____twoism

Berlin 9:15 sesh. Had an absolute blast.
Shout out to the guy from Düsseldorf who showed up without a ticket and got in on a spare.
Album had me floored. Can’t wait to listen to the vinyl on headphones, speakers in the venue didn’t do the record justice at all times imo.

Now to order the red cassette on Bleep. Stoked!

Oh, I forgot to mention. When I was getting up after the session in Shibuya, my phone fell in the seat. The seat snapped up to close, and practically punched a tiny hole in my phones screen in the bottom right hand corner.

The crazy thing is that the result is a tiny brilliant turquoise-bluish star about 1.5mm wide, blocking the “m” key on my keyboard, that looks a lot like the star at the end of the Prophecy video.

I might take a screwdriver and try to carve it into a hexagon…

I’m going to vote you don’t take a screwdriver to your damaged phone screen!

bungler666 wrote:Not to derail this thread but:
They played Circle before the show? o_O

I asked a Warp employee and was advised it was a piece made by BOC exclusively for the listening event.

novayshun wrote:

bungler666 wrote:Not to derail this thread but:
They played Circle before the show? o_O

I asked a Warp employee and was advised it was a piece made by BOC exclusively for the listening event.

Nice

I'm glad to be reading everyone's dispatches. I'm writing mine now. Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare.

Mexicola wrote:

outhudd wrote:Was there video / visuals for the whole album? Contributing from the 1420 video?

Sadly no. There was a flaming hexagon on the ceiling, which only changed for the second but last track to include what I would class as new but fairly standard BOC visuals. Super8-esque clips, nature, kids playing etc etc. Reverted back to the flaming hexagon for the final track. They didn't even play the video for Prophecy or 'Track05'.

The flaming hexagon was different for the last track. It wasn’t spinning anymore. And at the end it dissolved in the flames.

Good knowledge. My neck hurt from staring up by that point

I've enjoyed reading (most of) the reviews. There's been some that clearly heard the spoken stuff much better than I did. Now I read the text, yeah that rings a bell, what they're saying it said.

It's funny though we came out going "that was a LOT" and some stuff I really wanted to remember for later to talk about I just totally forgot. "Oh yeah there was a Hare Krishna section".

Keep remembering textures I enjoyed. Swear there were nuns at one point.

Yeah I really enjoyed catching up on this thread. I was in NY. Drove up from DC and got in around 2. Walked all over—to the Strand, bought some books, went to get a huge bagel, met with another fan Matt who grew up not far from me in MD. We walked around and had a great conversation about music and our families. The rest of the group met up a bit before 5pm and everyone was so down to earth and interesting. We talked about philosophy and physics and societal collapse and we had lots of laughs, too.

The things that I remember from the show:

Yes, a new age feel to one of the first tracks—sinister Enya!

A track with a man spelling out “you are marvelous”??

A Telephasic Workshop like vocal chop of a female vocal. Alex, another fan I met, said he heard the sample in the SXT.

A very cool new kind of Casio keyboard section in the second half.

A song that evoked Opening the mouth and You could feel the sky.

What might have been my favorite track. I think it is Arena Americanada… just a complete flex of BOC harmony and uplifting energy.

The amazing final two songs that brought tears to my eyes. That footage felt very personal.

So many tracks were full of surprises. Twists and turns and unexpected chord changes. I could not once “predict” how the chord progressions would resolve or evolve. Such a pleasure.

writetomhatcher wrote:A track with a man spelling out “you are marvelous”??

That jogged my memory. I tried to follow what he was spelling out but it didn’t seem to form a real word and then he said “marvellous” a few times. I also clearly remember the line “(I love you) more than any other physical being” but that might have been another track. One or both of those must have been during Father and Son.

Yes! It didn’t seem to spell out a word…we will see next week!

You just jogged a memory…
“Have you considered that your mother your father your brother your sister could be your mortal enemy??” Something like this??

writetomhatcher wrote:You just jogged a memory…
“Have you considered that your mother your father your brother your sister could be your mortal enemy??” Something like this??

Yes, that’s what I heard too! The rhythm of the words were matched with the rhythm of the track somehow.

I’m sure the word “Capricorn” was spoken several times during Age of Capricorn. I found that one a bit too vocal-heavy for my tastes, but that might have just been the speakers and the room. From where I was sitting, the treble was too harsh for my ears, leading to listening fatigue with some tracks.

writetomhatcher wrote:Yes! It didn’t seem to spell out a word…we will see next week!

You just jogged a memory…
“Have you considered that your mother your father your brother your sister could be your mortal enemy??” Something like this??

Fuck, yeah that was it.

One of the reviews mentioned a prayer being answered by a deep distorted voice on one track. A different one to that one, iirc.

I dunno if it's going to sound different on headphones but I really got this picture of prayers being intercepted by a demon that was just kinda laughing at the whole concept of prayer. But like, nothing in the tone of the person praying changed, like she was unaware what she was praying to and only we could hear both sides of the conversation

Goes to a fear I've long had of recordings of people being unaware of the danger they're in. It gave me chills in the room.

