“Just like you have a lot of different you's”

May 29, 2022 3:09 AM

Whitewater [sea and sky][train journey], described as “an insistent, echoing snare drum and melting synth-brass that evokes an old science show that’s been left out in the sun”, is a track on Boards of Canada's extremely-limited 1996 'release' Boc Maxima. The track contains a distorted sample of Sesame Street's “Many Me's” segment (lyrics). Other Sesame Street segments used in BoC tracks. Other BoC track/remix fan videos include R35TT A01, Heard from Telegraph Lines (cover), Poppy Seeds (reprise) and The Children's Prison, R35TT A12, R35TT A14, Finity, Northern Plastics, Fly in the Pool, Dawn Chorus, Julie and Candy, Beware the Friendly Stranger, R35TT B09, Broken Drum, Hiscores, Peacock Tail, David Came To Mahana'im, and Sometimes.
posted by Wordshore (16 comments total)

If only this post presaged new BoC...
posted by bigZLiLk at 3:59 AM on May 29, 2022 [6 favorites]

If only this post presaged new BoC...

Same, every time I see a new post on certain BoC forums, or a new tweet or retweet (nothing for a while, now). Alternating between hope and expectation and acceptance...
posted by Wordshore at 4:26 AM on May 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

This FPP is brought to you by the number sixty-ten.
posted by 7segment at 7:15 AM on May 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

I've given up on any new BoC. I was surprised they put out the Societas X Tape for the Warp 30 celebration.

Thanks for this, because I had no idea that Whitewater had a sample from Sesame Street. I had always thought it was a sample of their parents saying something and then "I'm proud of you too..." (I guess it was "There's a proud me too").

Whitewater is one of my favorite tracks of theirs, too.

I think i'm ok with Tomorrow's Harvest being the last thing we ever see. It was apocalyptic, and it fits basically... everything these days.
posted by symbioid at 8:37 AM on May 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Every time I listen to BoC it's new and I hear something different.

I swear those guys worked some kind kind of spell, sigil or fractal into the albums. Which might explain the years and years between releases, because they're actually recording n+1 albums and using some kind of time machine to encode the final albums.
posted by loquacious at 9:19 AM on May 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

I could talk about BoC all day, 100% agree that you can find new sounds and details in their music after hundreds, thousands of listens. I’m a little split on how much of the magic is them putting in things for you to find, and how much is them putting in something that gives you the impulse to keep looking.

They’ve done so many extraordinary tracks that they have really good ones that were just played for people once, then never again, like this Untitled one from a live show, given a restorative edit by fan / famous musician Machinedrum.

It’s a live recording, but the appreciative crowd ambience is unobtrusive and works similarly to the background party chatter in Turquoise Hexagon Sun.

My favourite thing about the track in some ways is the audience member who, at the very end neatly summarizes BoC’s whole career in 3 words -

What a treat
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:44 AM on May 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

Oh oh - speaking of like - intent and intention - especially with Tomorrow's Harvest...

My sister died in October 2013. I didn't see her at the hospital, but I know she was on life support.

So Harvest comes out, and then I hear Reach for the Dead... The breathing in and out, the stutter... just... yeah, talk about powerful.
posted by symbioid at 10:09 AM on May 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also if there's any single music project I'd love to see put out some kind generative/iterative music hardware as a concept album it would probably be BoC. How cool would it be to have a piece of software/hardware that maybe used some machine learning and had a musical output that was basically endless and self generating and some layers that you could interact with, not unlike a Buddha box. Imagine a small box where where you could input some tone, samples or sounds and out would come BoC sounds and noises.
posted by loquacious at 10:37 AM on May 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

As someone who enjoys BoC and knows only small portion of their work, I appreciate just the handy list of good links/songs!
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:44 PM on May 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

As someone who enjoys BoC and knows only small portion of their work, I appreciate just the handy list of good links/songs!

