Sound Isolation in various BoC songs.

[apriorion]

It's not that creepy. It's probably just a clip from some documentary on older, non-christian religions, and they put it in backwards as a joke. I actually have a hard time seeing how anybody could not see it as a joke. It seems like a lot of people put so much stock into Western Judeo-Christian religions that even the mere mention of a deity that doesn't look like a hippy dude (N.B., "A god with horns, a god with hooves" is not a complete sentence) freaks them out. I thought it was funny when I first found out about it.


As for the "s" being a woman's screaming--Occam's razor, man. It's just an "s" sound.

[OverTheHorizonRadar]

Well whether or not it actually is, it certainly has an appearance of sounding that way. Would be cool to sample in some manner.

[mono]

Michael: People found things in the record that aren't actually in it. I've seen people talking about some of the vocal lines in the album being palindromic - you know, if you play it forward, it says exactly the same thing backwards. I think we did this in one case, but some people claim that there are many more. Then there are people who said, if you slow down this song, after two-and-a-half minutes you hear a little sound that sounds like a cymbal, but if you slow it right down and reverse it, it actually turns out to be a child screaming. But that's just a cymbal.

http://bocpages.org/wiki/Stirred_Up_The_Ashes

I do believe, though, that there is something up with that "s", because it sounds like there is a weird pause between the "a God with hoov-" and the "s". It's a bit like Aquarius, when it goes "six, seven" and it sounds as if it was saying "sixtyseven" but the "ty" was somehow garbled.

[OverTheHorizonRadar]

I just recorded myself making "sssssssssssss" noises and slowed it down a bunch. Sometimes I guess there are like certain whistling noises I made that became apparent in the slowed down version, which I guess could possibly sound like the scream? I dunno man. It's just weird.

[bearhead]

I don't know how I feel about the screaming... I'm pretty sure that's just an "S" sound slowed down. Still pretty interesting, though. It just seems like one of those things that people find that isn't actually there.

see also: burial

What do you mean?

[euue]

see also: burial

What do you mean?

his music and production uses a lot of similar "filling the gaps" type sounds, where underneath all the rhythmic and musical elements there are a lot of other sounds that add up to a unique, uh, lushness i guess is the word? he's mentioned it before, i dunno if this is the exact interview i'm thinking of, but it's a starting point:

http://thewire.co.uk/in-writing/intervi ... transcript


Wire: Is there a connection between crackle and rain?

Burial: Yeah. But I partly use the rain to cover up the lameness of my tunes.

Wire: It’s a bit like when they put on the mist on [the PlayStation game] Silent Hill because they didn’t have the memory power to render a fully-realised environment.

Burial: Oh, really? Dark. I like Silent Hill. If you hide sounds in the mist. It’s like a veil across the far wall of the tune.

Wire: That’s really important. It’s like the euphoric things are all the more euphoric because they are hidden by a veil, rather than being directly heard.

Burial: Yeah, euphoria trapped in a vial. Or a silencer. Volume's like a proximity to something. Everyone in their life has heard a muffled conversation from next door where you can’t hear the words, but you know that people are shouting. Or you’re on stairs, and you hear people downstairs, and you're aware of something not being right, just by the tone of someone’s voice. Even when you don't understand, when you’re younger, that kind of meaning in the sound, it makes you hold your breath. It’s like when dogs go quiet when there's a storm coming.

[rainier]

It's not that creepy. It's probably just a clip from some documentary on older, non-christian religions, and they put it in backwards as a joke.

This is what I've always thought it sounded like too. Makes me think of Pan. This album does have it's unsettling moments but I never thought this was one of them, I think it's kind of funny. I think the "we love you all" thing is cute and funny too, but that actually sounds a little bit creepier to me than the "god with horns" thing.

I forget how seriously some people take this sort of thing though. At my 10th birthday slumber party one of my friends told me if you dialed 666 you could talk to the devil on the phone so of course I was like "well we gotta try it" and she freaked out and told her parents and wasn't allowed to play with me anymore. I was just trying to have a funny/spooky time blowing up satan's phone! But I've seen reviews of Geogaddi where people are like "this album is good but I think these guys are satanists so I can't listen to it".

[Yellow Records]

Makes me think of Pan.

Mhmm!

[blastrid]

Can you do this to 1969? I'd be curious to hear if the vocodor "1969 in the sunshine" is totally removed or completely isolated. I know that it's one of those 'out of phase' audio phenomena, sort of like what they did with the Σ Soundcloud clue.

[noby]

Can you do this to 1969? I'd be curious to hear if the vocodor "1969 in the sunshine" is totally removed or completely isolated. I know that it's one of those 'out of phase' audio phenomena, sort of like what they did with the Σ Soundcloud clue.

You're correct, it gets almost completely isolated.

[rhysosborne]

"Marcus: "If you're in a position where you're making recordings of music that thousands of people are going to listen to repeatedly, it gets you thinking, 'What can we do with this? We could experiment with this...' And so we do try to add elements that are more than just the music. Sometimes we just include voices to see if we can trigger ideas, and sometimes we even design tracks musically to follow rules that you just wouldn't pick up on consciously, but unconsciously, who knows? 'The Devil Is In The Details' has a riff that was designed to imitate a specific well-known equation, but in musical terms. Maybe it won't mean anything to anyone, but it's interesting just to try it. We do things like this sometimes."

[rainier]

'The Devil Is In The Details' has a riff that was designed to imitate a specific well-known equation, but in musical terms. Maybe it won't mean anything to anyone, but it's interesting just to try it. We do things like this sometimes."

