Capt Kittinger wrote:Maybe I'll go and listen to Geogaddi and depress myself.
I never understood why most people view Geogaddi as a downer album, or one that sounds evil or bleak, to me it's likely one of the best work of the brothers, and yes, there are bits of it that do NOT sound all trippy happy but that is much closer to life than an artificial barbie-girl constant high on bliss, no?
I don't know, just asking, what is it that makes Geogaddi so dark to all of you?
I don't think it's dark in the sense that it's depressing or something, but dark as in really moody or murky or just something that gives a weird out-of-body like experience.
To me MHTRTC is a trip through your childhood, Geogaddi is a drug trip in your adolecense and TCH is a long car trip with your friends.
I would say that the dissonance and eeriness of songs like Sunshine Recorder and Devil in the Details can drive someone up the wall. I personally find the theme of Geogaddi to be that of ascendance or salvation. As they put it, it's like going through a dark tunnel and finding the light at the end. Of course, that whole 9/11 business might account for the dark atmosphere...
I'm a man that does not strive for a certain genre, in his music. Ugliness among beauty. Or is the other way, around? Maybe just all ugly.
hGc wrote:That's why it's taking them so long. They're waiting to recreate the perfect retirement home experience
Haha!
They've said themselves that they utilized darker musical themes and taboos in the music on that album... INGENIOUSLY so in my opinion! So, of course it would give certain listeners an uneasy, dark, or even depressed feeling because it puts those concepts right up in your face for you to digest. It takes an enlightened group of listeners to truly appreciate and grasp that concept. It's definitely not a pop album, if you really want to get someone into not just their music, but their ideals and concepts about music, then GEOGADDI is the way to go!
For me personally, all of them are like a trip. And like a trip in such a way that if you go into listening to it and you're sad or something's bothering you, it'll become amplified. If you go into it feeling super awesome, it amplifies that too. That's how it is for me anyhow
Geogaddi is my favorite too. It's a journey. It's a dream. It has it's happy moments and it's sad moments for me. Corsair really is the light at the end of the tunnel. Fantastic.
Geogaddi is eerie to me cos anything on there that sounds like it was from a human - voice samples, non electronic instruments etc is warped in some way, and... Ok. A vocal track has a human presence in it, an instrumental doesnt, but you don't judge it on those terms. But Geogaddi is almost anti-human, it draws your ear to the absence of human presence in it.
It's like a picture of a town center where all the people have been photoshopped out, but all their shadows and reflections are left in. Everything human in that album is a reflection or a ghost of what was there before.
Capt Kittinger wrote:Maybe I'll go and listen to Geogaddi and depress myself.
Haha, I feel like I've been misquoted, but it's only thanks to my own mediocre expression.
What I really meant was "[I'm going to go] and listen to [my favourite album] Geogaddi and depress myself [by reinforcing to myself that the new album still hasn't been announced]".
Geogaddi is "it" for me, MHTRC is not quite as polished (to me), and whilst I appreciate TCH its guitar driven approach just doesn't grab me for some reason. To me, Geogaddi is the most complete, polished album.
I don't find it depressing at all really, but I can see how others might find it disturbing/dark/etc. Radiohead's OK Computer, now there's an album that I find depressing.
I do a lot of cycling, most of the time off roads so footpaths, farm tracks and the like. When I am heading home at near dark/twilight and Geogaddi is playing I can assure you a lot of those tunes naturally start making me think that the trees are whispering, eyes are watching me from ruined barns and those twinkling lights in the distance are witches dancing round fires.
My imagination doesn't wander to these places with MHTRTC.
Capt Kittinger wrote:Maybe I'll go and listen to Geogaddi and depress myself.
I never understood why most people view Geogaddi as a downer album, or one that sounds evil or bleak, to me it's likely one of the best work of the brothers, and yes, there are bits of it that do NOT sound all trippy happy but that is much closer to life than an artificial barbie-girl constant high on bliss, no?
I don't know, just asking, what is it that makes Geogaddi so dark to all of you?
There are parts of that album that definitely make me uneasy - but that's the beauty of BoC - they go beyond to that layer of your emotion you can't even put your finger on, i find listening to their records like mining for a rare mineral in my brain. To me it transends merely "happy" or "sad" or "scary". To find Geogaddi a 'downer' album is to listen but to not understand.
I used to find it quite scary/eerie/depressing but now I just take it as it comes and love every moment of it.
