BOC's Output: One Consecutive Work and the future of LP5?

[Echelon]

I decided to make a separate thread on this, inspired by Fredd-E's suggestion, but has anyone ever looked at BOC's LPs on a macrocosmic scale? Do you believe that there is a narrative that they are trying to tell with them? And do you think it could give us some future insight on their next album?

In their interviews, BOC reference their first three albums as a trilogy:

It's like the closing of a trilogy for us; there's a bit of Music Has the Right to Children in the new record, because this one has that same fresh out-in-the-open sound, which was exactly what we wanted after the darker abstract tunes on Geogaddi,

Not only this, but they suggested in a TCH era interview that TCH and Farewell Fire specifically was the end of the line for their classic run:

In the United States, burning in the open is called "farewell fire".. So you could say that "Farewell Fire" is our own okuribi. Because this song was a send off for the music that has been made up to this day.

If we take this into account, everything after Headphase is meant to be different. The first three albums feature faceless people on the cover, possibly representing fading memories/people, but, as Demo pointed out in the general speculation thread: TH features a vanishing city instead.

So can we draw any conclusions about what's next from this supposed narrative? Will LP5 continue this saga that they are trying to tell? I really do like Demo's theory about a fading universe following this fading city.

This is technically general speculation too, but I also want people try to view this possible LP5 on a grand scale of their entire output instead. Happy theorizing and let's hope May gives us some more food for thought

[NorthSaturnian]

i see the first 3 lps sort of like a rollercoaster. starting off slow with music has the right to children, peaking in intensity and "weight" at geogaddi, and slowing back down with campfire
so if they were to follow the same formula for the next album trilogy, id expect lp5 to be a distorted and fucked up, almost inverse version of tomorrows harvest. a space theme wouldnt be too far of a stretch, but i dont think theyd make it explicitly about the heat death of the universe, or something nihilistic for that matter
i just doubt theyd do two albums back to back about decay. maybe lp6, since they could aim to draw parallels with tomorrows harvest, akin to how campfire resembles MHTRTC in some ways.

basically i expect a happier theme for lp5. continuing with the space theme theory, maybe it will be about the colonization of other worlds, like some have speculated. the childlike naivety and hopefulness of a ruined civilization fleeing whats left of earth after the events of TH, expecting to find a new and perfect home on another planet. then lp6 could be about how those plans and hopes ended in disaster

again, this is all speculation. i have no idea what theme they're going to go for next (yes i know why even bother posting this then), but i know they won't disappoint

[rodox_head]

If we go with the concept of TH being the start of a new trilogy of albums, I feel like it would end up mirroring the first. The way TH is constructed like various interrupting radio broadcasts fighting for the same frequency, or cutting in and out from someone turning the dial themselves, would reflect the mixtape-esque structure of MHTRTC, which was based on more positive memories of early childhood.

Geogaddi, whilst aligning with a post 9/11 mostly coincidentally, is almost like a mental collision of ideals where we're constantly deriding ourselves over our own perceptions of good/bad, right/wrong, and real/fake. It's not so much saying we're doomed, but that things can get scary sometimes, and peace is achievable and demonstrated with the last few tracks (and I include FOSATD as the true final track as an epilogue of a sort). Alpha & Omega proposes this idea of being truly in control of our own destiny (for better or worse) before winding down into the more psychedelic and meditative side of the album.

The Campfire Headphase is like a naive, yet not wrong, sense of hope as one grows through adulthood. The pacing of the track list is calm and smooth in comparison to its predecessors. No "Sixtyten"s or "Julie and Candy"s to be found, just the soundscape of enjoying everyday life, but eventually the concept of time catches up with you. Things are changing, slowing down, you start to get a little more depressed over time, and you wonder if this is it as the internal fire starts to fade into mere smoldering embers.

So basically, I'd expect it to be a more Geogaddi approach in the next LP, and if Treat 'em Right is anything to go by, I predict the usage of dark techno, industrial sounds, possibly a heavier emphasis on percussion (the beat was incredibly similar to "Breakbeat Etiquette" by Omni Trio). "Vessel" by NIN would be an example of the kind of sound I'm thinking of. "Year Zero" was essentially NIN's "Tomorrow's Harvest".

