More Gnar/Burger Awesomeness from Japan: The Boys Age - Fake Gold

Here's another slice of strange from Gnar Tapes and Burger Records - The Boys Age is a pair of musicians from Saitama, Japan who produce some pretty unique and delightful stuff. If you can deal with the strange vocals - there's a combination of an affect and an accent that sort of push the vocals into another time zone - and the consistently lo-fi nature of the instrumentation, you're in for a real treat. On this record, Fake Gold, there are elements of all kinds of rock music, old and new - on about my fifth listen, I came up with a mental image of Syd Barrett and Willy Wonka collaborating under the supervision of Phil Spector - but even though that is a strange and nonsensical description, it still fails to describe all the fun that's going on here.

Here's my favorite track - mainly because of the interplay of the vocals, some truly fantastic psychedelic guitars and delightful chimes - "Fake Gold Pt. 1 Wonderful Life":



Here's "I Wish For God's Sake" - starts out with an insistent guitar line that will be familiar to any indie rock fans, and some dreamlike reverb effects and Kaznary Mutoh's unusual vocals combine to push it into the real of pure delight:



Here's "Gigantic Stamp" - a little more uptempo, and a little more British Invasion feel to the drums and guitars, but again, the vocals are up front and very, very unusual:



I think a lot of people will either love or hate this, as it is truly strange. In the words of Gnar's attempt to describe this stuff: "Think Magnetic Fields meets The Pixies meets Beat Happening". Yeah, sure... that's at least as good an attempt as my Barrett/Wonka/Spector. Either way, you must hear to believe. And you can check it out at Gnar Tapes or Burger Records.

Gnar Tapes
Burger Records