Boards of Canada: Classic or Dud?

I once played Geogaddi at work and was told to "turn that spooky ghost shit off right now" lol

that's what's appealing about them though isn't it? their music is spoOoOoky without necessarily using the common signifiers of spooky music

In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country (the EP) is more beautiful than creepy and the best thing they've ever done imo.

Every couple years I read praise like this, give the EP another try, and wind up scratching my head. To me it's utterly boring.

geogaddi was my first boc record, and before tomorrow's harvest it was definitely the darkest/most disturbing one. the backwards masking, the disturbing distorted voices that would ordinarily sound calming but instead sound like what happens to all my skype calls after about 20 minutes - yeah, i definitely get a manson family/branch davidian vibe from them, when they talk about 1969 they're not talking about woodstock

as terrifying as that is, the manson family murders were in the past, the branch davidian conflagration is in the past. yeah there's something "retro-future" about tomorrow's harvest, but it's, you know. the past inside the present, if you will. i "know", don't really "know" intellectually but feel in my gut, where things are going with the environment, "know" that nothing will change that, "know" that of all the things going extinct, the most terrible of these is hope. and for me, tomorrow's harvest is an incredibly vivid, incredibly immediate chronicle of that process. even now, the only hope i have left is this: i hope to god i'm wrong, about _everything_.

i had the impression that campfire headphase was considered chill and pretty but i haven't listened in a loooooong time.

i think there is definitely an unsettling mood that is sustained throughout tomorrow's harvest. i get that their music is pretty enigmatic and suggestible but imo there's an undeniable sensation that it's a soundtrack to a future-past film about climate change or nuclear holocaust or the like, supported by the titles of the album and the songs.

xp to gd you gotta get stoned and hear it on a good system maaaaan it is totally gorgeous and singular in their catalogue for being so austere and restrained but it really opens up...

The Campfire Headphase is on the more positive end of their trademark vibes, sure, but even before Geogaddi, you can easily picture Beth Gibbons delivering a sad torch song over 'Turquoise Hexagone Sun' and there's an unsettling urgency to 'Rue the Whirl'. Come to think of it, 'Sixtyten' can also be rightly described as menacing.

xps

and yeah, that's very obviously a non-universal experience. a lot of my experiences with music are non-universal. but there's something between "personal" and "universal" and tomorrow's harvest is there. when i hear that record i understand that it's not just me.

boards of canada is music of mass suicide, of philosophical pessimism. it's also occult music, there are things they go out of their way to hide.

geogaddi has a couple pointedly spooky tracks imo - "gyroscope" and "devil in the details", but that's about it

tomorrow's harvest is desolate but not spooky

and yeah, there's darkness in "music has the right to children" (music does, but we don't, not anymore). the percussion on "telephasic workshop". "aquarius" (and again, think of what the age of aquarius _means_ to them) - the voice counting up slowly until it falls apart, starts saying numbers out of order, starts saying the names of numbers that don't even exist, in the meantime there some guy sounding astonished saying "orrrrrrange" and children giggling and saying "yeah that's right", it's entrancing and hypnotic and also, you know, wherever that's going it's not anywhere safe or healthy or good, that's some "a page of madness" shit.

i find all of that to be really funny tbh

I don't really care about the intertext tbh. I've always connected with it as absolute music, so the subliminal stuff about cults and mass suicide and survivalism doesn't shine through at all when I'm listening. The fact that I got into BoC when I was 14 and Music Has the Right to Children had come out a year prior probably has something to do with it as I had no context for their music when it fell into my lap, except maybe something like 'There is no dark side of the moon, really…'

i find all of that to be really funny tbh

― Give me a Chad Smith-type feel (map)

fair, i get that, but i also find "eraserhead" to be a fucking hilarious movie. i find cioran to be one of the funniest goddamn writers i've ever read.

and yeah i am a "context is everything" sort of lady, that's just how i look at shit

This reminds me that I've been meaning to start a thread about the ways in which we, as listeners, actively or subconsciously decontextualize music that tends towards the programmatic.

i don't really care much about references either but boc is quintessential 'stoner music' to me. also feel like they were always essaying about alien lifeforms on planet earth - like, that's the nature of the menace or disturbing element in their sound.

