____twoism

thepastinsidepressant wrote:

Radiobuzz wrote:I want to like this but I have been unable to hear any of the supposed samples in any of the episodes.

same here :/ might need repetitive plays

Dudes. I know i've said this before, but nobody's ever taken me up on it. Feel free to hit me up on facebook at facebook.com/noonewouldcome !! i'll hook you up with wav/flac files of the samples i've pulled and do my damnedest to help you hear them. Wish I could be there sitting next to you to point them out, it makes it much easier, but I bet I could still get you hearing what I hear.

Hope to hear from you, that goes for anyone!

Obviously I can't help you with each and every slice i've made, but even hearing a few should help you get trained to listen to the right frequencies, recognize the little vocals. It's amazing to me that there are only a handful of tracks I've gone through that I HAVEN'T found voices in.... (semena myrtvykh.... farewell fire... uhhh.. that might be it so far).

BrunchTime wrote:Episode 8. Trans-Canada Highway is a lot deeper than I ever would have suspected. Amazing stuff. Enjoy.

that analysis or whatever on heard from telegraph lines was amazing! nice work.

These are fantastic, man. Sorry to be late to the game haha. I wanted to ask, do you have any ideas of what to tackle after you run out of boc material to analyze?

Radiobuzz wrote:I want to like this but I have been unable to hear any of the supposed samples in any of the episodes.

Same here for 75% of the time.
The one sample which might give you some hope that Michael is actually hearing stuff and we are missing out, is from the TCH part 1 @ +/- 32:50. This time it is easy to hear because the sound from right to left is easy to follow and ends up/transforms into a voice which is saying "all the people you fuck". If you can't hear this then you should visit the doctor With a lot of samples I think my 36 years old ears are wasted too much to hear but this one is very audible.

I really want to thank Michael again for pointing this kind of stuff out. It gives the music more dimension and it proves even more, like we all know, that BoC put a lot of thought into their music. There is probably more that we don't hear and I wonder if they even put it there for us to hear or just because it is a sound which adds to the total picture.


Michael, why don't you upload the BoCcasts in flac somewhere?
Speaking of which, do you have the TCH part 1 in flac?

I think anyone who listens intently to BoC would agree that there are voices in the tunes sometimes. Key word being "sometimes".

You often make an implicit distinction between the voices and the music. It seems that the voices you claim to hear are the semantic content which provide a framework for understanding the big picture.

Both the voices and the music occupy the same frequency range, because they are the same thing: sound. This is a banality, but I think it's important to consider. The ear has evolved to be drawn most strongly towards the frequencies of the human voice. Music is an organized system whereby changes happen in a semi-predictive manner, just like speech. So it's not too farfetched of a possibility to mistake the "structure" of music, which mimics and contains many of the same physical properties of speech sound waves, AS a voice with hidden semantic content. I could easily play the same musical snippet 10 times over and tell you what word it sounds most like, to me. Because tones sound like vowels: AAA, OOO, EEEE, etc. And because hi hats sound like Sss, and because snares sound like KEHHH. But this correlation between a sound and a word does not necessarily mean that the message you hear is intentional.

I listen to flac and wav files driven by a fully restored Pioneer SA-9100 from 1974, into a nice pair of Sennheiser headphones. And I just don't hear any counting in the intro to Dayvan Cowboy. Is it in time with the tambourines? When does it start? Does it go from 1 to 24? I definitely hear what sounds like someone exhaling a deep breath at the end of the intro... and there's definitely a repeated voice or two in there that happens every so often, but I just don't hear any counting. You mentioned that you "heard" the counting in the song, while you were counting out loud. Could it be that you heard what you wanted to hear?

