Well, this is quite pleasant

[Cab Dreaming]

Ok so, I'm a bit late to the party having only gotten round to listening to the album properly this morning. I tried to steer clear of here till I'd had a listen just for myself without too many "spoilers" but I can't pretend that I haven't read the odd bit now and then.

After a couple of spins I have to say that I'm not getting any of this dark, end-time, armageddon vibe that seems to be something of a common thread amongst a lot of listeners. I was expecting something dark and dense like Geogaddi (which I have to admit, although I do enjoy the album I find it a very difficult listening experience) but instead I'm hearing a very propulsive, almost hopeful album. There are certainly moments of light and shade but it feels relative to the rest of the album, rather than "duuuude, this is some dark shit". If I were to put it up against other BoC releases, I'd say for me it feels like the natural sequel to Geogaddi: If that were the claustrophobic, paranoid journey through some nightmarish tunnel, then Tomorrow's Harvest is coming back out into the sunlight and the reveal of having gone through some kind of strengthening process.

If you'll indulge me for being a total hippy for a moment, my personal belief is that the universe is going through a massive upheaval at the moment and we're in an unsettled period because a lot of the darkness on this planet is being brought out into the open in order for it be exorcised, kinda like when you're full of cold and the time you feel shitiest is when all the garbage is actually being killed off and pushed out of your body. So, I will admit that this may colour my judgement of the album to a degree because of the overall apocalyptic theme, I just kinda see it a being a good apocalypse rather than a bad one.

So anyways, is it just me, or is anybody else not really feeling this 80's B-movie post nuclear holocaust angle that I've heard about?

[El Camino]

Well i can't say i get that for the whole album, but most of the second half is very hopeful to me, especially Palace Posy, Nothing is Real, New Seeds.

[seanandcandy]

i hate to be "that dude" but we have a few threads for this sort of stuff already

http://www.twoism.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10516

[d e n]

i hate to be "that dude" but we have a few threads for this sort of stuff already

http://www.twoism.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10516

organization is essential to any good forum but i think this is a specific enough topic to warrant it's own thread.



cab,

i think all the sci-fi movie talk refers purely to the music and similarities in some of those film scores. and they cited a lot of film composers as influences on this release, composers outside the sci-fi world too.

Geogaddi was made over a decade ago and I really don't think they were thinking about that when doing this... i don't think this album is a figurative sequel to anything. it's completely its own thing.

therefore, while I want more anything to agree with what you're saying about humanity going through healing process or whatever, i also think its really naive based on history. and i strive to be optimistic. i don't see this being an overall warm, light reprise from something dark.

for example the album brings you to places of celebration like Palace Posy and of transcendence like Nothing Is Real but it's all sort of taken away from you by the last track, Seeds Of The Dead.

[Cab Dreaming]

Yeah, I did mull over whether to put it in the general album discussion thread and if I get my hands slapped by the mod squad then fair play, but to me it felt more like a particular discussion point rather than just a chime into the whole conversation.

[Cab Dreaming]

i hate to be "that dude" but we have a few threads for this sort of stuff already

http://www.twoism.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10516

organization is essential to any good forum but i think this is a specific enough topic to warrant it's own thread.



cab,

i think all the sci-fi movie talk refers purely to the music and similarities in some of those film scores. and they cited a lot of film composers as influences on this release, composers outside the sci-fi world too.

Geogaddi was made over a decade ago and I really don't think they were thinking about that when doing this... i don't think this album is a figurative sequel to anything. it's completely its own thing.

therefore, while I want more anything to agree with what you're saying about humanity going through healing process or whatever, i also think its really naive based on history. and i strive to be optimistic. i don't see this being an overall warm, light reprise from something dark.

for example the album brings you to places of celebration like Palace Posy and of transcendence like Nothing Is Real but it's all sort of taken away from you by the last track, Seeds Of The Dead.

Yeah I totally get what your saying and I'm under no illusion that I'm probably gonna be in the minority! They're certainly working with a sound palette that's redolent of cold war cinema so there's a lot of immediate association with all that goes with that, I guess I'm just struggling a little to find why I appear to have quite a markedly different view of the overall feel of the album to a lot of people. Also, the Geogaddi point was more to try and express the overall vibe I get rather that it being a literal continuation.

Also just realised I've used the having a cold analogy twice today, wonder why that's on my mind...

[d e n]

i'm sort of with you in that in i don't hear anything that i can relate to specific era film , i don't even really know what cold war cinema is , etc.

but it does feel incredibly cinematic. and i like that about it.

now, i don't think i could describe how i feel the overall vibe. there is so much buried inside the sound (and i don't mean code-cracking stuff, purely referring to the music) that it makes it difficult. it feels to me as though the sound is coming from an ancient place and someplace in the future simultaneously.

[Cab Dreaming]

Yeah i can dig that, the films I mention are the late 70's/ early 80's era stuff that they appear to have referenced, these guys who were doing films with a strong post-nuclear apocalypse... agenda? Doesn't feel like the right word but I'm gonna use it anyway. Stuff the brothers have said they've taken as a reference point. Maybe that's where my cue is, maybe they've taken the word apocalypse at it's literal sense of revelation or uncovering rather than the popular interpretation of mass destruction? *shrug*, maybe I'm just grasping at straws.

