Boha | Boil EP

Words inevitably fall short of conveying the experience of music. So our recommendation to you is to skip this introduction, and press play. If you’re feeling curious, then read on…

Vancouver native Tom Speakman, a.k.a. Boha , has been refining his talents as a musician since he picked up his uncle’s guitar at age 13. During his teenage years, Speakman and a handful of like-minded enthusiasts came together and formed a series of bands in order to showcase their original songs. Of course, being 17 at the time, it was rather difficult to find a venue that would welcome the slew of rowdy youths. And so, Speakman and his friends became accustomed to (and relished in) playing in seedy basements and underground parking garages filled with sound, sweat, and bodies. However, in 2009, he experienced a shift in inspiration.

While visiting Rio de Janeiro, Speakman was introduced to Baile Funk, a musical, social, and political phenomenon that has been alive since the 1970s. Baile Funk was popularized in lower-class neighborhoods of Brazil by individuals who chose to create their own genre of music centered around social injustice and breaking social taboos. (Baile Funk has been criticized for it’s overt, sexually explicit content.) As Fact aptly puts it, production generally consists of an “everything-in-the-blender ethos” wherein a meld of Miami bass and an assortment of electronic devices are fused with Brazillian singing, rapping and drumming. While in Rio, Speakman stumbled across Baile parties and it was these experiences that sparked his fascination with electronic instruments. All of this considered, although we are not ourselves connaisseurs of Baile Funk and so we don’t really know what we are talking about in this respect, we suggest that the influence of this particular style of music may not be obvious on Boil .

For us, the emotional climax of this record is “Soft Square”. Over top a bed of soft kicks and wind-chimes, Speakman layers a melancholic brass section as well as a crisp electric guitar melody and a nostalgic synth melody that do a bittersweet little dance together [1:00]. The trajectory of the arrangement takes us into some weirder territory as the sweet slide guitar melodies give way to strange oozing detuned synth chords [2:14], (which we are told were constructed with a Realistic Concertmate MG-1–a cheap lovechild of Radioshack and Moog Music born in 1981). Speakman’s cold robotic rhythms and his sample selection with respect to percussion sounds bring the productions of Thom Yorke and Radiohead to mind.

“A Call” takes us into more of an ambient experimental locale. It layers field recordings of unsettling clanging metal and feverish dark rustling sounds, and detuned bells. The only hint of human emotion comes from the soft mournful synth chord progression that comes in for the first time around [1:12].

Brought to you by Jellyfish Recordings , Boil is Speakman’s first release and it deserves your attention.

Wolfey & alh