I'm with kate and all those who find the music profoundly unsettling. Are those of us who do so roughly in our 40s or older? I feel like the music, as it does the makers, may have the melancholic resonance for those of us who grew up in an analogue era and watched 70s era science filmstrips.

I'm not familiar with too much beyond MHTRTC but their early material has this woozy/warbly character that can be unsettling... similar to the quality of 70s film projectors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYoDINXAo7w

xp!

like they sounds like my 3M Minnesota "computers with big tape reels are our future" childhood

that's some hiveminded crossposting right there. cheers.

I agree that many (but not all) of their tracks are unsettling, I'm just saying you can pick up on that malaise even if you're mostly unfamiliar with their frames of reference (whether musical or ufological or religious or other still).

the voice counting up slowly until it falls apart, starts saying numbers out of order, starts saying the names of numbers that don't even exist, in the meantime there some guy sounding astonished saying "orrrrrrange" and children giggling and saying "yeah that's right",

was playing this in my car once and the passenger said "what the fuck is going on here? you know this is really creepy right?" and I was like hmm I never really thought of it that way

IABPOITC and Geogaddi are absolutely riddled with numerology, hexagons, Branch Davidianism ("Amo Bishop Roden" ffs), shortwave radio, 666/66:06, Revelations and so on - it's impossible for me to listen without feeling the pulse of something malign below the surface. It's what makes them great instead of pleasant incidental music.
And of course they sound like educational films, they're called Boards of Canada.
https://canadamodern.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/CM_Main5_Content_NFBLabels_CM76-1300x953.jpg

That one just strikes me as playful with no serious afterthoughts.

xp

It's what makes them great instead of pleasant incidental music.

oh man, i really disagree with this. their music-as-music is really unique and what makes (made?) them great and not pleasant incidental music - how synth lines fold together, suggest modalities but don't resolve into them, open up into a sudden vista with one sudden shift, etc.

Very much so.

boards of canada is music of mass suicide

not sure what you mean by this, so maybe this is in line with your comment - to me it seems like music that documents mass suicide, with sadness and some compassion.

of philosophical pessimism

mayyyybe ... even their darkest album has New Seeds. which is unsettled but energetic, propulsive, generative.

It's hard for me not to perceive some baked (ho ho) in context with BoC, being almost exactly the same age as them. There is a degree of specificity to the references to TV and wildlife films and media from 'our' childhoods, on MHTRTC at least. They had an incredible knack for it, being siblings around the same age is probably part of it - being able to excavate those memory / feelings together. But also some of it is literally samples from children's TV programs from the 70s FFS.

The only "aliens" vibe I can remember getting from BoC is I associate Tomorrow's Harvest with The Tripods.

like the problem to me of positing BoC's canon as unremittingly dark (beyond simple counterexamples) is that their whole method is haze, ambiguity. psychedelics can convince you that you've figured it out, you have the final story. they can also induce a kind of alert confusion that helps recognize things that conflict with your existing worldview. BoC seems to me to lean towards the latter.

mayyyybe ... even their darkest album has New Seeds. which is unsettled but energetic, propulsive, generative.

― lukas

immediately followed by "come to dust"

hope which is immediately and brutally crushed is, i think, something of a hallmark of philosophical pessimism?

most obviously to me their work has a very scarfolk vibe. is it people in their 40s who go in for the "scarfolk" thing? does that sort of horror take on different forms for the younger set?

they can also induce a kind of alert confusion

― lukas

ah! we want to talk leyland kirby?

i find all of that to be really funny tbh

― Give me a Chad Smith-type feel (map)

fair, i get that, but i also find "eraserhead" to be a fucking hilarious movie. i find cioran to be one of the funniest goddamn writers i've ever read.

and yeah i am a "context is everything" sort of lady, that's just how i look at shit

unique whimsy/dark balance, hard to pin down.

it's natural to want to pin it down, but - ugh, am I really going to reach for this metaphor? - the kaleidoscope keeps shifting.

immediately followed by "come to dust"

i don't take that track as cancelling out the previous, or even following on from it chronologically in the timeline of whatever story they're telling. i also think the apocalypse will be patchwork, confusing, unevenly distributed, so to me the idea of a more positive story being told alongside a more negative one makes sense.

leyland kirby

hmmm I only know the Caretaker stuff but it seems like a very different use of the past to me.