I always thought this is what the title of this song was referring to (the golden ratio detail) more so than "oOoOo spooky satanic stuff!". I don't find that song creepy, though i know a lot of people do. I wonder if the perception of it would be different had it used the other common phrase "god is in the details" instead. People have tried to link Phi to a creator god before, so either way I think it's a clever idea and title.

[Keeoaddi]

I wonder if the perception of it would be different had it used the other common phrase "god is in the details" instead. People have tried to link Phi to a creator god before, so either way I think it's a clever idea and title.

Yeah, I always found it interesting how Geogaddi has this recurring theme of the devil, and 666 and then the bonus track is people talking about god, as if god, the devil, cult leaders, are all somehow part of the same thing.

[Negamuse]

'The Devil Is In The Details' has a riff that was designed to imitate a specific well-known equation, but in musical terms. Maybe it won't mean anything to anyone, but it's interesting just to try it. We do things like this sometimes."

I always thought this is what the title of this song was referring to (the golden ratio detail) more so than "oOoOo spooky satanic stuff!". I don't find that song creepy, though i know a lot of people do. I wonder if the perception of it would be different had it used the other common phrase "god is in the details" instead. People have tried to link Phi to a creator god before, so either way I think it's a clever idea and title.

I sort of had a theory about that track, that maybe it was a sort of a jokey play on the whole new age hypnosis CD genre, where you've got you know, washy synths, running water and calm soothing voices, whalesong and all of that. Here they've got all the same kind of ingredients but just the most nighmarish versions of them; a modulated creepy voice talking about how you can program your mind, animals(?) crying out in pain, jarring textures, the splashing of some kind of... mechanism. And it's funny because they've done all the same stuff but it's the opposite of relaxing, because The Devil's In The Details (boom boom).

I could be reading too much into it, but it made me smile so I think of it every time it comes on now.

[rainier]

I think that's just a matter of perception though, I don't think it sounds like an animal crying out in pain, to me it sounds like a little kid or a lamb or something, and the voice sounds pleasantly under water to me. "Programming your mind" is a basic element of hypnotherapy, ie, letting your subsconsious mind take over where your conscious mind keeps screwing things up because it's stuck in old patterns.

In fact my whole perception of that song changed once I started undergoing hypnotherapy because the experience reminded me so much of that song, which is to say it was a little bit surreal and trippy (there's all sorts of weird stuff in our unconscious minds). But the underwater feeling and strange images that came up were really on point, I always wondered if it was based on one of their experiences undergoing hypnosis. Which to be fair can be a scary experience depending on what issues you're addressing. I find it to be a really mind altering experience, I love it, but I'm comfortable with feeling pretty weird.

But I'll take note, since I'm working on hypnosis recordings now and was wanting to emulate some of the elements of this track (I mean, not quite as weird, but I like the way the vocals are mixed and the music is better than your average public domain new age wankery), but I guess that's not for everyone

[tubolcane]

The vocal sample at the end of You Could Feel the Sky still haunts me. Everyone seemed to hear something different in it, and maybe I was influenced by the atmosphere of the time like they were or read the interview where they mention 9/11, but I always hear "two planes" repeating. I could be wrong, but i can never un-hear it. The song is like a beautiful day gone horribly wrong, or the weirdly elevated summation of events at the point of no return. I had the hardest time describing this music at the time, but I got close with this: when it is most powerful, it's like the feeling of discovering something huge and wonderful, or terrifying and wrong, and sometimes both at the same time. It's like the soundtrack to the 'life passing before your eyes' moments. The clearing at the end of the path. Despite the mix of emotions it stirs in me, it is one of my favorites.

[rd1994]

The vocal sample at the end of You Could Feel the Sky still haunts me. Everyone seemed to hear something different in it, and maybe I was influenced by the atmosphere of the time like they were or read the interview where they mention 9/11, but I always hear "two planes" repeating. I could be wrong, but i can never un-hear it. The song is like a beautiful day gone horribly wrong, or the weirdly elevated summation of events at the point of no return. I had the hardest time describing this music at the time, but I got close with this: when it is most powerful, it's like the feeling of discovering something huge and wonderful, or terrifying and wrong, and sometimes both at the same time. It's like the soundtrack to the 'life passing before your eyes' moments. The clearing at the end of the path. Despite the mix of emotions it stirs in me, it is one of my favorites.

what vocal sample? that singing type of thing?

[zeoevil]

You Could Feel the Sky

I won't lie. I don't listen to that song much at all. It just gives me the creeps. That stretchy noise just irritates me to no end.

[Green Pylon]

Boc suggests that they're working hard on sound testing. Dinamic patterns of noise catched by satellite sounds familiar for me in slow this bird down. Under the coke sign have some sort of background interferences, there are some songs getting the same work path. I think this is why outstands boards of canada as an unique band, I hope an excellent new record.

see ya

[Kilroy the Killjoy]

The vocal sample at the end of You Could Feel the Sky still haunts me. Everyone seemed to hear something different in it, and maybe I was influenced by the atmosphere of the time like they were or read the interview where they mention 9/11, but I always hear "two planes" repeating. I could be wrong, but i can never un-hear it. The song is like a beautiful day gone horribly wrong, or the weirdly elevated summation of events at the point of no return. I had the hardest time describing this music at the time, but I got close with this: when it is most powerful, it's like the feeling of discovering something huge and wonderful, or terrifying and wrong, and sometimes both at the same time. It's like the soundtrack to the 'life passing before your eyes' moments. The clearing at the end of the path. Despite the mix of emotions it stirs in me, it is one of my favorites.

If it is in fact "two planes," it's likely not referencing airplanes but instead two geometric planes. BoC have a history of references to math and geometry.