Boards of Canada - 'Geogaddi' C/D

obv. you crawled out of the womb a full grown, embittered adult then.

If you're going to wander round the internet looking for BoC bootlegs, personally I'd recommend nabbing their rather fine live sets from ATP and the Warp party instead unless you find something that's definitely real, but that's just me. The recordings clip a bit, ok, a lot in places but, damn, they're gorgeous. BoC can make me feel closer to tears (in a good way) with a single note than pretty much anyone else around can with an entire track. And this post is really shittily written, even more so than usual, but it is nearly 8am, and I need sleep. Must resist. Must get bodyclock back to GMT.

Have also just nabbed a new Clinic track - "Welcome", which used to be called Jouster - and, oh my God, you can hear WORDS! Lots of them! In sentences! All that on the first listen! Oh my God! Sellouts, heh heh. (Not really. I like it.)

Macros, Tim. Macros.

*flounces off in huff*

Oh, it's not only me, then. I mean it sounds nice enough and 'roygbiv' is lovely but overall it can't keep my attention for very long. I keep thinking I just need to persevere with it and it will click into place.

Okay, serious question time: why do you find Boards Of Canada uninteresting? Do you find them monochromatic/one-trick-ponyish? Have you heard others do their thing better? Are you turned off by their facelessness? I really want to understand, because I can't fathom anyone not finding them gorgeous.

I really think I must listen to that album again before arguing against them. It's just that it didn't grab me on first and second listen. And that's about all the chance I give things these days.

i sympathize with tom over possibly wanting "evocativeness" in music to be accidental. usually i find stabs at such "atmospherics nostalgia" to be tedious in the extreme. all i can say is their one trick schtick (and that's what it is) works for me, tremendously. and they could do it to the end of time and i'd be happy.

Incidentally if that balloon track was on the Skam EP, why wasn't it on Music HTRTC?

but does it evoke any childish memories for anyone?

-------

Absolutely does for me (that "soccer kids lost in the suburbs" comment on BoC Classic or Dud still is on the money). I found it a bit uncanny that more people have had the same impressions. Their sounds probably were used all the time on 70s tv. It's in the sounds though because I never read anything about Boc and childhood nostalgia until after I heard the album.

Can someone (Robin C?) sort this out authoritatively once and for all. If it's there it's way too subtle for me. Even the Canadian Film Boards music that i've heard isn't too like BoC, on the other hand BoC DOES go well with the visuals of some of them (esp the more abstract chalky/snowy visuals).

ACtually, now i think about it, PLEASE DON'T prove this to me as it would put me off one of my all time fave albums :-(

Haven't heard it since I've never lived in Canada ;) But I meant 70s tv music in general. More specific though: children's programma's like Barbapappa, or Dutch shows none of you know of course or even the wicked sound the German tv clock used to make, and indeed those science documentaries Melissa mentions.

if you mean "BoC sometimes sound a bit like 70s Radiophonic Workshop", you're right.

I love 'em, pretty much. But I think they're best at their funkiest and even with a slight early hip-hop / electro influence, stuff which isn't on MHTRTC.

I'm happy, I'm very happy.

Strange I thought 'Music has a Right' was real easy to get into, maybe because I immediatly flashed to that feeling of childhood melancholia. I dunno, with those melodies it doesn't seem that forbidding?

organic stuff. BUT we got it at the wrong speed so it seems. should be 45 rpm. never mind. BOC rules. saw them in 2000 @ the lighthouse party, it was gr8!! My guess = some of the songs they played @ the lighthouse will be featuring on the new album. Im an old geezer whos in the IDM bizz(listening)for too long. JMJ kraftwerk and loads of otherbands "plugged music" ive heard them all. but BOC = so well fabricating with those happy/sad layers. This = in my opinion "soulfood" @ least 4 me it =.BoC are few of the people in de musicscene who really control everydimension in it. The layers, the depth, the warmth and so on... THis is primitive electronic music, which wakes up the youth in you even when your youth = recent.

Just my 2 eurocents.

BTW Please has anybody got a copy of the lighthouse gig????

Feel free 2 contact me.

Maybe because they use a lot of reversed samples which then play forwards if the whole thing is reversed.

