10. The Word Becomes Flesh

[jcnporter]

I hadn't read this thread, just saw Backrooms and was leaving while the end credits ran and suddenly thought....hold on a minute!
Loved Backrooms, by the way.

[The Other]

I hadn't read this thread, just saw Backrooms and was leaving while the end credits ran and suddenly thought....hold on a minute!
Loved Backrooms, by the way.

Just saw Backrooms today. Stuck around to listen as the credits rolled. Damn did the theatre have a fantastic sound system and this sounded incredible. Saw several people Shazam the song as they were leaving. They just got introduced in to a whole new world lol. Backrooms was great.

As far the song goes, it is an absolute head nodder. The way they play with vocal
Samples on this entire album is an absolute master class. Something they have always done really well but, have just perfected over the years.

[Seat of Consciousness]

Wonder what the story is about someone at A24 hearing the new BoC early enough that they could get it into Backrooms the day it and Inferno released.

[Den]

The delays at the end sound so dub. And I'm in awe of the phrasing on the vocals.

[The Other]

Wonder what the story is about someone at A24 hearing the new BoC early enough that they could get it into Backrooms the day it and Inferno released.

I wondered that same thing. I don’t think it was written specifically for the film as it just plays during the end credits. So in reality they could have used anything that would fit thematically with Backrooms. Maybe BoC were approached to make a track for the closing credits and offered this track up as it would coincide with the release of their album.

[Josh]

My guess is Warp approached A24. Kane Parsons did an entire score himself. Someone at Warp probably decided this was a synergistic opportunity and was willing to pay.

[Seat of Consciousness]

Wonder what the story is about someone at A24 hearing the new BoC early enough that they could get it into Backrooms the day it and Inferno released.

I wondered that same thing. I don’t think it was written specifically for the film as it just plays during the end credits. So in reality they could have used anything that would fit thematically with Backrooms. Maybe BoC were approached to make a track for the closing credits and offered this track up as it would coincide with the release of their album.

OK, so my working theory is now that BoC's kids are huge Backrooms fans and the brothers reached out to Kane Pixels to put a song in the film as the ultimate cool dad move

[Ectonaut]

The entire vibe in this track reminds me a great deal of Brian Eno's Nerve Net album. Younger fans who have not yet checked out this absolutet masterpiece is encouraged to do so. You'll also find some Tomorrow's Harvest vibes

[halfdane]

does anyone else think the last 10 seconds sound SUPER similar to the tidbit of Circle we have from Hooper Bay or am i just going insane? the warbling feels almost identical to me, but modernized and obviously in better quality

[Altruizine]

Oh my God I just listened to this separately from the album as a one-off because of what I had read about it.

That was ridiculously creative.

Sorry, I have a hard time not bringing this up. I'm glad I managed to really tune into it and experience it "purely". Now that it's over I'm thinking of past experiences of sharing something like that with another person and having them react in a hurtful way.

Like my sister who made me put music her mp3 player when we were teenagers, didn't instruct me on what to put in there and then would mock the stuff I put in there, which was from my own music library. BoC among others, stuff that was very special to me.

As a teenager that tends to get hardwired into your brain. "Haha what are you listening to XDDD"

Fuck off.

Sorry but The Word Becomes Flesh is an absolute work of art. As far as I'm concerned whoever hears it and says that crap from before is... Mabussss.

[Altruizine]

It was SO GOOD. I'm genuinely hurt if someone comes at me and disagrees. I listened to Naraka earlier today and I'm listening to it now. It's great but this is better. I don't care about listening to Naraka casually every so often. The Word Becomes Flesh however... I'm gonna hold back on this one

[turquoise70]

At my local record shop's listening party last night, after this song played, multiple people turned to one another in shock. Saying things like "that's the standout right there", "holy shit", etc. The groove and chops are immaculate on this one.

Similar experience at my listening party at Rainy Day in Olympia. There were a couple differenet points in the album that made us lift our heads and look around at each other, and this was one of them.

Perfect air of menace mixed with a hypnotic groove (I'm noticing that a lot on this album, a large swath of it has "drum circle"-sounding percussion rhythms, reminds me of certain stuff off Maxima a lot). But then the vocal bits are just... arresting. No other word for it. They start in and everybody's effing sleeper code activates.

