What got you into the brothers' music?

[Ashtray Wasp]

What got you into the brothers' music? For how long have you been listening to them? I just wanted to hear some stories, becouse I've seen some on the "Introduce yourself" thread

[clearcut]

in early summer last year, when I was on discogs, I saw BoC appeared a lot in the Recommended section. I had heard of BoC being used in a comparison to GY!BE's All the Lights Tape, as people would prepare insane an insane amount of money for potentially something which could be utter shit (in this case the record being referred to was ------ / ------ / ------ / XXXXXX / ------ / ------).

Before BoC I didn't really listen to much electronic music at all, I was a post-rock/indie rock guy (GY!BE, MMJ, Beta Band)

I was then pretty interesed in BoC when I eventually looked at their discogs page, to find many rare items with lots of tracks on them. This intrigued me a lot because I am into that sort of thing (rare cassettes). So when I was going to sleep one night I decided to go on youtube and listen to 'A Few Old Tunes' because I had noticed the only way I could listen to it was online for free, without being able to get a physical copy. I fucking loved it. I would listen to it every night and occasionally all the way through in the mornings, so I listened to Old Tunes Vol. 2 and R35TT as well and I loved them all so much. After a few months of only listening to the old tunes saga I want to the Chichester HMV and bought 3 CDs, MHTRTC, Geogaddi and TCH. All spectacular, I properly knew I adored this duo when I heard Satellite Anthem Icarus. I then for Xmas last year got IABPOITC and TH on vinyl and Trans-Canada Highway on a CD, and I fell in love with them all instantly (I mean Kid for Today, c'mon).

The Old Tunes Saga remains my favorite BoC albums, due to the amount of tracks, the spontaneousness of the tracks and the replay value (you can listen to these albums again and again and again). Oh, and not forget 5-9-78, Finity, Forest Moon, Magic Teens, Zander Two and Buckie High. What amazing choons.

[re-phaelam-ed]

meth

[Najlepsiejszy]

It's like they feel what I feel. This sounds arrogant, but their music makes me feel very welcome and accepted(except for TH). Especially Old Tunes/Boc Maxima- because there is also a certain degree of intimacy in listening to them. They help me enjoy life (except for TH).

[IronMark]

A few years ago, I was already heavily into ambient electronic music and had heard the name Boards Of Canada. I knew there was a band called Boards Of Canada but I didn't know anything about them, for some reason I had assumed they were an avant-garde indie band in the same vein as The Arcade Fire etc.

Anyway, I was watching something on Youtube and when it finished, one of the suggested videos had a thumbnail of some kids with monkey masks on riding vintage bicycles which really caught my attention, so I decided to give this "Everything You Do Is A Balloon" malarkey a try and see what it was all about. Jesus Christ, talk about love at first listen, I fell madly in love, hook line and sinker and have never looked back since.

I think maybe only two other bands besides BoC have had such a huge and immediate impact on me in my entire, music-obsessive life and neither of the others sound anything like BoC. The only reason I can think of why I was so immediately taken with them is when I was a kid I used to have this vision of the type of music I'd love to make some day. Dark, atmospheric, dissonant and shrouded in mystery (although I didn't know how to vocalise it at the time) and I had never heard any music that sounded like what I wanted to hear in that sense until I heard BoC so when people talk about how a band "speaks" to them - it sounds like a pretentious load of horseshit most of the time and I never really bought into it but I'd have to concede that BoC's music resonated with a part of me that nothing else in the world has ever been able to touch.

[Peacock Tail]

This is probably an incredibly boring answer but Radiohead got me into BOC.

[Mexicola]

As above.
As with Sigur Ros.

[Aerial Boundaries]

About 4 years ago now, I stumbled across a video from some american freestyle dance competition. One of the guys on there chose Dawn Chorus as his soundtrack, and I thought it sounded very interesting so I looked up the track and bookmarked it.

Back then I didn't really listen to music that much, and I would never listen to whole albums so I saved Dawn Chorus and played it now and then, and pretty much forgot all about Boards of Canada for a few months. It is one of those things where you listen to something superficially and like it for the general aesthetic, the melody, the beat, but you don't really read into it much.

Anyway fast forward six months and thanks to another artist (the clue is in my username), my ears were opening up to the utterly unique and beautiful art form that is music. Some people get it from a young age, but if you are like me and it happens later on in your adolescence, it is a complete revelation. I was developing this ear for detail, starting to actually analyse and take in what I was listening to.

A new friend of mine mentioned Boards of Canada and I once again took interest. So I went back to my bookmark and looked up Geogaddi, and gave it a listen. It was hard to take in, it is such a monolithic album and becomes even more so the more you listen to it. I put it to the side and gave Campfire Headphase a spin, which I loved and still love, I never once found it 'top-heavy' or simplistic. For me it had and has just as much going on musically as any other work they have done, and what I loved the most is how cohesive it is to me.

There is a very very strong sense of movement and narrative in all of their work and it really propelled me into listening to their discography and with the help of bocpages (thanks a million fredd-e) and this forum (you too aesthetics) I got to looking into all the concepts and ideas that they intricately weave into every track. It was and still is the most detailed, thoughtful, patient and really human work that I know. There are a lot of artists that come close but none of them for me have succeeded where BOC has. And despite being based on their experiences in a time I never lived in, they have managed to actually synthesise a nostalgia for me, with everything I know about them now it so easy for me to picture what people thought the future would be like, how utopian and hopeful the vision was at one time.

Even with everything they've made me think about in terms of 'finding god', the past and memory, how we develop as people, what we were back in those decades and what we wanted to be, thought we would be, I think what I thank them the most for is making me trust an artist when they are trying to provoke you to think about something.