Hm, never struck me before reading this thread:
dia (ancient Greek) = "through"
per (Latin) = "through"
Quite an unconvincing name for the thing, considering its supposed function, eh?

WTF is "Disengage"? Is it a Warp records promo? A radio show? Something else? I've only seen it as two long MP3 files, labelled "Side A" and "Side B", and totalling about 35 minutes, suggesting that it's a vinyl release. Yet when I look for info, I can find nothing. It's got Nlogax, Turquoise Hexagon Sun, Roygbiv, etc.

it's a compilation from the 'hi scores' ep and 'music has the right to children' album, which was put together by skam and broadcast on local radio in england on a skam radio show. the tracks are available on easy-to-get releases.

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1509223292

Did anyone ever attend an elementary school built in the 1970's? Mine was, and I still remember the very colors and fonts on the wall. I still remember the huge white numbers painted over the ROYGBIV walls in the pod-like enclaves for each grade. kindergarten=ORANGE, first 1=yellow, 2=green, 3=blue, 4=purple, 5=red. Those letters were so cool too, lowercased and vertically arranged on the wall in the hallway entrance to each 'pod'. that school was so badass. everything was in lowercase letters, it was full of sunroofs, it had an atrium with a rocky pathway that cut through the plants, a very cool lunch room with long tables, 'psychedelic' trays, and chairs that were blue, orange, or black. we would hope to be in the same color chair as a pretty girl and make fun of the guy who was in the same color chair as an ugly one. That was when i was truly happy and content. When all that mattered was the playground, Children's Television Workshop, Star Wars, Atari or even the Odyssey 2, and Little League. We watched all the film strips and videos (remember those big discs that you inserted like a card) with the analog synths in the background. BoC bring it all back home. Their music seems to make me yearn for such nostalgia. However, the BoC music seems to pull those deja vu moments out of the deep chasms in our minds but we know very well we cannot go back to those days. There is a sense of detachment in the music of the BoC as well. It's a strange gestalt. I know someone out there has had similar memories and would have to agree. Some of us whether we know it or not are Chilren of the Analog Baroque. When George Lucas infected every child's mind. When Francois Truffaut communicated with little greys with an ARP modular. We proudly wore those ringer shirts with 3/4 length sleeves with the same color as the collar and a number 88. Our dads had mustaches and beards and wore corduroy pants while our mothers had sexy feathered haircuts like Charlie's Angels. Even Dolly Madison cakes had a cool logo(she was hot for a 2 dimensional face without a nose). We had the boardgame Operation, then Pong, then PacMan and then the Commodore 64. As children, we saw the death of John Lennon and Steve McQueen. Oh, those were much simpler days. Perhaps our best years are gone. When there was a chance for happiness. But we wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in us now. No, we wouldn't want them back.

Jamesebee

But this is on two listens - I've paid my money for the fucker now so I'm committed to giving it a decent go, and perhaps my front room when I'm trying to work isn't the best context.

Was reading some earlier responses on how BoC incorporates music & sounds from old 70's documentaries from the NFB (National Film Board). I am Canadian and a product of the 70's school system. I bought MHTRTC on an internet recommendation and had no idea who BoC were, but got chills when I heard Wildlife Analysis from MHTRTC for the first time. Back then the NFB had produced a series of short (1- 2 mins) vignettes describing various Canadian wildlife. These clips were shown mainly on the government-run CBC network (who else would show them?). Riveting stuff -- "The woodchuck is a lonely creature who makes his home in old logs..." etc. If anyone wants a prime example of the source of much of BoC's "70's nostalgic" fuzz, the theme music to these clips is it. You can actually view these clips on-line (on a government web site, no less), just do a search on "Hinterland's who's who" on your favourite search engine. May not seem like much, but compare this theme to Wildlife Analysis and then make up your mind.

This track, similar music and samples throughout the album, along with the sounds of children and their laughter, all combine to evoke a very strong feeling of childhood nostalgia for myself, anyway. I can't help but link much of MHTRTC back to films I've seen in school or on TV. While this is not the main reason I listen to BoC, it is certainly a draw: the fact that someone has tapped a distant, shared memory of a blank, obscure time and place -- 70's Canada (cripes, what, if anything, ever happened there -- We all know the important stuff only happens out in New York or LA) -- and incorporated it into some of the most beautiful music ever recorded.

