Boys Age: weird and wonderful from Japan

I’ve been listening to Boys Age for about three years now and keep introducing strangers, friends and family to the strange works of Kaznary Mutow. Kaz is both the creative force behind the music of Boys Age and the strange, sexual and sometimes disturbing artwork of their album covers, and he produces their music videos. He does production in his ‘bedroom and bathroom’. He is truly a man of many talents.

Boys Age craft chill, enveloping songs about love lost, love found, frustration and fantasy, but you generally wouldn’t know it because Kaz sings with a garbled voice akin to what you would sound like if you filled your mouth with marbles and tried to say anything at all. When you can decipher the lyrics they are in English, but a kind of mangled English that fits the disconnectedness and difficulty to communicate and execute desires portrayed in the music. I think that Kaz could have songs with non-broken English–his contemporaries and collaborators certainly do, but the brokenness is part of what he is slinging, and slinging well.The instrumentation is enveloping, dreamy, and takes you out of your own experience into Kaz’s surreal landscapes. Kaz manages to paint a sonic world with real depth of emotion with what I would call excellent production for what is basically a garage act.

Boys Age are truly prolific. On Bandcamp you can find 33 releases from them including a ‘rarities’ album and two best-of albums. Some are free, most are pretty cheap. I’m kicking myself for not buying their discography a couple months ago, as they no longer offer it at a discount.

I suggest everybody check out Boys Age. The Best-of albums are a great place to start, Faceless and Sapphire Forest are free downloads, so also worth checking out.