Also I think you should consider the fact that a 96/24 vinyl rip could have surface noise, a bad stylus, cheap ADCs, etc. Maybe you have a great rip, I don't know. But it might be less clear than a 44,100 CD rip to wav. Just something to consider. Any voices that are in there will be lower than the 5khz range, which is about the upper limit of phoneme energy. You do not need 96/24 rips to hear something in the 5Khz range. And most of the voice content would be much lower in frequency than that. Yes, if a hidden sound is there, it will be more 'there' in a higher-fidelity rip. But it will still be more than half-there at lower-fidelity rips. And vinyl causes noise that interferes with fidelity, to some extent.

Of course, you might be totally right sometimes. Who's to say for sure? I just think it's difficult to accept your analysis of a tune, when it completely hinges upon something as subjective, and possibly wrong, as a hidden voice that says "Leviathan" when you detune the song.

I'm only saying this out of respect. I think it's awesome that you have done such thorough research, and I hope this does not come off as rude. I truly enjoyed the anecdotal part of your analysis about old American telegraph lines. The reason I write this is to provide feedback about what I enjoyed, and what I found confusing about the podcast.

Also, side-note, Iowa City's a great town. Big Ten represent. I've had some great times in Iowa City. Probably one of the most psychedelic experiences of my life happened there, actually. Listening to our friends play instrumental post-rock in a basement like 7 years ago. It was unbelievably moving.

Aesthetics wrote:Michael, why don't you upload the BoCcasts in flac somewhere?
Speaking of which, do you have the TCH part 1 in flac?

I'll see what I can do on that, Robin... sorta been new to editing and I think I might've boned the TCH project files and so i might have to re-edit them... pretty sure TH is in good shape tho. I'll look into it when I'm on the proper computer man

JESUSANDHOES wrote:I think anyone who listens intently to BoC would agree that there are voices in the tunes sometimes. Key word being "sometimes".

You often make an implicit distinction between the voices and the music. It seems that the voices you claim to hear are the semantic content which provide a framework for understanding the big picture.

Both the voices and the music occupy the same frequency range, because they are the same thing: sound. This is a banality, but I think it's important to consider. The ear has evolved to be drawn most strongly towards the frequencies of the human voice. Music is an organized system whereby changes happen in a semi-predictive manner, just like speech. So it's not too farfetched of a possibility to mistake the "structure" of music, which mimics and contains many of the same physical properties of speech sound waves, AS a voice with hidden semantic content. I could easily play the same musical snippet 10 times over and tell you what word it sounds most like, to me. Because tones sound like vowels: AAA, OOO, EEEE, etc. And because hi hats sound like Sss, and because snares sound like KEHHH. But this correlation between a sound and a word does not necessarily mean that the message you hear is intentional.

I listen to flac and wav files driven by a fully restored Pioneer SA-9100 from 1974, into a nice pair of Sennheiser headphones. And I just don't hear any counting in the intro to Dayvan Cowboy. Is it in time with the tambourines? When does it start? Does it go from 1 to 24? I definitely hear what sounds like someone exhaling a deep breath at the end of the intro... and there's definitely a repeated voice or two in there that happens every so often, but I just don't hear any counting. You mentioned that you "heard" the counting in the song, while you were counting out loud. Could it be that you heard what you wanted to hear?

Also I think you should consider the fact that a 96/24 vinyl rip could have surface noise, a bad stylus, cheap ADCs, etc. Maybe you have a great rip, I don't know. But it might be less clear than a 44,100 CD rip to wav. Just something to consider. Any voices that are in there will be lower than the 5khz range, which is about the upper limit of phoneme energy. You do not need 96/24 rips to hear something in the 5Khz range. And most of the voice content would be much lower in frequency than that. Yes, if a hidden sound is there, it will be more 'there' in a higher-fidelity rip. But it will still be more than half-there at lower-fidelity rips. And vinyl causes noise that interferes with fidelity, to some extent.

Of course, you might be totally right sometimes. Who's to say for sure? I just think it's difficult to accept your analysis of a tune, when it completely hinges upon something as subjective, and possibly wrong, as a hidden voice that says "Leviathan" when you detune the song.