One little thing I've noticed is that all three of the oringial trilogy had "epilogue" tracks. Happy Cycling, FOSATD, and Macquarie Ridge (yeah, they're bonus tracks, but work with me here). Tomorrow's Harvest doesn't have anything like that, just Semena Mertvykh and then nothing. It's like an extra stamp of bleakness to the albums that implies there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

[babylulu]

This actually ties in with my hopes perfectly! If TH is about the destruction of civilization, maybe BoC5 will be about the rebuilding of civilization! Folklore inspired! The quiet and mysterious sensibilities of British countryside folklore mixed with the BoC trademark, it’d make perfect sense !!! But that’s just me getting excited

[Sky and Trails]

Instead of concept albums, it would be a concept discography?

That was my interpretation.

If Tomorrow's Harvest was the result of their having witnessed 9/11 then they can't help but be reactive with any concepts in their music. The next album would have to somehow acknowledge what's going in the world as they experience it, so maybe it's 'concept' might simply be surreality.

Throw that into the mix and their entire discography is a touching reflection of life on Earth.

It is a consecutive work.

I speculated way too much.

[Echelon]

These are some good posts already people. Thanks for replying! I enjoy hearing how everyone feels about their output on a grand scale. Especially since they are such an ambitious group

[rodox_head]

Is the idea of a space themed album that's been shared a lot solely based on the pioneer plaque image, or is there something I missed?

[Burning Shadow]

If the next album is “space themed” here’s a suggestion about how it could follow on from Tomorrows Harvest

TH is about the world becoming uninhabitable

You could take a view that currently there are political accelerationists who appear quite nonchalant about collapsing systems on earth, not particularly bothered about climate change, and more concerned about extracting money from the economy and hoarding wealth. When it all goes to shit they’re gonna be ok, cos they have their billions of dollars, let the world burn.

Tech bros like Elon Musk who don’t care if the planet is ruined because their future is on Mars. You can see this when his ex Grimes talks about “The Mission” and how when she dies it will be on Mars

So if the next album is a space album I’d suggest a BoC way of doing it would be to go super dark, but based on trends we can see happening now. Space is for the nihilists who have left an uninhabitable planet behind. Who’s on the spaceships, the regular joe or the billionaire? Who are the pioneers, the wide eyed innocents or the capitalists in search of new resources to exploit?

[Echelon]

Burning Shadow that's a legitimately awesome idea. BOC have stated that they hold fairly radical views about politics and the environment and I could honestly see them commenting on the corruption of space travel. Much like cults and hippie esque life in the woods, space travel, a once idealistic product of dreamers is now used for evil.

This could very well be Geogaddi in space. Which I'm all for.

[Orbited insanitarium]

The way I see the current main studio albums is this.

I've thought about what distances the trilogy of albums and Tomorrow's Harvest.
It's Humanity.

The first three albums, whimsical Sesame Street child samples, nature, people's yearning and nostalgic memories. I picture a green forest when playing either MHTRTC or TCH. Outdoors, warm and spacious like a crackling fire.

Tomorrow's Harvest on the other hand is just as direct and unfiltered with it's themes, but completely the opposite. Cold and brooding. There is an element of humanity like the previous albums but it is nowhere near as strong.

The best way I can describe Tomorrow's Harvest is that it's like BOC are inviting people to look back through their catalog. What was before and what is now.
It's foreboding not because it sounds like an societal and ecological collapse of the future but because it reminds you about what isn't present in the album.
If anything Tomorrow's Harvest is their most nostalgic work because it invites listeners to peek in it's world, a surreal dystopian world of little or no life.

It wouldn't hit home so hard today if BoC didn't grow the human life soundscapes which they elaborated on the previous albums. It's not whimsical or warm. The mental imagery has been turned on it's head.

In my view the album was a look back at how their mindsets has changed between The Campfire Headphase and Tomorrow's Harvest rather than looking into a near desolate future.

———-

What this means for LP5, I don't know. But it seems like it will definitely follow a natural progression from TH.