Anyhow, I'm a little off topic, but thought I'd put in my 2 cents (pence?) after reading some posts regarding the 70's film links in BoC's music.

Back to Geogaddi -- f'g Brilliant. More rhythmic, swoopy, definitely darker. Feels like a pirate radio transmission you were never meant to hear, but doing so may have revealed you to Forces best left unknown. It could be bad: They may know you now. Good thing I stopped doing acid a long time ago, the beats and swirling synths on "1969" and "Opening The Mouth" would have me chewing the wallpaper. It would be wholly unfair to compare Geogaddi with the transcendant MHTRTC. Geogaddi is a different road, one that I, for one, am happy to travel.

Major irritant with this record of course is that, since the files got lost, we have no personnel details and no one seems to be sure who exactly does what (example: credit for tenor solo on "Hobo Ho" has ping-ponged between Bobby Jones and James Moody).

Childhood melancholia, someone said, and that's very close. About a decade ago, in my mid-twenties, I took some LSD and went wandering on Hampstead Heath (a big and quite wild area in North London, beloved of Blake, Constable and loads of others). Going through a heavily wooded part, I found a path lined with privet hedges. I grew up in a garden with similar paths: the sudden burst of incredible emotion this discovery produced was so overwhelming that I had to sit down and catch my breath. It wasn't like being a child again, but the sheer cascade of long-forgotten images and emotions brought my childhood back to me with an intensity that cannot be expressed in words. The whole fabric of being a child was recalled, overlaid with an awareness of how my personality had changed in the intervening years.

BoC - both with Music Has The Right... and now Geogaddi -- produces a very similar (but thankfully much, much more wistful and less powerful) experiences. I don't know how they do it: of course those distant children's voices are a big part, but the production and progressions make it much more than just a pushbutton trick.

As for Geogaddi versus MHTRTC, who can say. I'm still not finished with MHTRTC, and yes Geogaddi is similar and yes it's different. I've only heard it through about five times, and that's nowhere near enough.

One thing, though. I'm very, very glad BoC do whatever it is they do. These two albums are worth a year of Top 40.

RW

I will try again with the CD today. It just seems so... obvious somehow, you know? I think though this might be one of those cases where I like the follow-up bands more than the originators - ISAN's Beautronics does similar things but its clicky fragility touches me in ways that BoC just can't (so far).

Does anyone else's copy "warp" or is it just me (I have tried it on four different CD players, all in otherwise perfect working order, with the same effect)?

Which is why I put the word "warp" in inverted commas, fuckwit.

Can somebody please give me a SERIOUS and NON-ARSEY response to my query?

Clarke - oddly enough, I think it's the "undertones" of unease etc I find most banal, in the way that pointing out that ice cream van chimes are "spooky" is banal (though ice cream van sampling can be great - see Earth Leakage Trip's "The Ice Cream Van From Hell", a record with no depth but a lot of bottom). I'm more drawn to ISAN maybe because they strip this stuff out - also because their little- clicks rhythm aesthetic is way better than BOC's big clumping Warp breakbeats.

The pretty-much unbeatable yardstick in records-about-the-condition- of-childhood is still Position Normal though. Who were clearly inspired by BOC, so good for BOC on that account at least.

I did enjoy Geogaddi more on headphones - I was still itching to hear something else by about track 13, though. But if I'm going to get into it that's the way to do it.

I can't answer your query, Marcello, but I can say that some of the bits of MHTRTC that others find incredibly evocative *always* bored me. Their best moment for me remains "Nlogax", the funkiest they've ever got and the furthest from any risk that anyone might even think of invoking those dreaded words "New Age".

Still not heard Geogaddi.

Status report: favourite track now is number 21. Track 14 still reminds me of Tangerine Dream.

I will probably email BoC/Warp Records themselves as I'm clearly not going to get a proper answer from the morons on this board.

So much for requests for information. Thanks a fucking bundle.

To my study, Sanderson. Double quick.

Well, I got MHTRTC in '98 from a workmate of mine who has since passed away - I really would have like to hear his view of Geogaddi...

