15. Arena Americanada

[Negamuse]

LOOK XD

OK, this one. I do get that it's got similarities with stuff that was used on soundtracks in the 70s to accompany moody driving. I will 100% concede that.

But c'mon, we've had a decade now of people making stuff like this No shade to L'Avenue, that stuff's great mood-chasing stuff but *THAT'S* your sleeves rolled up to your elbows, while you misremember what the 80s was actually like. It's the romance of the Hollywood 80s without the grit and the madness and the fear you'd never get to see the 90s.

Arena Americanada sounds properly authentically cinematic. You're not driving that road because your angular Ferarri matches your suit, you're not even driving your KITT wannabe in a leather jacket like in Pontiac Dream. You're driving a shitty Chevrolet that you got cheap off a guy cos the back seat had to be ripped out after That Thing That Happened and it's heads or tails if the engine's gonna blow before it runs out of gas. You just needed something that you could use to get out of town before They find you, and still have money for a motel room and a bottle of forgetting juice.

More seriously, those chords are something that only a session musician who knows some jazz would do, and they're picking up soundtrack work on the side. It's a cool track, I love it.

[WATER_CAN-_-]

[astral deeps]

Absolutely my favorite track off Inferno. The bass/guitar sound reminds me heavily of the Liquid Stack preset from the Emulator II, literally my favorite preset sound of all time. Tangerine Dream used it really often in the 80s. While I see the sort of 80s synthwave (I hate that term haha) thing, I hear that for sure, but more than anything it gives me this late 80s/early 90s TV thing, like Unsolved Mysteries bumps/the intro credits to an old true crime show. I don't listen to synthwave/vaporwave stuff much, but I'd never heard someone scratch that itch in the way that this tune does. So tastefully done.

Does anyone find it interesting how in the "choruses", if you can call them that, a burst of noise/tape hiss comes through with some of the chords? At 2:01 and 3:34, it's really prevalent. It seems like the chords, which are different sounds in both parts respectively, carry the noise with them, but its strange because at 2:01 it's just the very last two chords of that chorus section. I guess they're sampled (probably from themselves) or something, but I do find it interesting. The whole album has a lot of blatant tape hiss in sections, in a way I've actually never heard from BoC. For instance, '84 Pontiac Dream is filled with little sampled synth snippets like that, and I really never hear the tape hiss or anything. The mixing on this album is sooo wild, man.

I also can't help but think that the choppy, panned sound that comes in at 2:33 sounds like a human voice, singing. Someone mentioned the gulls/waves at the end, I think they come in right around there, like 2:28, and stick around for the rest of the track. I am probably hearing wrong, but I also hear a sound verrrry low in the mix that reminds me of "Constants Are Changing" (or another track I can't place) coming in at the start of the outro, though I could be imagining it. There are definitely a few voices buried in there, in the right channel" as well.

[747Music]

Ya, this song evokes visuals in my head involving a muscled man mounted on a machine gun attached to the back of a jeep. Very Mad Max style meets Rambo, but also guys attacking him on horseback with various weapons. Also feel some Thunderdome in there along with the fight to the death between Kirk and Spock. That whole style of arena combat. All captured on aged VHS tapes.

I love that the second half turns into really positive sounding vibes. Victory.
This feels like such a perfect soundtrack song. Really takes me on a journey.

I also wonder if perhaps this Arena Americanada is the grounds for the "great war" mentioned in All Reason Departs.

[astral deeps]

Ya, this song evokes visuals in my head involving a muscled man mounted on a machine gun attached to the back of a jeep. Very Mad Max style meets Rambo, but also guys attacking him on horseback with various weapons. Also feel some Thunderdome in there along with the fight to the death between Kirk and Spock. That whole style of arena combat. All captured on aged VHS tapes.

I love that the second half turns into really positive sounding vibes. Victory.
This feels like such a perfect soundtrack song. Really takes me on a journey.

I also wonder if perhaps this Arena Americanada is the grounds for the "great war" mentioned in All Reason Departs.

Yea I get a similar vibe from it. The background skittering percussion really reminds me of machine gun fire in the distance, and that bass rhythm also gives me that vibe. Like bursts of gunfire, to the point I can't unsee that in my mind. I do think the "Great War" is Arena Americanada, and it made me think of something interesting about the end of the album. The Process sort of feels like an invasion in some way, like rounding people up. I get the same exact vibe from The Process that I get from Split Your Infinites, maybe less heartbreaking, until the second half. Then we get "You Retreat Into Time And Space". The title of that track at first seems like something psychedelic and relaxing, but I tend to think that it happens after a "war" and thus "retreat" has a different meaning. Sort of like, humanity lost the war, and retreats into space or through deep time, i.e. Musk/Bezos obsession with leaving earth, James Webb telescope yearning for the lost answers of time within space...etc. Nothing groundbreaking, but as a narrative it sort of makes "You Retreat" fit.

[747Music]

Ya, this song evokes visuals in my head involving a muscled man mounted on a machine gun attached to the back of a jeep. Very Mad Max style meets Rambo, but also guys attacking him on horseback with various weapons. Also feel some Thunderdome in there along with the fight to the death between Kirk and Spock. That whole style of arena combat. All captured on aged VHS tapes.

I love that the second half turns into really positive sounding vibes. Victory.
This feels like such a perfect soundtrack song. Really takes me on a journey.

I also wonder if perhaps this Arena Americanada is the grounds for the "great war" mentioned in All Reason Departs.

Yea I get a similar vibe from it. The background skittering percussion really reminds me of machine gun fire in the distance, and that bass rhythm also gives me that vibe. Like bursts of gunfire, to the point I can't unsee that in my mind. I do think the "Great War" is Arena Americanada, and it made me think of something interesting about the end of the album. The Process sort of feels like an invasion in some way, like rounding people up. I get the same exact vibe from The Process that I get from Split Your Infinites, maybe less heartbreaking, until the second half. Then we get "You Retreat Into Time And Space". The title of that track at first seems like something psychedelic and relaxing, but I tend to think that it happens after a "war" and thus "retreat" has a different meaning. Sort of like, humanity lost the war, and retreats into space or through deep time, i.e. Musk/Bezos obsession with leaving earth, James Webb telescope yearning for the lost answers of time within space...etc. Nothing groundbreaking, but as a narrative it sort of makes "You Retreat" fit.

I kinda suspect that the war is something we fight within ourselves. To free ourselves from different forms of mind-control and be able to return to and embrace the inner child. This would be the "crowned and conquering child" in each of us. Accepting the law of Thelema, to do what thou will, is to kill the notion of anyone else's will in ourselves which, in effect, returns us to a child-like state. Because in order to leave childhood we typically are forced to fall into line with whatever system we think we have to; to follow a will that is not our own. So after the battle, we can Retreat Through Time and Space and feel that warm comfort we felt as a child, no longer twisted by the world, and with a killer bassline, too lol.

I think this album makes a large statement as to the battle of a twisted world and its resulting destruction of our inner child. This album feels a little bit like the process of having lost and then retrieving your inner child again. The last track being called "I see Through Platonia" acting as a statement that this album's message is absolute. As if he's seen through all time and space and stands by his conclusion. "Screw what this twisted world tries to feed us. I was robbed of my inner child and am taking it back." That type of thing. Perhaps.

[bleak.]

I'm not sure how many times I've blasted this song over the past few days...there's times where I'm honestly left speechless by their attention to detail. So grateful.