Boc Maxima cassette origin

[jlgui]

On funky souls forum, 4-yearoldNexus-6 wrote :

BOC Maxima (cassette) / (99.82% CDDA): FLAC


Here's how this particular recording became available:

Boards of Canada gave this cassette to Autechre,

Autechre gave a CDR of a recording of the cassette to Richard Devine (Schematic),

Richard Devine gave a copy of the CDR to Alex Graham (Lexaunculpt),

Alex Graham gave a copy of the CDR to me,

I gave a copy of the CDR to Jonathan Canupp (Ten And Tracer),

Jon Cannupp gave a rip the CDR to the general public via followers of the old IDM ring.


This 16bit recording of a cassette is the best rip we have.

All lossy rips I've ever found are sourced from it.


We are not meant to have this music.

BoC has not given it to us.

We can only covet it.

It is not ours.


For years, I felt that I would pay extortion prices for a rip of the CD.

But I realized I could only accept it as a gift for it to become mine.

Anybody know anything about this story ?

[Basefree]

It could be true, though tracking down such a long lineage sounds ridiculously detailed to me.

The rip itself - I also get 100% CDDA from Audiochecker, but I am a bit surprised it sounds no different to my mp3s, which I reckoned would have gone through various transcodes and other degradations. It's also split in a weird way, to only 11 tracks, though no music seems to be missing. It's actually a little longer than the mp3s.

Probably only worth downloading if you care for lossless quality. Could still be fake though, the best way to verify it would be checking the spectrals, but I don't have the knowledge nor software for that.

[Opothecary]

I have been trying to find the 11 track version of maxima again for years. This is definitely its original form, going back to when only Hi Scores and a vinyl rip of the original Twoism were floating around. Glad this has not been lost to the ages!

[jlgui]

The tracklisting on this version :

1. Boards Of Canada - Wildlife Analysis / Chinook / Rodox Video / Everything You Do Is A Balloon (Intro) (8:24)
2. Boards Of Canada - Everything You Do Is A Balloon (5:26)
3. Boards Of Canada - Boc Maxima / Roygbiv (4:00)
4. Boards Of Canada - Nova Scotia Robots / June 9th / Niagara / Skimming Stones (9:38)
5. Boards Of Canada - Sixtyniner (5:17)
6. Boards Of Canada - Red Moss (6:16)
7. Boards Of Canada - Concourse (1:42)
8. Boards Of Canada - Carcan / Nlogax (6:59)
9. Boards Of Canada - M9 (3:43)
10. Boards Of Canada - Original Nlogax / Turquoise Hexagon Sun (6:22)
11. Boards Of Canada - Whitewater / One Very Important Thought (7:25)

[jlgui]

Parts of some songs are repeated, others are cut in half ...

I join all the 11 FLAC files in 1 big FLAC file and i'm actually trying, with a magic cue file, to split the big file in 20 FLAC files with the correct running time...

[everythingyoudoisorange]

Can you upload Red Moss and the White Water/Very Important message as separate?

Would love to hear a better version of these than I have

[Fredd-E]

On funky souls forum, 4-yearoldNexus-6 wrote :

direct link to this please?

[Techboy]

Have downloaded. Its deffos flac but its just the source of the mp3 rip that floats about. Still distorted and weird. Would like to think autechre knew how to make a CDR from a tape!

[harpoon dodger]

I think I've said this before, but I've always appreciated the homebrew remaster that Twoism forum member Esselfortium made way back in the dark ages lol..I don't know if anyone else on here ever approved of it/remembers, but it's stayed in my iTunes library for years. It is a fresher/different perspective than the familiar rips that we all know and love..sorry to get off topic, /end

[Techboy]

I like that remaster too. Its the copy I use

[Dmitrii]

On funky souls forum, 4-yearoldNexus-6 wrote :

direct link to this please?

http://forum.funkysouls.com/index.php?s ... try8357986
(registration is required)

I think I've said this before, but I've always appreciated the homebrew remaster that Twoism forum member Esselfortium made way back in the dark ages lol..I don't know if anyone else on here ever approved of it/remembers, but it's stayed in my iTunes library for years. It is a fresher/different perspective than the familiar rips that we all know and love..sorry to get off topic, /end

where can I download this remaster?

[Techboy]

No reg to view here
http://forum.funkysouls.com/dump/f57t3008n1380.html

[Techboy]

Forwarded you a link, may re host rather than use up all o essel's bandwidth!