If anything, Everywhere at the End of Time (stages 4-6 in particular) goes to show just how tranquil and airy BoC's music is in comparison. Like lukas said, it remains tethered to ambiguity even at its darkest and thus differs greatly from the explicitly tragic, progressive breakdown of memory The Caretaker lays out in sound. There is nothing as hellish as Stage 6 in BoC's discography, and even if there were, it doesn't go on for more than an hour.

this has all been a great discussion. thanks everyone.

i think context absolutely matters with them. as a person who actively experiences auditory psychosis as a normal thing, i've always understood boc to be the music of the consciously insane — that is, people whose mental health is an ongoing chess match. sometimes you hear that one voice and it's happy and pleasant. other times, it's the same voice in the same timbre and inflection but it's saying some very disturbing things. same thing with their music. sometimes 'dayvan cowboy' sounds like the absolute most beautiful thing ever; other times it's the soundtrack to the apocalypse. nothing about the recording changes though.

i've always understood the "no censorship" message at the end of music has the right to be metaphoric — you have to let your psyche do what it does, because if you repress and try to silence the parts you don't like, it will end in conflict.

I do not experience BoC as scary or unsettling even when they are trying to be scary and unsettling. I experience them as awesome groove music; the idea of finding “Aquarius” unsettling is 100% foreign to me because that is one of my ginormous grin happy jams.

Enjoyed reading through that (the recent posts). Made me hanker for a time when I would read loads of meaning in BOC tracks (the Jim Jones references and so on).

all their albums have slightly different vibes but Campfire Headphase really feels like the outlier in all that. I bang on about this a lot on ILM but it's at once the most and therefore the least accessible to me. I can't hear the devil in those details. it's washy and pretty, but in the same way as Moon Safari is washy and pretty. it lacks that darkside occultism that drew me to them

but i also find "eraserhead" to be a fucking hilarious movie. i find cioran to be one of the funniest goddamn writers i've ever read

― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, August 18, 2020 5:50 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I find Cioran as depressing as it gets but I definitely agree about Eraserhead. How do people not find, for instance, the “OK Paul!” and “So I cut it like a regular chicken?” scenes uproarious?

I'm with kate and all those who find the music profoundly unsettling. Are those of us who do so roughly in our 40s or older? I feel like the music, as it does the makers, may have the melancholic resonance for those of us who grew up in an analogue era and watched 70s era science filmstrips.

― Boring, Maryland, Tuesday, August 18, 2020 5:55 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm (I’m mid forties and I agree with you and Kate)

all their albums have slightly different vibes but Campfire Headphase really feels like the outlier in all that. I bang on about this a lot on ILM but it's at once the most and therefore the least accessible to me. I can't hear the devil in those details. it's washy and pretty, but in the same way as Moon Safari is washy and pretty. it lacks that darkside occultism that drew me to them

― doorstep jetski (dog latin), Tuesday, August 18, 2020 7:23 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

we've probably been over this in a million other threads but despite BOC being one of my favorite acts of all time I flat-out dislike most of CH. One of my biggest musical letdowns ever (redeemed eight years later by the brilliant TH) - maybe this is why?

oh man, i really disagree with this. their music-as-music is really unique and what makes (made?) them great and not pleasant incidental music - how synth lines fold together, suggest modalities but don't resolve into them, open up into a sudden vista with one sudden shift, etc.

I honestly think it’s in the melodic/harmonic department where the fakers falter, map otm re their odd modulations, unresolved harmonies etc.. there’s a lot of cool counterpoint going... like the whole thing that “June 9th “ builds up to..

But also, their early textures sounded legit naturally mucked up... it’s like saw 85-92, ‘shitty’ tech like the rebels in Star Wars...idk

but also I don’t think eg freescha and those types ever tried for a VHS-80s creeps type vibe, it was just reverb, pitch modulation lfo whatsit... they were stuck on some kind of astronomical wonder bullshit. idk.

I've not been able to listen to Tomorrow's Harvest since the start of the pandemic. Thought I was ready to do so but I just picked it up, had a look at the artwork and put it right back on the shelf. Still too scary for me.