[Ostentatious Username]

Yeah I kind of understand what you mean. For the first 3 tracks I totally feel a nuclear vibe and a story being told. I'm not sure where songs like Palace Posy and New Seeds fit into the story. What is being celebrated exactly?

[StarblazerUK]

Yeah I kind of understand what you mean. For the first 3 tracks I totally feel a nuclear vibe and a story being told. I'm not sure where songs like Palace Posy and New Seeds fit into the story. What is being celebrated exactly?

The collapse of norms. The fall of the powerful.....I'll celebrate to that lol.

[Ostentatious Username]

Yeah I kind of understand what you mean. For the first 3 tracks I totally feel a nuclear vibe and a story being told. I'm not sure where songs like Palace Posy and New Seeds fit into the story. What is being celebrated exactly?

The collapse of norms. The fall of the powerful.....I'll celebrate to that lol.

If anything wouldn't it be the rise of the powerful? Just saying because there is an anagram for Owl of Minerva on the cd disk. Which relates back to the idea that the elite want to exterminate the population.
I'm totally missing the plot. Somehow the people have survived a nuclear bomb and have overthrown the hierarchy.

[d e n]

i think it's way more effective to go by how the music itself is sounding, not an anagram that may not even have clout.

but it all really depends on your perspective, i guess.

[LKaoaKSo]

Celebrating the transition from self-destruction to self-realization. Seeing past the temporary into the future in order to understand that this has to happen despite our fear. I liken TH to a realization that the despair of such a transition is worth it.

[rainier]

Yeah I kind of understand what you mean. For the first 3 tracks I totally feel a nuclear vibe and a story being told. I'm not sure where songs like Palace Posy and New Seeds fit into the story. What is being celebrated exactly?

The collapse of norms. The fall of the powerful.....I'll celebrate to that lol.

word

[aperture]

Had some realizations during Split Your Infinities..
When the last bit of electrochemical energy has left this place, our transmissions will be all that remains of us (plus the contents of a few tiny relatively slow space probes). Everything we transmit, intentional or not, is on its way outward in an expanding bubble of electrons representing us and our history (from a variety of perspectives). And of course it may be that there is no receiver, that no one would even hear our story. These waves of energy have an incredibly romantic semi-permanence of their own when I consider their journey and that they might be the only echo of life remaining. There's an analog to the music too, as everything we're listening to is technically also an echo of something from the past.
I think the story involves the last few pockets of humanity finding each other through transmissions, as well as hiding from and surveilling each other. Some of that time might be spent looking at spectacular views in traffic-free skies, knowing the astrophysicists are gone or unable to work on the great questions. Knowing that these attempts at communication, inward or outward, are all there will be. The universe experiences us or some version of us, but not the other way around at some point. I think a major theme here is that beauty will remain, even if alone. If you can see it in overgrown desolation, you can probably appreciate it in a larger sense.

[miklatov]

Had some realizations during Split Your Infinities..
When the last bit of electrochemical energy has left this place, our transmissions will be all that remains of us (plus the contents of a few tiny relatively slow space probes). Everything we transmit, intentional or not, is on its way outward in an expanding bubble of electrons representing us and our history (from a variety of perspectives). And of course it may be that there is no receiver, that no one would even hear our story. These waves of energy have an incredibly romantic semi-permanence of their own when I consider their journey and that they might be the only echo of life remaining. There's an analog to the music too, as everything we're listening to is technically also an echo of something from the past.
I think the story involves the last few pockets of humanity finding each other through transmissions, as well as hiding from and surveilling each other. Some of that time might be spent looking at spectacular views in traffic-free skies, knowing the astrophysicists are gone or unable to work on the great questions. Knowing that these attempts at communication, inward or outward, are all there will be. The universe experiences us or some version of us, but not the other way around at some point. I think a major theme here is that beauty will remain, even if alone. If you can see it in overgrown desolation, you can probably appreciate it in a larger sense.

This is great and fits well with the track. Beautiful. If you have any realizations on other tracks, I'd certainly be interested in reading your interpretations.

[aperture]

This is great and fits well with the track. Beautiful. If you have any realizations on other tracks, I'd certainly be interested in reading your interpretations.

Thanks. My posts are sort of all over the place, but feel free to read them if you dare:) right or wrong, i am definitely getting a narrative and this record is just heartbreakingly beautiful. It goes to as many places as a great movie would. This is what got the ball rolling for me late last night:
In September of '01 I was camping with friends at a bluegrass festival not far from a major airport and during that time all air traffic was grounded. We marveled at the sky night after night, also full of questions, wondering what the hell happened, what it said about the world and how that world would change. The last of us may have a view of the stars to rival what the first of us saw. If we're lucky;)

[Ostentatious Username]

Thanks. My posts are sort of all over the place, but feel free to read them if you dare:) right or wrong, i am definitely getting a narrative and this record is just heartbreakingly beautiful.

Yes, can you please do a track by track narrative and write the "Tomorrow's Harvest" movie for us.

[In_The_Annexe]

a lot of people will experience the album differently but overall this album has a concept and narrative.

Definitely about Nuclear reprocussions and the Media propagandizing. Other small factors as well but this album has a sort of message to me.

It's very serious, forthcoming and direct for Boards of Canada's usual cryptic themes.

[d e n]

maybe it's because i'm so scared of it

but i don't think nuclear repercussion is something specific to the album... i think it's just the overall repercussion... how it happens whether it's war or the collapse of the industrial food system or extreme flooding/weather as a result of climate change.