[rodox_head]

Tomorrow's Harvest on the other hand is just as direct and unfiltered with it's themes, but completely the opposite. Cold and brooding. There is an element of humanity like the previous albums but it is nowhere near as strong.

The best way I can describe Tomorrow's Harvest is that it's like BOC are inviting people to look back through their catalog. What was before and what is now.
It's foreboding not because it sounds like an societal and ecological collapse of the future but because it reminds you about what isn't present in the album.
If anything Tomorrow's Harvest is their most nostalgic work because it invites listeners to peek in it's world, a surreal dystopian world of little or no life.

It wouldn't hit home so hard today if BoC didn't grow the human life soundscapes which they elaborated on the previous albums. It's not whimsical or warm. The mental imagery has been turned on it's head.

In my view the album was a look back at how their mindsets has changed between The Campfire Headphase and Tomorrow's Harvest rather than looking into a near desolate future.

To me, the thread that runs through MHTRTC all the way to Trans Canada Highway is a meditation on humanity's relationship within themselves, with a lot of references to elements of spirituality and memory. Tomorrow's Harvest feels more like humanity's relationship to the world around them, be it nature or other cultures and civilizations, which can be a lot more of a bleak concept than an internal one. I think the multilingual titles make a dual reference to us being divided by arbitrary things, but also unified by the same goal of progress; Tomorrow's Harvest so to speak.

I've been thinking about the Pioneer Plaque and how it fits with this theme. The image was made to represent the human race on a totally physical level to extraterrestrial life that would have absolutely no idea what a human is. Whether this was meant to be a clue, or just something they thought looked cool, I think it's representative on some level to what's been on their minds lately, not really that we're going to space, but what is our relation to the real world on a grander level. I could totally believe that a future LP would make references to concepts of Accelerationism and Futurism.

[Sky and Trails]

A quick thought on Tomorrow's Harvest...

I originally thought that the album itself was the harvest. But now I'm starting to think that the album was simply sowing seeds for the next album. The next album truly will be Tomorrow's Harvest.

Maybe this means Tomorrow's Harvest is a metaphorical look into the machinery and tools of planting, the "agriculture" of their music/message/concept.

Now I have to tie this into the idea of one consecutive work...


Perhaps the overriding message is of lost childhood.

I love the idea that they would do a space themed album but it feels too perfect for them and the defeatist inside of me feels like they won't do such an album because it might make me too happy

[Echelon]

If we go with the concept of TH being the start of a new trilogy of albums, I feel like it would end up mirroring the first. The way TH is constructed like various interrupting radio broadcasts fighting for the same frequency, or cutting in and out from someone turning the dial themselves, would reflect the mixtape-esque structure of MHTRTC, which was based on more positive memories of early childhood.

Geogaddi, whilst aligning with a post 9/11 mostly coincidentally, is almost like a mental collision of ideals where we're constantly deriding ourselves over our own perceptions of good/bad, right/wrong, and real/fake. It's not so much saying we're doomed, but that things can get scary sometimes, and peace is achievable and demonstrated with the last few tracks (and I include FOSATD as the true final track as an epilogue of a sort). Alpha & Omega proposes this idea of being truly in control of our own destiny (for better or worse) before winding down into the more psychedelic and meditative side of the album.

The Campfire Headphase is like a naive, yet not wrong, sense of hope as one grows through adulthood. The pacing of the track list is calm and smooth in comparison to its predecessors. No "Sixtyten"s or "Julie and Candy"s to be found, just the soundscape of enjoying everyday life, but eventually the concept of time catches up with you. Things are changing, slowing down, you start to get a little more depressed over time, and you wonder if this is it as the internal fire starts to fade into mere smoldering embers.

So basically, I'd expect it to be a more Geogaddi approach in the next LP, and if Treat 'em Right is anything to go by, I predict the usage of dark techno, industrial sounds, possibly a heavier emphasis on percussion (the beat was incredibly similar to "Breakbeat Etiquette" by Omni Trio). "Vessel" by NIN would be an example of the kind of sound I'm thinking of. "Year Zero" was essentially NIN's "Tomorrow's Harvest".