So, it is funny how a quirky youtube video (side note: the guy who danced in it actually ended up doing a commercial for budweiser or some company like that) ended up launching me into a different way of thinking and generally made my life more fulfilled.

PS. They also massively helped me in dealing with my depression at one point, their music is very empathetic and solitary.

[Najlepsiejszy]

Are Radiohead inspired by BoC or is it the other way around? Either way, it's awesome

[noisy]

Delving back into the mists of time...

I Can clearly remember the National Film Boards of Canada movies and animations that were shown on BBC 2 and much later, on Channel 4 . They were diverse and very interesting and often very funny , great to watch and very educational. Some stayed with me for years. When I first heard Of BOC they were trickling through in the music press and MHTRTC was just about to be released, I was already intruiged by the name and when I first saw the faceless family on the cover with its lovely pale blue soaked hue ( the original artwork) I just had to have it.
from the opening strains of Wildlife Analysis I was Immediately drawn in...
Hook line and sinkered.
The rest my friends is history...

[Aerial Boundaries]

Are Radiohead inspired by BoC or is it the other way around? Either way, it's awesome

If there is any connection, it is the former as far as my memory serves. I think Thom Yorke has mentioned them.



Bass line reminds me of roygbiv a little.

[timestoad]

In Summer 2013 (after TH came out), a friend introduced me to Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin. Before that, the only electronic that I'd really listened to was Moby and Brian Eno, and was mainly into rock. I soon discovered Autechre and the whole IDM thing and after not too long was very deep down the rabbit and never looked back

[jcnporter]

I can't exactly pinpoint what got me into BoC, I've always read music magazines and used them as a reference to expand my horizons - from fairly standard indie/rock/dance into stuff like Sigur Ros, Spiritualized, Mogwai, Low etc. in my 20s, basically stuff that was getting good reviews and sounded like I might like it. Eventually that led to electronic and then, later, ambient stuff - I can remember always being aware of BoC being mentioned, since I guess MHTRTC came out, then their profile increased (at least in the music press) with Geogaddi. I think it was then their reputation for hidden messages etc in the music that made me curious enough to check them out and when I did I think it was the sheer strangeness of Geogaddi compared to anything else at the time that attracted me. Anyway, according to my Amazon account I bought it in 2005 and I suppose went from there.

[Fireal420]

Are Radiohead inspired by BoC or is it the other way around? Either way, it's awesome

If there is any connection, it is the former as far as my memory serves. I think Thom Yorke has mentioned them.



Bass line reminds me of roygbiv a little.

years ago i remember reading something about Thom Yorke being influenced by BOC. i'm pretty sure i remember it being during their kid a/amnesiac era where he said he was finding inspiration in their music, Radiohead even toyed with reversing music, on the album Amnesiac if you take the track "like spinning plates", and play it backwards, it contains the rhythm for the track, "I Will" from Hail To The Thief.

[ShaneAnthony]

It's like they feel what I feel. This sounds arrogant, but their music makes me feel very welcome and accepted(except for TH). Especially Old Tunes/Boc Maxima- because there is also a certain degree of intimacy in listening to them. They help me enjoy life (except for TH).

Try taking a long break from the internet, and then listen to TH.

[arvy]

Internet

[Najlepsiejszy]

It's like they feel what I feel. This sounds arrogant, but their music makes me feel very welcome and accepted(except for TH). Especially Old Tunes/Boc Maxima- because there is also a certain degree of intimacy in listening to them. They help me enjoy life (except for TH).

Try taking a long break from the internet, and then listen to TH.

So I'll find another distraction. Also thanks for the subtle hints that I'm a nerd. I'm not proud of my life or myself, and no amounts of breaks from the Internet will change that, ok? I don't need another downer album playing in my ears

[Mexicola]

I don't think that was what he was saying Naj. Come on fella, we're not trying to nark you

[maxd98]

I had just gotten a premium subscription to spotify late last year. I was going through radio stations (spotify) based on my current playlist, which was pretty much just Balmorhea and Bonobo at that point. I think the Bonobo stuff triggered Reach for the Dead to come on (this is a radio station based off of my main spotify playlist). I like the song immediately, and added it to my playlist. A few days later, when I was working on some long assignment, I decided that I was going to just give BoC a chance, so I looked through their discography on Spotify and the artwork for Music Has the Right captured my attention. It looked creepy enough. I had just assumed up to that point, only listening to reach for the dead, that BoC, assuming from the plural Boards that this was a fairly large group, like 4-5 people in the band. I thought that reach for the dead was some sort of instrumental interlude. I then listened to the entirety of Music Has The Right to Children completely enraptured. Front to back, without stop. I almost forgot to even start working on my assignment. Once I started seriously working though, the music seemed to become even better. Thanks to the easy availability of the main BoC albums on Spotify, I listened to Tomorrows Harvest (where my first song from them came from), then Campfire (its still growing on me), then Twoism and Hi Scores. I had known that, looking at Geogaddi's cover, I needed to be in a quiet place and have a lot of time to listen to this. I was right. I was initially absolutely terrified by Geo, but I've gotten over that now and I love Geo.

Embarrassing side note: I looked up reviews for all the albums (hobbyy of mine to just look up reviews for stuff I like, no matter how old), and I would see references to the EP's (Trans Canada, Peel Session, etc.), but I couldn't find them. I assumed they weren't available. Then two months later I finally looked under the "Singles" tab, and there they were. It was like searching for years and years and years and finally discovering a cave full of gold.

[warphead]

Same label as Aphex Twin. But I didn't really get the bug straight away. Took years to acquire but now can't shake it off.