[23degreesdream]

I think I've said this before, but I've always appreciated the homebrew remaster that Twoism forum member Esselfortium made way back in the dark ages lol..I don't know if anyone else on here ever approved of it/remembers, but it's stayed in my iTunes library for years. It is a fresher/different perspective than the familiar rips that we all know and love..sorry to get off topic, /end

Ah, so that's the origin of "Essels Remaster" - it's the version i tend to listen to most and i've no idea where i got it (probably here)

[jlgui]

Does someone have the FLAC version of "Essels Remaster"? There is only a mp3 version?

[harpoon dodger]

^^I dont think there is a FLAC version, it would kind of be irrelevant though because I'm sure Essel used the original MP3's as his source to work off of. You can't get lossless starting from a lossy format, unfortunately

On the other hand, try and contact Essel and ask him if you wanna make sure!?

[Buckle Higher]

Could someone PM me a link of Essel's remaster please?

Curious about this supposedly lossless tape rip as well. I always thought the version in circulation came from a radio broadcast?

[jlgui]

harpoon dodger wrote :

^^I dont think there is a FLAC version, it would kind of be irrelevant though because I'm sure Essel used the original MP3's as his source to work off of. You can't get lossless starting from a lossy format, unfortunately

Essel not used original MP3 exept for the 4 songs only on Boc Maxima.

Essel wrote :

I've had the idea to do this for a while, since I love Maxima but so many of its tracks can be found in higher quality on other releases. Tonight I finally did it in Ableton Live, replacing tracks wherever possible and tediously getting them to crossfade as accurately as possible to the original Maxima. I also added the deep bass from MHTRTC's One Very Important Thought to Maxima's version, yielding a rather nice-sounding result.

I'm pretty pleased with the result, but I'm going to give it a listen or two to make sure I don't need to adjust the track volumes more.

Keep in mind, though, that the tracks that were only on Maxima (Whitewater, Red Moss, the Maxima version of Chinook, etc.) have not been modified in any way.

For Carcan, it seems there's no way I can avoid the added sounds from the A Few Old Tunes version. I was originally going to loop it to avoid that, but there's an extra melody that comes in and plays once towards the end (once Nlogax's beat has faded in), so...deal with it I guess.

By "remaster", I mean I'm replacing poor-quality Maxima tracks with higher-quality versions from other releases whenever there are better copies of the same tracks available, and mixing them to match the original Maxima.

I'm not taking random tracks from other releases. I'm taking tracks that are on both Maxima and other releases, and putting the higher-quality one in there. The track listing is identical to the original Maxima; the only differences I've noticed in any tracks are the added sounds in Carcan and the different panning at the beginning of Everything You Do Is A Balloon.

EQing and a bit of high-end reverb, set differently based on whether it's a Maxima recording or an Old Tunes one, and also based on the song itself, to a certain extent. On some of the Old Tunes tracks I added a bit of chorus.

For M9, I set up some auto-panning to imitate the auto-panning in the original Maxima version that doesn't exist on the Old Tunes one (basically, it pans from left to right and back at a set speed).

For Carcan, I was faced with the tedious task of figuring out the perfect loop points to get a seamless loop of the exact right length, so that it would sync up with Nlogax in the same way as the original, without the cut-up voices from the Old Tunes version coming in.

[jlgui]

Buckle Higher wrote :

Curious about this supposedly lossless tape rip as well. I always thought the version in circulation came from a radio broadcast?

On WATMM forum Joyrex (Site Administrator) wrote :

As mentioned before, BoC Maxima was a demo tape they were shopping around to different labels. I have one of the original cassettes (just a standard, handwritten cassette with homemade insert in colour). I purchased it quite some time ago.

The story that I've heard (and granted it's just a story until BoC themselves confirm it) is someone at SKAM leaked BoC Maxima by copying onto MD for a friend, who in turn decided (or people he gave copies to in turn) the internets was the best place for this music.

I have a theory that due to this, Hi Scores and MHTRTC were BoC's only SKAM output (besides the MASK tracks), and when Maxima leaked (which was around 1998-1999), BoC terminated their relationship with SKAM in favour of WARP. Mind you, that's just a theory I have - no basis for it at all.

I wish BoC would release an EP of all the unreleased tracks called BoC Minima (ha). I'd love to hear a remastered version of Whitewater, one of my fave BoC tracks and one of their best tracks ever, IMO.

link : http://forum.watmm.com/topic/6514-boc-maxima/

[jlgui]

I think it is very cool to have at last the first gen copy of the boc maxima cassette in FLAC.

All lossy rips we have are sourced from it.

And despite the distorsions, i prefer to listen to the original cassette from BOC than a remaster version who is not exactly like the original.

I finish the first 12 songs. I try to respect the original running time.

link : https://www.dropbox.com/s/vs9ecmsd58rxp ... Maxima.zip