One little thing I've noticed is that all three of the oringial trilogy had "epilogue" tracks. Happy Cycling, FOSATD, and Macquarie Ridge (yeah, they're bonus tracks, but work with me here). Tomorrow's Harvest doesn't have anything like that, just Semena Mertvykh and then nothing. It's like an extra stamp of bleakness to the albums that implies there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

You know speaking of the bonus tracks, imagine if Seeds of The Dead was the bonus track on those editions? It would be fun getting an imported edition and expecting a bit of light after a bleak album but instead getting that cold bucket of water instead.

It would have continued BOCs streak of ace bonus tracks too.

[WATER_CAN-_-]

Not sure if it was intended this way from the start, but from my current standpoint, I do see BoC's output as one consecutive work. While exceedingly difficult to articulate, there are themes that are present throughout.

These themes are:

a. Deep appreciate of nature and the beauty of nature, wildlife, mathematics, childhood memories and nostalgia, memories and nostalgia for adolescents and young adulthood, love and family, and North American Indian culture (that tend to be of the belief that the land, plants, and animals are sacred)

b. However, there are also the darker themes, such as the irrationality of people, and how a group of people can be manipulated to behave and think in an irrational manner and perhaps meet a destructive end (geogaddi - seems to be from a child's perspective observing adults behavior)

c. Finally, with Tomorrow's Harvest, it's almost about (b.) the irrational and the fearful leading to the precariousness of (a.) all that is perhaps truly meaningful in life. Specifically, the behavior or the Nazis in WW2 leading to the opening of the Pandora's box which was the Manhattan Project, leading to a looming threat that life as we know it that many of us take for granted, can be gone in an instant. With such considerations, and with considerations of technology, it becomes apparent that other looming threats to everything many of us hold dear exist such as anthropological climate change also leading to environmental collapse...

[hexagonFox]

I really love this thread.

In short, as I dont't have time to construct a full length post.

I think there is subtle clues and or hints to our next LP

Inside of their interviews, Album artwork, etc

Call me crazy

Or call me

Orange

[Twentington]

I really want the next LP to be packing some serious flower power, that is all.

[Quadrivium]

I’ve always viewed BoCs work as analogous to life / growing up.

mhtrtc - childhood, nostalgia. The formative years
geogaddi - teenage years, learning about the world, forming opinions of your own and being confronted with societal norms. Exploring alternative lifestyles.
tch - post uni / college years. Early adulthood and freedom. Discovering some of the world and the beauty of it all.
th - Adults. Having faced the reality and hardships of life. Seeing the effects of our 21st century lifestyle and globalisation and realising what little is being done to offset this, is likely too late.
Album 5 - ?

[Magic Orange]

If the first 3 albums is really a trilogy and they have been released in a period of almost 10 years, them the next 3 will be released in a very long period, considering that Tomorrow's Harvest was released after 8 years of The Campfire Headphase, i could imagine the LP6 being finished until 2040.

[SamuraiDrifter]

Well, they mentioned in an interview they view their first 3 albums as parts of a trilogy, which makes Tomorrow's Harvest the odd one out. So I feel like whether or not there's a second "series" being started after the first 3 albums will depend on where they go after TH, with LP5. And I honestly have no idea. We know that in the years before TH they hinted at its themes with the mushroom cloud banner on the BOC Warp page, which makes me think the Voyager banner on YouTube, the "I feel good" clip, their social media shenanigans, etc. could be clues as to where they're going next.

The only theory I've really come up with is that the posting across multiple social media pages both verified and unverified and adding/deleting posts, seeming to intentionally create confusion about what's legit and what's not, might hint at one theme of the next release being the effect of social media on the perception of truth. But I really don't know.

[μasch]

Yeah, when listening to it, i always felt that the campfire headphase was like an echo of the first album, but with scars from geogaddi. Funny how in all it's organic wilderness, their discography ends up following a pretty simple structure.

MHTRTC : Thesis
Geogaddi : Antithesis
Campfire Headphase : Synthesis

Tho i never thought TH as isolated from the trilogy. Imo it made sense as a continuation, and even a conclusion for the post-traumatic evolution of Campfdire headphase, but i'll just have to wait and see what LP5 is about !