Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth once described her position as a woman between two boys with guitars as like being in the center of a circle jerk. Yoshimi P-We, the Boredoms' minxy drummer, could probably relate. As the rhythm section for the Boredoms' musical onslaught, she is at ground zero between both Eye Yamataka's vocal hysteria and Seiichi Yamamoto's guitar histrionics.
So in OOIOO, her all-girl group, Yoshimi has shaped a distinctly female space. "Everything is different," she says. "From the smell in the air to the atmosphere. It's not that one [gender] is better than the other. [Men and women] are just two different kinds of animals."
Taking its cues from girl-group predecessors such as the Slits or the Raincoats, the first OOIOO album was a reworking of avant-garde new wave shot through with shiny moments of Yoshimi's saucy wit. It was a distinctly, yet off-kilter, pop album. The new album, "Green and Gold," keeps the challenging instrumentation but leaves behind the plastic, pop as Pop Art feel. Instead, the fierce otherworldliness of Alice Coltrane, the sprawling looseness of the Grateful Dead and the pointy pastoralism of "The Rites of Spring" have been rolled into one beguiling package.