I'm only saying this out of respect. I think it's awesome that you have done such thorough research, and I hope this does not come off as rude. I truly enjoyed the anecdotal part of your analysis about old American telegraph lines. The reason I write this is to provide feedback about what I enjoyed, and what I found confusing about the podcast.

Also, side-note, Iowa City's a great town. Big Ten represent. I've had some great times in Iowa City. Probably one of the most psychedelic experiences of my life happened there, actually. Listening to our friends play instrumental post-rock in a basement like 7 years ago. It was unbelievably moving.

i read this

Aesthetics wrote:the TCH part 1 @ +/- 32:50. This time it is easy to hear because the sound from right to left is easy to follow and ends up/transforms into a voice which is saying "all the people you fuck"

Here's an edit:

Hate to say it but this is a case of auditory pareidolia at best.

Please allow me to be the voice of descent here. This is a brief yet necessary chance for a listener like myself to play Devil's Advocate and offer a counterpoint. Please don't take it personally.

This is not an educated analysis of Boards of Canada's music, but the interpretation by one man—a crazy man. I just do not hear those voices you claim to hear, and this severely hampers my willingness to buy into your outlandish readings into these songs.

Yes, the band uses a lot of snippets of audio from TV and film. and most times, these audio clips are barely intelligble. But where the vocal samples from Sesame Street or the NFBC were easy for my ears to hear, the ones you point out are not audible in the least. You often throw up a sample that may or may not contain a voice (at some frequency that us normal humans cannot discern) and then procede to dive into some farfetched theory into what the words might mean. This narrow approach, while interesting and thought provoking by itself, does not hold up to scrutiny without allowing input from other interpretors or from the band members themselves. On an intellectual level, the analysis fails to pass muster when the samples used to illustrate the argument are noisy and garbled at best. You know what they call people who hear voices that others do not? Schizophrenics!

I can make the claim that Boards of Canada are a bunch of sun-worshipping cult leaders, and use numerous examples of their music to prove this, but that would not be the truth. It would only be my own narrow perspective based soley on the art they've put out over the years and from interviews and critical reviews of the band. To do this in a podcast is a disingenuous and dishonest way to review music.

Suffice to say, I am not terribly shocked by the paranoid and metaphysical nature of your interpretations. This style of speech is not unusual coming from the mentally ill or someone under the influence of a hallucinogen. When the analysis of an otherwise open-ended piece starts getting into shit about wiretapping (and debunked nonsense like chemtrails and FEMA camps) as being a genuine part of the music, I find the opinions a lot harder to take seriously. What next, are you going to tell us that there's a backmasked voice in "Zoetrope" that says the moon landing was a hoax?

To sum up: This podcast is a bunch of stoner bullshit. Put down the bong, hippie!

Okay, that's out of my system. Despite that little foray into controversy, I do really appreciate the podcast and the time you put into making it. Can't wait to hear more!

Down10 wrote:Please allow me to be the voice of descent here. This is a brief yet necessary chance for a listener like myself to play Devil's Advocate and offer a counterpoint. Please don't take it personally.

This is not an educated analysis of Boards of Canada's music, but the interpretation by one man—a crazy man. I just do not hear those voices you claim to hear, and this severely hampers my willingness to buy into your outlandish readings into these songs.

Yes, the band uses a lot of snippets of audio from TV and film. and most times, these audio clips are barely intelligble. But where the vocal samples from Sesame Street or the NFBC were easy for my ears to hear, the ones you point out are not audible in the least. You often throw up a sample that may or may not contain a voice (at some frequency that us normal humans cannot discern) and then procede to dive into some farfetched theory into what the words might mean. This narrow approach, while interesting and thought provoking by itself, does not hold up to scrutiny without allowing input from other interpretors or from the band members themselves. On an intellectual level, the analysis fails to pass muster when the samples used to illustrate the argument are noisy and garbled at best. You know what they call people who hear voices that others do not? Schizophrenics!