Thanks, though it's only a tiny sample of the output of Boards of Canada. I went for personal favourites which had interesting fan videos. For people new to BoC it's worth bearing in mind that:
- many of their tracks were created in the last century, before their first commercial release (Music Has The Right To Children, itself largely tracks from this time).
- ... and therefore many tracks aren't on Spotify - YouTube and various increasingly obscure file download sites are better sources.
- some tracks are (even after years of internet arguing) of contested legitimacy.
- some appear in different formats on different releases (official and unofficial).
- the duo, Warp records, and other organisations affiliated to the duo like teasing/playing with BoC fans online. It's slightly weird to feel that my favourite group have been subtly trolling me/us online for a decade and more.
- then you add on the remixes, and add on variations such as reversed tracks - a particular, glorious, favourite is Macquarie Ridge but played backwards - and live recordings, bootlegs, and a whole lot of other content and you gradually realise that you're several hundred tracks in, years have passed, and you maybe should have kept a spreadsheet.

The discography listing on the Bocpages wiki is as good a place as any to start wandering through their work (though even bits of this are contested, or viewed as incomplete, on various BoC fan forums).

Or plunge in with content e.g.
* The Random 35 tracks collection.
* The Boards of Canada channel video playlist, which currently has 148 YouTube videos, and the remixes playlist (30) and reversed track playlist (31).
* The Sleep Mix Volume 1 and Volume 2 are pretty good collections.
posted by Wordshore at 7:49 PM on May 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

Same, every time I see a new post on certain BoC forums, or a new tweet or retweet (nothing for a while, now).

I'll pull that comment back as another MeFite has just pointed out (though am not reading more into this than the merest glimmer of hope) that the Boards of Canada twitter account has recently 'liked' several tweets asking them for new music e.g 1, 2, 3.
posted by Wordshore at 8:10 PM on May 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

many tracks aren't on Spotify - YouTube and various increasingly obscure file download sites are better sources

Not sure that The Pirate Bay really counts as obscure.

TPB user Greenpeas says:

The Complete Boards of Canada Discography [FLAC]

This is the entire Boards of Canada discography for die hard fans. All their albums, EPs, mixtapes, singles, live albums, bootlegs, DJ mixes, appearances, remixes, leaks, etc. (as of 2/9/21) Most of the torrent is in FLAC with a few exceptions to rarer releases that could not be found in FLAC that are mp3 @ 320. It took me a VERY long time to put this all together, so if you decide to download, please make sure to seed, so others can enjoy it too! Thank you! <3

Info hash is 86aaced01729ec83cb7db1d23e08bb1422147a9c and it appears to be well seeded (better seeded by one peer as of five minutes ago :-)

Thanks for this post, Wordshore.
posted by flabdablet at 3:44 AM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

As somebody who still has PTSD from moderating two separate Yahoo! Groups for Boards of Canada -- as well as from managing multiple crowdsourced BoC teeshirt runs (this was before you could even get BoC merch from Warp, I did it strictly not-for-profit* as a public service, haha) -- this brings ALL the feels. Thanks, Wordshore!

* (Someone over at bocpages.org actually made a wiki entry about me because of this, and yes, it was truly non-profit, I didn't even compensate myself for my time spent sourcing and shipping teeshirts to obsessives all over the world -- and when I realized I had funds left over, I put them into making custom vinyl BoC stickers, which I sent for free to anybody who sent me a stamped, self-addressed envelope**...the good old days, I guess?)

** ((I still have a metric crap-tonne of this, if anyone is interested, MeMail me :) ))
posted by retronic at 10:30 AM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm still very curious how the bootleg Midas Touch 12" happened
posted by runehog at 1:29 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Those of you who have hung on to this thread until late, here is an item:

Step one: Visit this Wikipedia media page and get ready to hit play on a recording of actor Karl Johnson talking about a pub in north London.

Step two: Cue up this BOC remix instrumental on YouTube. If it starts playing automatically, stop it and scrub back to the beginning. It's not time yet...

Press the Play button at Wikipedia and start Karl talking. Now get ready over in your YouTube tab.

Two sentences in, a quarter beat just after Karl gets done saying "The Pineapple Public House in Kentish Town", kick off the YouTube video.

It's pretty good until Karl enters the pub, which means around the two minute mark on the YouTube video. Well, there you go.
posted by tss at 3:05 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

A few more BoC fan videos...

* Audiotracks 13, 14, 15 & 17
* Seven Forty Seven
* Buckie High
* Olson (Version 3)

And I guess this last one is for summer days to come at the beach:

* Happy Cycling
posted by Wordshore at 1:45 PM on June 4, 2022