I never was able to listen to You Could Feel The Sky for some reason, but then I went through a phase of listening to it several times a day for about a week and now it's one of the highlights of the album for me.
I personally don't find Geodaddi any depressive nor even dark. First half is kind of psychedelic, tribal, while second half is absolutely mindmelting. It's one of the characteristics I always appreciate from BoC's albums, they're so well balanced. I guess the difference resides in the aesthetic, MHTRTC looks more nostalgic and Geodaddi is surrounded by all this diabolic, cultist stuff.
To me, they both bear the same levels of darkness/lightness in them.
MHTRTC to me is like a person stopping and analyzing him/herself. All the events in your past, the nostalgia, the happiness and sadness coming together and you mentally determining where you are going with your voice, your feelings and your rights as an individual (OVIT); in essence, this is the growing album to me, the 11 - 16 year old or so adolescence album.
Geogaddi, on the other hand, is like the opposite in concept to me. It's sight of the outside world from a person who has become enlightened and been to that dark, void Happy Cycling-esque moment, but now seeing the world is almost entirely un-salvageable. Of course starting off depressed, astonished at the lack of integrity, truth and realism the world has around you, you (or the character of adolescence now a young adult, basically) begin to go into a slump (starts immediately at the beginning of Music Is Math), having the beauty of the natural world around hindered by the sadness of humanity. At some point in time, you find your way out of the slump and find a peaceful state where your existence becomes further enlightened and the natural world becomes one with human architecture in an artistic manner you've never seen before. You are happy(er), albeit still torn and sympathetic for those who do not deserve to live in the world of sadness. That last note being especially prominent in my mind, hearing the track From One Source All Things Depend, hearing the warmth and happiness of the kids being hopeful and wanting to understand God, yet at the same time feeling the sadness inherent in the fact that although they're happy, they do not understand they are being brainwashed by religious leaders who want to control them with exaggerated "morals" and false promises. If anything in that album really "depressed" me, it was that track. It's a very split mood. I'm also fairly certain that this album has something to do with evil, a demon like evil. From the "666" references, the tone of the album, the vastly varied moodswings, songs that make subtle references to hell and whatnot...even with the happiest moments of the album, with songs like Julie and Candy, it felt like something underneath the song was uneasy. Something was not right. Basically, if "Geogaddi" is supposed to mean anything we think it means, to me it basically roughly translates to "Devil". The entire album has so much supporting it, but that just may be the way I see it.
The Campfire Headphase, as was said before, feels like a car trip with your friends to a forest somewhere. Trans-Canada Highway is like the trip to new places.
Heh, that got into a bit longer of a form than it was originally going to be, but that basically sums up my feelings on those albums. I hope it makes sense.
Also, this term "scary" is being thrown around very often describing Geogaddi. I'm not sure I've head a less scary and more overall comforting album (with the exception of some out of place, uneasy moments) than Geogaddi in my life. Not sure where that trait comes from to some people, but then again, a lot of those same people thought that One Very Important Thought was "creepy".
With the whole darkness thing...what a lot of people really don't realize is that dissonance isn't always exclusive to sadness/darkness. You've just been raised to hear it that way since you were young by society. For some people, dissonance is the ONLY thing that makes them happy.
Last edited by Jonse on Sun Jun 12, 2011 7:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
From my perspective, it seemed that earlier on, when Geogaddi had not even been out for a year, a lot of fan reaction was based around it being kind of shocking, or even unsettling, and I think that could be attributed to it being something nobody had ever heard before. Even to this day there is nothing else out there quite like it.
However, now that it's been out in the world and people have had the chance to accept it, analyze it, what have you, those initial reactions seem to have faded. Even a lot of newer BoC fans don't feel like it's that shocking of an album. I, however, did! I had never heard anything so utterly mind blowing as that record, and still haven't!
so it just occurred to me that when I took my original FLAC rip of Geogaddi and converted it to the MP3's I've listened to since, a track called "Opening The Mouth" did not carry over, so this track basically never even existed to me and I had listened to the album many times without it.
Now hearing it, I have to say that it MIGHT just be my favorite track on the album. Really nice sounding.
Geogaddi creates all sorts of post-apocalyptic imagery in my head. It's very sinister and uneasy with a playful side hiding just beneath the surface. Sort of like if you knew the world is ending at a specific time but you choose to go play or have fun up until the last second.
It isn't depressing to me but it is emotional. So I can see how somebody who tends to be down would get emotional in a depressed way listening to it.
