv-jerk includes a language of gestures explosive enough to coexist with the same incredible buckling of sonic structures here. Still, something like the intro to 7b has the same semblance-of-approachability that makes even outside rock music a relatively populist proposition. And you could certainly splice chunks of 3 and 6 onto a live tape of MC5 doing a Sun Ra cover without making John Sinclair roll over in his bathtub. So mere rock fans have nothing to fear. Which isnt to say that Tearsdoesnt have spurts of unprecedented density. I thought they had closed the book once and for all on overtones and found feedback harmonics with their previous record, New York Performances (Agaric 1986), but there are sections here that sound like a dozen distinct and angry zebra trying to burst out of Ed Kochs lower bowel. But its only the four of them. And theyre humans. Theyre just so goddam intent on what theyre doing and so capable of transporting themselves through their hands and brains and lungs that their one beats yr three. Its a simple matter of shamanism -- a quality sadly lacking in most everything you hear today. Imagine this record as a log thats been sharpened by magic, hardened by fire and is just aching to drive itself through yr chest." --Byron Coley, Forced Exposure, 1987.