Anyhow since getting my hands on MHTRTC all I wanted was more BoC stuff - there is something about their music that stops everything else cold. The whole childhood nostalga this is definitely there for me - on the first listen, without any idea of what to expect besides "they're on warp", I was taken straight back to 70's/80's marine wildlife/science documenary projections on the wall at schoool, as well as that wierd huge overpass somewhere in Ammerica with a million cars on it - remember that?

Anyway, MHTRTC has been in my daily travelling stash of tunes EVERY DAY since I got it, and has since been joined by IABPOITC and Geogaddi. It's like they are making music just for me - was nearly in tears when I first heard Turquoise Hexagon Sun, and again with Kid for today and IABPOITC itself. And as for Over the horizon radar - well, That was Kleenex time...

Quite a few of the friends I've played them to have gone out and bought as much of their stuff as possible, but some folks just don't get it - I feel sorry for them.

I just wish that all of the older stuff was still available - I got some stuff on mp3, but I don't think I'll ever get my hands on a copy of Twoism that doesn't skip at the end. I'd happily rush out and buy all of it - I'm sure most of you would too...

Anyway I 'm pretty glad to see they have such a big fanbase - I didn't realise that until saw the huge crowd when they played at the lighthouse party. Sorry I took up all this space with my 2 cents, but I was compelled to by the debate I just read, & I've been listening to Geogaddi the whole time...

One last thing: Does anyone have any idea what happened to Magic Window?

That 23rd track makes the length of the record 66:06. Is there a point to this? 2 X 3 = 6, 66:06...

Good news, then: apparently Warp have bought their back catalogue and Twoism should be getting re-released on cd soon (that's why there've been a load of vinyl copies of Twoism on ebay recently). Not sure if they'll be releasing the older stuff or not but I hope they do because some of it is impossible to get even on mp3.

Will be looking out for a release of 'Twoism' - cheers for that!

enough of this nerd stuff. did i already say, that the music is brilliant ;-)

Jason

Brilliant interview i reckon. What do the rest of you think?

They seem like really nice fellas.

d.

ps the BMW ad is Kid for today off the EP not Geogaddi. AND I worked out geogaddi means "Throne of the Earth" or something.

maybe it just seems like it would be pointless to own two records by them (though I do own the beautiful place ep, which I think I've played once).

Rob Geary is right.

the unease thing is important. i don't think it's superficial. something about the dislocating amount of space in the sound, the queasiness of the arrangements (Music Has The Right = melody, Geogaddi = drone?), or, i dunno, fuck it, the bass frequencies, is kind of upsetting on a physical level. perhaps this sea-sick sensation is why people take so long to make their mind up about the album? (not that i've 'made my mind up' about it, it still confuses me every time i hear it)

Everybody otm about the uneasy and disconcerting aspect. Even the hazy sunshine songs have this massively sinister presence lurking underneath.

and i still NEED this live track ID'd

But I'm afraid the boards of canada use their art for evil, not good. They are very sinister. They have admitted that music has a spiritual essence. It reaches levels of your conciousness you may not be aware of, or you may be very aware of the intentions of the music.

In short, I am afraid of the boards of canada. I do not trust their intentions.

And, OMG! Check it out if you haven't already - play the track "A is to B as B is to C" backwards, you'll be in for a big surprise, literally!

SPOILER: Amongst other things you hear quite clearly someone singing "Teddy Bear's Picnic".

I agree with dog latin, a few posts above, about the past few releases missing the creepy factor.

How is the campfire headphase more creepy than geogaddi? or MHTRTC?

this thing has been growing on me a lot a lot a lot, tho it still doesn't really add up to Music Has the Right to children for me

i was thinking which track from this i would put in a end of decade list and it's probably 'sunshine recorder' even tho '1969' might be more obvious choice

I really love this album, and to me it's by far the best thing BoC has done. The others are great, too, especially IABPOITC, but as some people indicated upthread, nothing BoC has done has come close to how weird some of the sounds are on Geogaddi.

Funny that this was mentioned, because it's exactly what happened with Geogaddi:

Though my hopes for the album are that they go all out texture-wise into full-on ambient mode (the rhythms on 'Music has a right..." aren't really spectacular.)