'New Seeds' on TH I do find to be one of the warmest-yet-coolest things they've done. Melancholy bliss. Not that I've been reaching for BoC much this year either.

we've probably been over this in a million other threads but despite BOC being one of my favorite acts of all time I flat-out dislike most of CH. One of my biggest musical letdowns ever (redeemed eight years later by the brilliant TH) - maybe this is why?

― Paul Ponzi, Tuesday, 18 August 2020 23:34 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

my opinions of these albums are diametrically inverted. the wonder of taste!

New Seeds is amazing.

Campfire is their weakest album overall, but has a handful of stunners (Chromakey, Dayvan Cowboy, Peacock Tail).

It seems very BoC that "Macquarie Ridge", which for me remains the most beautiful piece they ever recorded, was hidden away as a bonus track on the Japanese release of Campfire. Perhaps they were embarrassed about how nakedly emotive it is.

so i've never heard that song before and was pleased to find it easily listenable on youtube, but i also am somewhat annoyed that the country specific bonus track continues to be a thing.

good song in any case though.

so i've never heard that song before and was pleased to find it easily listenable on youtube, but i also am somewhat annoyed that the country specific bonus track continues to be a thing.

― Totally different head. Totally. (Austin)

oh yeah? well, i'm annoyed that _countries_ continue to be a thing! :-P

but yeah it is a great song and i dont' think i'd heard it before. also, their remixes are awesome and some of my favorite things of theirs, and they're not often heard either.

back to leyland kirby!

If anything, Everywhere at the End of Time (stages 4-6 in particular) goes to show just how tranquil and airy BoC's music is in comparison. Like lukas said, it remains tethered to ambiguity even at its darkest and thus differs greatly from the explicitly tragic, progressive breakdown of memory The Caretaker lays out in sound. There is nothing as hellish as Stage 6 in BoC's discography, and even if there were, it doesn't go on for more than an hour.

― pomenitul

for me the caretaker and boc are different in several ways. first, everywhere at the end of time is a monumental work of _individual_ desolation and loss. alzheimer's is a particularly strong fear for me, particularly disturbing to me. i'd prefer there to be bright lines between the living and the dead, we all act as if there are for a number of reasons, but in point of fact there aren't, necessarily. a life is not just heartbeat, a life is not just breath, it is a number of things that are beyond our ability to name sometimes, and beyond our ability to agree on most of the time, so heartbeat, breath, we treat them as absolutes when they aren't, when it is not just possible but not uncommon for people to die while still breathing, while their heart still beats.

that is what terrifies me about alzheimer's, the prospect of dying not all at once but by degrees, the person i was slowly slipping away and being replaced with confusion and pain, of wanting to make a final end to it but never knowing when or how. the way cioran meant to kill himself but in the end it went too fast.

the most disturbing stages of "everywhere at the end of time" for me are stages 3 and 4. what used to be comforting is twisted and transformed into a nightmare, moments of respite and solace turn wrong and hellish without warning. the subject sees themselves slipping away and can do nothing, hope for nothing.

i haven't listened to stages 5 and 6 all the way through. i'm not interested in doing so. not because they're too "disturbing" but because they have no _meaning_ for me. there are no words, there is no reference to the person the subject of the work once was. it's all pain and confusion and sometimes bliss but none of it accessible to me, a living person.

to me, what tomorrow's harvest does is to cover a lot of the same ground as stages 3 and 4 of "everywhere at the end of time", but that record is not about individual desolation and loss, but about _collective_ desolation and loss. in "everywhere at the end of time", the subject loses themselves. in "tomorrow's harvest", we watch the world dying, everything we loved, everything we knew, coming to dust, knowing that there is no hope for it, for our children, for any of us.

that's very hard. should i look away?

hmmm I just listened to Semena Myrtvykh again and I'm starting to come around to your way of thinking, and that was before I googled what it means

They're no Blue Öyster Cult, that's for sure.

https://bocpages.org/wiki/Semena_Mertvykh

Mike had the following to say about this track:

"...at the end of the whole album, you've reached some sort of sanctuary and then the whole thing is stolen away from you again with the final track. That last track has a deliberate feeling of complete futility that I find kind of funny. That's where the obsessive, scientific work comes in, and yeah, it takes us ages."