But it was presented in that kind of slightly Gonzo way documentaries were back then. Like the fact it was being presented playfully made it more horrific.

writetomhatcher wrote:
So many tracks were full of surprises. Twists and turns and unexpected chord changes. I could not once “predict” how the chord progressions would resolve or evolve. Such a pleasure.

This. Was on the edge of my mental seat the whole time. Filled with oh wows, fuckin A’s, head nodding, smiles and ending in tears of an unclassified origin.

Like taking a hit of excellent pot and going, fuck, this is some heavy shit.

Give me another hit.

writetomhatcher wrote:
So many tracks were full of surprises. Twists and turns and unexpected chord changes. I could not once “predict” how the chord progressions would resolve or evolve. Such a pleasure.

Yeah definitely more harmonically adventurous than TH. There was that one in the middle that started out as just a synth chord progression. IIRC the first two chords were misleadingly very "normal"/standard but then the third one was very unexpected, which made it feel like a deliberate "twist" rather than just a strange chord progression.

Expecting for the first fellows mates to take some psilocybin to this new release

Did anyone notice the similarities between the music before the listening party started and the music that was on the old music70 website?

Having been too broke to get to NYC for the session and too ethical to hunt for leaked audio, I am now gripped by an almost maniacal panic that I am going to get hit by a bus, or get smacked with a pneumonia/ sepsis combo (like the race car driver younger than me) before next week. The impressions from yesterday here and on reddit have left me dazed and euphoric and determined like never before to survive just six more days…

Reporting back from the first New York session. I loved how they stamped all of our hands with a hexagon for seemingly no purpose other than to stamp our hands with a hexagon. The merch table was visibly empty - the people working were wearing the shirts themselves, and the cassettes weren't physically present. No atmosphere of aggressive commerce (also, it was great to meet Lincolnshire Poacher while waiting in line). You could walk around the church freely.

The lights shifted to announce the beginning without fanfare. Cue disclaimer that we were about to take part in MBI’s mass behavioral initiative. In a sense, the session felt like an experiment because, unusually, we weren’t listening to the album alone, or with a few close friends, but with hundreds of people.

I was sat behind a wanker that kept using his phone and talking over the music. I immediately questioned my decision to sit a few rows back (to avoid being too close to the PA). I want to say that witnessing people in a state of ‘checking’ as the album played felt profoundly sad and uncivilized. While caught in this internal narrative throughout Prophecy At 1420 Mhz, I thought about my own apathy to the way that screen addiction has become normalized in my life and how I am not willing to accept this as a path forward.

Instead of taking vengeance, I dropped the tension, closed my eyes for almost the entirety of the session, and opened up to the music without holding onto any expectations. I’d occasionally open my eyes - glasses off - and look into the electric candle on the floor, which produced astigmatic light effects. I thought there was a bit of a lack of clarity in the PA, or this was just the acoustics of the space. The bass and drums sounded massive.

The session itself - and this also relates to the experimental nature of hearing the album in this setting - had an oneiric effect on my listening experience (I learned this word from a BOC interview). There is a unique shape to the album that I cannot yet articulate.

Here are my impressions from memory.

The vocals throughout Age of Capricorn and Father And Son are insane. There was also a vocal part somewhere that shockingly sounded like clear singing.

I had to restrain myself from laugh-crying during Naraka. Astounding.

I agree with edgbf, I’m always wanting more Mike right hand keyboard moments. I think they established their approach to the melodies on Inferno with Prophecy At 1420 Mhz - they’re still fully formed, there’s just so much space in every phrase. Another example of this is the song with the sitar melody. It stunned me. The way everything comes to a rest, and then returns from the top, and cycles around again and again is so powerful. I was hit with a totalizing feeling of - and I think there will be a moment like this for everyone here on the record - “this was made for me as a listener.” I felt tuned into my instincts too because I’d predicted a few weeks ago that we’d hear some Hindustani instruments.

There was a track with guitar that felt like a call to Mogwai. I loved it.

The description above of Arena Americanada as a “flex” of harmony is so on point. An apt title because one can hear this playing in a stadium.

I did not think the Tape 05 music would be on the record because it didn’t feel at home sequenced early - it clicks in its position as Deep Time. I still think there is a mixtape quality to the album, although it’s not as collaged as I’d expected initially after hearing Prophecy At 1420 Mhz.

There are a few tracks that come to total silence beautifully.

After one listen You Retreat In Time And Space sounded like a Japanese Bonus Track for The Campfire Headphase to me. Or a song they made for Campfire that didn't quite fit on the album. Before the song began, I felt lost in the dark. I wanted one more moment of wide open music before the album's end, and out of nowhere the fire inside the hexagon cut to an intimate Super 8 montage of a family in the outdoors. The effect of the melody and instrumentation (chimes, vibraphone/marimba, bass guitar) in contrast to the music that precedes it is extremely moving. I thought of the question they’re always asking, “how can things be different?” Then, I Saw Through Platonia.