Geogaddi's weirdness made me really disappointed in the Campfire Headphase -- I was really hoping they'd go even further out there. Are they up to anything new now?

see esp. the song "Gyroscope" (track 4) on Geo, those textures...wow! Also, "Devil in the details" (16), and "Dawn Chorus"

i do feel tho that the txtures could be even thicker, given that the percussion is pretty prominent

I think of Geogaddi as BoC's Loveless, in that it was the much-anticipated follow-up to an out-of-the-blue classic, got kind of a "meh" reception at first ("is that it?"), which in time grew positive as people finally "got" it, has the same sort of blurry reddish cover art, privileges texture over melody...and many other things of which I cannot now think of...

i just loooove "in a beautiful place out in the country" the track - is that EP good?

I think it's a great EP, and it strikes me as a little different from their other work, the textures are softer, maybe? There's a lot of space in it, even for a group that already uses a lot space in their music. I'm not very good at finding adjectives to describe music like others on this board, but I do think it's a very cool EP.

I agree with you on this: i do feel tho that the txtures could be even thicker, given that the percussion is pretty prominent, which is why I thought Campfire Headphase would logically have taken texture to a further extreme. Unfortunately, it didn't at all...

yes that's what i love about that track - the soft yet full texture of it

geogaddi is top 10 of all time classic material

i really think that out of all the boards tracks i've heard, and granted i haven't heard like half of their stuff, Beautiful place out in th ecountry is like my favorite

is that completely ridiculous?

no its great. zoetrope on there is really great too

i totally need the EP. so i guess i should look up the thread but it seems Campfire whatever is not so good?

hmm i can't find a thread on it

yesss i just heard Beautiful Place for the 1st time in a while, and notwithstanding the repeated children's laughter sample (i have no problem with the concept of children's laughter as a schtick, i just feel like u can vary the sample up), this track reallllly makes me happy. 2nd listening now

I put all my BoC stuff on shuffle these last few days and I have to say the 'Campfire' stuff actually holds up. Maybe it works better when interspersed with the older weirder stuff.

I have the Nick Warren in Reykjavik cd and on it, he does a beautiful mix from Ulrich Schnauss's "Nobody's Home" to BoC's "Happy Cycling", and it works perfectly, its like the two songs were made for each other.

I don't get it. It sounds like new age music.

Well done you.

I don't get Wolfmother, it sounds like guitars.

No wait, did I say guitars, I meant shit.

Campfire Headphase is awesome, it just wasn't what people wanted/were expecting.

Several years on, I started listening to this album again. It's pretty amazing; I don't really know why I let it drop off of my play rotation so quickly.

I want sth new from these guys. I really came to love the Trans Canada Highway EP

I never really understood why BoC became the naivist IDM act everyone loved? What made them different/better from predecessors like Black Dog or Mouse on Mars or Child's View? Granted, I've only heard Music Has the Right to Children and Geogaddi, but to me there's nothing particularly new or original about those albums.

They're both very good though, perhaps that was enough?

None of those other acts were particularly nostalgic though (afaik iirc), BoC really excelled with that aspect.

yeah - you seem to be missing the point to some extent. BoC = nostalgia + general "warped" creepiness + exhiliration of the great outdoos

They're a lot less of a product of the literal dancefloor than The Black Dog (a lot of their fanbase weren't clubbers), a lot easier to get a handle on than MoM, and I've never heard of Child's View

To me the nostalgia aspect of BoC felt kinda cheap and too obviously executed, at least compared to other nostalgic electronic acts such as 310 or Nobukazu Takemura/Child's View, who did the wistful/creepy remembrance of things past thing with more originality. I'm not saying any of this made BoC a bad act, I just didn't understand why they were treated as something exceptional.

Oh OK I know that dude, don't have anything by him as Child's View tho

a lot easier to get a handle on than MoM

Well, this was exactly the thing that made MoM or 310 more interesting than BoC. To me, IDM beats, simplistic synth washes and offbeat samples felt like too easy and obvious formula to reach a particular sound, whereas MoM and some other acts took a more interesting route there.

Yeah, you seemed to be saying 'how come they got popular' back there, so that was my answer... MoM always seemed to have a built-in sense of sabotaging their accessibility. 310 never did much for me but maybe if they'd been the default 3am choice at every fucking house party from like 1998 to basically now I might think of them in a slightly different context, I dunno

BoC were/ are more hip hop influenced, whcih perhaps provided an "in" for non-IDM heads?