I can make the claim that Boards of Canada are a bunch of sun-worshipping cult leaders, and use numerous examples of their music to prove this, but that would not be the truth. It would only be my own narrow perspective based soley on the art they've put out over the years and from interviews and critical reviews of the band. To do this in a podcast is a disingenuous and dishonest way to review music.

Suffice to say, I am not terribly shocked by the paranoid and metaphysical nature of your interpretations. This style of speech is not unusual coming from the mentally ill or someone under the influence of a hallucinogen. When the analysis of an otherwise open-ended piece starts getting into shit about wiretapping (and debunked nonsense like chemtrails and FEMA camps) as being a genuine part of the music, I find the opinions a lot harder to take seriously. What next, are you going to tell us that there's a backmasked voice in "Zoetrope" that says the moon landing was a hoax?

To sum up: This podcast is a bunch of stoner bullshit. Put down the bong, hippie!

Okay, that's out of my system. Despite that little foray into controversy, I do really appreciate the podcast and the time you put into making it. Can't wait to hear more!

lmao "don't take this personally, but you sound like you're mentally ill"

I don't smoke weed, haven't in a long time.

I'm mentally well, it's not like I hear voices masked into SOTL's music or Led Zep's, and time and again I say "this is one man's read, listen and draw your own conclusions, i hope this gets you thinking about the music" Time and again, I say "if you don't hear some samples, feel free to contact me" and I'm always surprised that nobody does. What's your audio setup like? I started hearing all kinds of details I never heard before when I started getting serious about audio.

Anyway, I hear where you're coming from, man. I'd hardly call it a "foray into controversy" because I hear from lots of people, even people who like the podcast, that they can't hear what I'm talking about. I know the slices hard to hear. When I get back to work on the slices I've taken, it always takes me a few listens to find them again.

As for Zoetrope, stay tuned my dude But there are a few voices at the very least. I don't think it'll fit in with the moon landing though .

ps: you don't have to believe in conspiracies, and neither does BoC, but they're definitely a part of TH's narrative.

Radiobuzz wrote:

Aesthetics wrote:the TCH part 1 @ +/- 32:50. This time it is easy to hear because the sound from right to left is easy to follow and ends up/transforms into a voice which is saying "all the people you fuck"

Here's an edit:

Hate to say it but this is a case of auditory pareidolia at best.

hmm yes, ahh yes, "blip blop blup" nice and meaningless, just like i'd expect from our favorite calculating workaholic perfectionists Sorry to be a dick, but this one is, like, slam-dunk clearly a voice... are you listening on laptop speakers or something?

No, I got some Sennheiser studio headphones. Not that it matters though. And you're being childish.

Perch wrote:These are fantastic, man. Sorry to be late to the game haha. I wanted to ask, do you have any ideas of what to tackle after you run out of boc material to analyze?

I dunno man, I'll probably just call it quits then... That's a ways off though. I've toyed around with the idea of writing a book, like a BoC companion, but I really don't think there's enough of a market to make it worth my time. I dunno, dunno what the hell i'm gonna do with my life in general tbh

Radiobuzz wrote:No, I got some Sennheiser studio headphones. Not that it matters though. And you're being childish.

hahaha ok man ok sorry. What kind of headphones tho OOC? And what kinda DAC you runnin'?

I will say that Mikey (BrunchTime) is 100% correct about Digital Audio Converters (DACs) being a major factor in sound quality. I recently switched from a standard 1/8" headphone jack (which outputs analog sound via the internal DAC in my Macbook) to a dedicated Firewire-enabled DAC, before sending that analog signal to my amps, etc. And the difference in clarity is fucking astounding.

Of course you're going to need good amplification and headphones / speakers. But I noticed tighter, clearer bass, a more clearly separated stereo image, and just an overall improvement in the clarity and spatial characteristics of the sound.