[Cupz]

Meanwhile

[akirako]

I wonder what kind of machinery was sampled for the beat. It kinda sounds like an old printer to me but I guess it could be anything. Maybe Inferno could have a theme of brainwashing/religion/propaganda/socially accepted common sense as a way of artificially creating a specific kind of life, or maybe some link between technology and the aforementioned, and I wonder whether that ties into AI anxiety. The more I listen to Inferno, the more I think it feels very "biomechanical" in that Akira/Beyond the Black Rainbow kind of way, and bringing the kind of social discourse that needs some sort of mind control into it sounds like an interesting premise to me. But I could be way off!

[Rikkiebags]

This is absolutely my current hard rotation track that I'm listening to by itself.

[steeldancer-x]

Definitely a printer.
Gets more and more complex as it goes on, but the printer stays… all the sound/technology stems from there. Muh printing press lol

Man, we’re all so fucking BORED. And sometimes boredom bornes delinquency. Or how does the saying go… complacency breeds contempt?

[ryetronics]

Meanwhile

This is about the closest we get on Inferno to a proper "drop" and it's glorious!

[drvaughan]

I wonder what kind of machinery was sampled for the beat. It kinda sounds like an old printer to me but I guess it could be anything. Maybe Inferno could have a theme of brainwashing/religion/propaganda/socially accepted common sense as a way of artificially creating a specific kind of life, or maybe some link between technology and the aforementioned, and I wonder whether that ties into AI anxiety. The more I listen to Inferno, the more I think it feels very "biomechanical" in that Akira/Beyond the Black Rainbow kind of way, and bringing the kind of social discourse that needs some sort of mind control into it sounds like an interesting premise to me. But I could be way off!

Interesting re: Akira and Beyond the Black Rainbow. I loved that movie and its score was a big part of it. And I'll go with you on the bio-, neuro-, psycho-engineering ideas, which I also think are present in this track, starting with the title.

There's the obvious Biblical reference and its place in the overall themes and narrative of the album, but it's the technological sounds that give John 1:14 a new dimension for me here. I feel that previously, wherever M&M have mixed in or referenced religion or religious samples/material, the music has been more "organic" sounding; grainier, blurrier. But this is different; everything about it feels "high tech" to me, mechanical, hyperefficient, and endless. Then you've got the printer sounds and robotic TTS stuff. And then the mixing and production and mastering are in on it: it feels big and pumping and overwhelming.

For me, "Words" here are exactly that: words. Books, laws, prompts, lines of code. But then these ideas become "flesh": our world, the reality we share and negotiate. As an example, we can say that "race is a social construct," that is, it doesn't really exist, but it absolutely plays a role in everyday social and private life, so it kinda does exist. "Doing the work" to undo these types of discriminations in our society is obviously proving difficult for something that "doesn't really but kinda does" exist.

Imagine how difficult it will be once those discriminations can be written into our genetic code. This article on the Guardian came out the day after the album did. Creepy stuff, in my opinion, and creepier still for the inevitability presented by the "biotech" entrepreneur Cathy Tie, highlighted in the article. https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... ify-babies

Now, or soon, we can edit the DNA of germline cells and create generational changes in humans. I don't think I'm being too creative when I suggest that if/when this technology, science, and logic enters our culture, it will be used to reinforce abstract concepts and reify them as actual, scientific discriminations.

"Designer babies, super-smart or super good-looking, are inevitable." - He Jiankui, lovingly referred to as "China's Dr. Frankenstein" in the article mentioned above.

Will these babies simply be "designer" products, luxuries for the rich and bored, or will they be used to reinforce abstract concepts (words) into reality (flesh)?

Taking a look at John 1:14 again, the first sentence suggests God taking some form in Jesus (I'll leave the Christians among us to articulate the finer points of that), but it's the second sentence that really intrigues me:

"We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

We are engaged in a project that will eventually leave us as the inferior at the end of it. We create and will marvel at what we've created even as it renders us superfluous.

Baudrillard: "The current revolution is different than previous historical revolutions—it is a truly anthropological revolution: a revolution in the automatic perfection of technical devices and in the definitive disqualification of human beings, of whom they are not even aware."

Leaving only the robotic voice at the end of the track.

[sowhereareyouliving?]

Soon a vig-or-ous-ly beat-ing heart is pump-ing blood throughout the com-plex em-bry-o

[green calx]

Im sorry I haven't made an effort to skim through the topic yet, but have you also had a feeling there's a second voice whispering in the left channel along with the lady and the robot?