I have fond memories of listening to "alpha and omega" on repeat while playing this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T3woiAcaE0

for some reason, the visuals are kind of perfect.

...but I still hate the track right after "alpha and omega" w/the baby sounds!

in fact, lots of the little segue bits don't work for me, now that I think of it. esp. towards the beginning of the album.

but towards the end we get gorgeous stuff like "corsair" (I've always wanted to hear a whole album of little mini ambient tracks like this one) and the more fleshed-out stuff is all pretty killer. so, it's all good.

>What made them different/better?

The hip hop influence that Neil cites is definitely an element of this (and I'd include RnB in there too); BoC's rhythmic sense is incredibly varied, compared to most IDM, yet avoids the showing off and technical-for-its-own-sake beat programming that makes some electronica tiresome to listen to.

I think the other crucial factor is that BoC's use of melody is very adept and distinctive - their songs and remixes are instantly recognisable, which is unusual in a largely instrumental genre. They're brilliant at including compact and catchy melodies in their songs and knowing exactly how long to let tracks build before dropping these in (eg. Happy Cycling's final section). They also squander some great tunes in the coda of songs; the outro of their Last Walk Around Mirror Lake remix has a hook that most other people would build a whole song around. This might seem trite, but at a time when loads of other electronica artists were deliberately making their music more "ugly" (cf. drill and bass), BoC's consistently tuneful and "beautiful" sound was almost unique - it doesn't surprise me at all that they became so popular and well regarded, or that they are still held in such high esteem.

^^^^ :-)

Bullseye.

a lot easier to get a handle on than MoM

Well, this was exactly the thing that made MoM or 310 more interesting than BoC

Interesting to you, grating to others. (I stopped liking MoM after Audiotacker). I mean it seems like you're asking "why doesn't everyone like kooky stuff like me?"

more like "why did this get popular when it does not directly appeal to my specific tastes?"

Interesting to you, grating to others. (I stopped liking MoM after Audiotacker).

I think MoM got worse after Autoditacker too, but Autoditacker is still better than anything I've heard from BoC. And it's not particularly kooky or "difficult", I know people with zero interest in IDM who still like that album.

This might seem trite, but at a time when loads of other electronica artists were deliberately making their music more "ugly" (cf. drill and bass), BoC's consistently tuneful and "beautiful" sound was almost unique

This is probably correct, but I still think Child's View/Nobukazu Takemura still did the tuneful/beautiful thing better (and before BoC too).

Anyway, I'm sorry for derailing this thread, I'll stop now.

You at least gave me someone to check out!
I don't think I've even bothered to rip Audiotacker (though I probably should. at least a couple tracks worth hearing again), whereas BoC is some of my favorite shit to this day. I'm old and would rather hear "soothingly pleasant and nostalgic" than "interesting", y'know?

Plus, "interesting" stuff tends to lose that value after a couple listens.

I dunno, BoC's appeal to my ears isn't based on how "beautiful" or soothing their music is (except maybe for Campfire Headphase). There' something pretty startling about their music

I played BoC for a friend the other day and it creeped him the puck out.

^^ Creeping friends out is good. I'm with Baaderonix on this one: the startling aspect of BoC's music is what makes it so geat.

I'm listening to the sample clips on Amazon of Funfair by Child's View, and it's super annoying. Is there another album I should be checking for? Is it all like that? Or are the clips unrepresentative?

What're you all meaning by "startling" though?

xpost

imo Child & Magic is a much stronger album than Funfair. but with its emphasis on field recordings and jarring stylistic shifts, it might annoy you even more — who knows? you can hear clips of it here.

Still got a lot of love for 'Geogaddi'.

Lives 1969 off this.

Wharves happened to them?

Heh, I was about to come in and mention how I randomly heard '1969' yesterday and still love it.

Lives 1969 off this.

Wharves happened to them?
--Naive Teen Idol

wharves happened to them

fished to extinction

how have we never polled this

do it up paul!

I may! I'm trying to avoid procrastinating today but I'll try to post one later if no one else does first

poll is now live: Geogaddi: The Poll