Computers are workhorses that are designed to be good at doing a lot of shit decently, but they are not designed specifically to convert 48,000 24-bit digital audio samples every second into a high-fidelity analog signal that is as faithful as possible to the master audio file.

This shit really matters and makes a significant difference in overall sound quality.

The first time I listened to Left Side Drive, I literally could not help but exclaim in joy. Regardless of whether you'll hear as many voices as BrunchTime (a topic for another day, haha), having a solid setup with good DACs is just the right way to listen to music as deep and complex as BoC.

This:

JESUSANDHOES wrote:I will say that Mikey (BrunchTime) is 100% correct about Digital Audio Converters (DACs) being a major factor in sound quality. I recently switched from a standard 1/8" headphone jack (which outputs analog sound via the internal DAC in my Macbook) to a dedicated Firewire-enabled DAC, before sending that analog signal to my amps, etc. And the difference in clarity is fucking astounding.

The first time I listened to Left Side Drive, I literally could not help but exclaim in joy. Regardless of whether you'll hear as many voices as BrunchTime (a topic for another day, haha), having a solid setup with good DACs is just the right way to listen to music as deep and complex as BoC.

If you are not using a quality (outboard preferably) DAC and second good headphones you probably aren't hearing a lot of the stuff Mikey is talking about. I don't always hear the same words he describes or interpret the meaning the same but it is obvious to me at least that he has found some valuable nuggets. If you are into the deep dissection of what goes into a BOC production or any other really powerful electronic music what is the harm? You can argue all day about WAV, FLAC and MP3 but if you aren't using quality converters you have no foundation.

I don't post here often and didn't start reading the threads until the TH campaign but this is where all the great info came from, which I might add, required some abstract thinking. I have however, been listening to BOC since the late 90's and I can say that something Mikey found in some of the songs is startling. You can believe it or not but there are some parts he has pointed out where there are spoken vocals (often female) that exist in the mix. I can't say if they are even meant to be heard because they are light and airy with barely any where to hang in the mix but a lot of the places he has pointed out, especially TCH and TCH have words there are damn near subliminal.

We all know that there are the obvious samples and back masking in some BOC samples but we also all know BOC are not an obvious band.

As far as the explanation or his understanding think of it like archeology. If a researcher finds one valuable artifact among a lot of background ruble or 'noise' you can argue the exact meaning, reason or purpose behind why it exists but arguing about whether it exists would be a waste to anyone who has witnessed it.

The bottom line is lay off him, he's having fun and so are a lot of us listening. I don't see how his exploration into BOC is any less valuable than publishing a bunch of copy cat music of the same band. How is copying something more valuable than analyzing it on a deep level even if it does involve some imagination?

C'mon folks!

chiefastronaut wrote:The bottom line is lay off him, he's having fun and so are a lot of us listening. I don't see how his exploration into BOC is any less valuable than publishing a bunch of copy cat music of the same band. How is copying something more valuable than analyzing it on a deep level even if it does involve some imagination?

^agreed

BrunchTime wrote:

Perch wrote:These are fantastic, man. Sorry to be late to the game haha. I wanted to ask, do you have any ideas of what to tackle after you run out of boc material to analyze?

I dunno man, I'll probably just call it quits then... That's a ways off though. I've toyed around with the idea of writing a book, like a BoC companion, but I really don't think there's enough of a market to make it worth my time. I dunno, dunno what the hell i'm gonna do with my life in general tbh

You should get into making music if you don't already! convert all the interest you've got in finding little details into making them for others.

chiefastronaut wrote:The bottom line is lay off him, he's having fun and so are a lot of us listening. I don't see how his exploration into BOC is any less valuable than publishing a bunch of copy cat music of the same band. How is copying something more valuable than analyzing it on a deep level even if it does involve some imagination?

C'mon folks!

Spot on. Well said.

There's a reason why there's a sticky for BoC casts.


Keep up the good work Mikey!