Possible early BoC piece from Autechre's Kiss 102 show, 1995

[oswellmh]

Background info:
Around 12 years ago I was given a set of mp3 recordings of Autechre's Kiss 102 radio show, Disengage, from 1995. At the time I was given strict instructions not to share them on slsk etc. Well, after more than a decade of hoarding, my ideological position on the concept of rare mp3s is now very firmly 'fuck that' – so I'm currently in the process of figuring out how best to share them publicly, going through them to make rudimentary tracklists etc.

But I'm posting this in the meantime as I think it'd be of interest to Boards fans specifically.

On a couple of occasions they played a piece that to my ears sounded plausibly like early, pre-mature phase BoC. Various elements are present and correct: SH-101 jamming, plonky-plonk fucked-about-with live drums, extremely boardsy flute melodies, and some exceptionally psychedelic layering. At the same time, it sounds like they haven't *quite* worked out their sound either: the melodies never quite move or resolve; the layering and 101 lines sound even a little naive.

Needless to say, it could be the work of a different band, but I don't know of any bands working in quite this vein back in 1995. I'm not expecting anyone here (bar mdg…) to be able to confirm that it is BoC's work, but I felt it'd be of sufficient interest to warrant sharing here in the interests of healthy speculation and general curiosity. And maybe someone with broader musical knowledge than me might be able to confirm that it isn't by BoC, if that's the case.

The goods:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/d28 ... 9.mp3?dl=0

The first 5 minutes are from the first broadcast (Radio 1 Part 1), and the remainder from the second, a couple of months later (Radio 8 Part 2)
Be warned there's a bunch of Gescom idents (which personally I love – 'thissss traanssssmisssion is broughttoyouby Gessssssscom' etc), and a KISS ident WELCOMING YOU TO THE CHILLOUT ZONE, ON KISS 102. Just a heads up.

[Fredd-E]

whoa! you might be on to something right here! (in b4 mdg)

[Cosmic Manta]

Compare this style to tracks such as Audiotrack B09, B11, and even B16― all of which use chopped breaks, similar to this radio broadcast. Tracks such as Spectrum, She Is P, and perhaps even Staircase Whip come to mind as ones with a similar mixing style and sound quality. Furthermore, compare the flutes in this to tracks such as Spiro and Rue The Whirl. If you still can't see any parallels, go open a few of these tracks and switch between them and the radio broadcast. I think we might have something.

[Valotonin]

Some of the effects used, despite there being a lot of almost signature BoC flutes present, would suggest to me that this isn't the work of boards despite it sounding wonderful. It doesn't seem to have any basis or relation to anything from either Old tunes, R35TT or from Twoism from what my ears tell me despite some slight similarities in style. Unless it was one very wavy experimental jam session between the brothers, I don't see how it could reasonably be the work of the Sandisons. Especially with the digital vocoders and the raw, almost jungle type drums at points and simple reverb usage. I don't think it goes deep enough into their long-term love affair with really serene and unique effects created manually and not to mention the fact that a lot of the main keyboard sounds seem to be presets as opposed to something created almost from scratch in a unique way as is a tell tale sign of the brothers at work.

However, it is a great track and there is still a glimmer of hope that it bears the fingerprints of BoC. This is all just speculation and you may well be right.

[Cosmic Manta]

https://puu.sh/uVh5D/5cdea7b828.mp3 I made this to highlight the parallels

[Gevel]

Maybe I'm just as attuned to it as others, but I couldn't identify anything in there that sounded like an SH-101. The flutey moments didn't have too much of a BOC flavor to them, either. But there are other parts of the general coloring of the whole thing that has a BOC aura to it.

I guess the question is was anything that sounded like this being done by artists in 1995? I would expect this sound on an obscure electronic music station today, but back then I'm not so sure.

[Cosmic Manta]

the bubbly bass in that clip sounds very 101ish to me― also aphex was making similar things in that era:

he was also a heavy SH101 user around that time

[15Dreams]

I could see this being legitimate. Early BoC definitely played with a lot of interesting sounds; there's a pretty vast difference between some of the stuff on R35 and the Old Tunes stuff. Heck, even comparing XYZ and Chinook (the Aquarius single version) to the rest of their discography highlights some of their different creative directions.

The only thing I'm not sure about is all the changes in melodic and rhythmic direction. I mean, sure, a lot of parts sound like something BoC could have made...but there's so many variations within each piece. Most of the pre-95 stuff we have is pretty repetitive; not boring, but repetitive. If this is Boards then I think the 'very wavy experimental jam session' idea described by Valotonin makes the most sense. This goes for Aphex as well, I find his work hard to get into because the repetition is so extreme.

[Kyla]

See the thing is Autechre, Aphex and BOC likely used the same gear at that period. Could it be lost BOC ? sure. A lot of people sounded like that in the early 90's, dropping down to 4 track cassette isn't anything super special.

[Fireal420]

regardless of who made it, for 1995 parts of those tracks are pretty ahead of its time. i'm really digging the 3:00-4:20 mark of the recording.

i'm not obsessed enough to care or put in the work, but i am sure some of you guys can try and match the track lengths with their unreleased discography and see if anything seems to be close. or play the track in reverse and see if anything catches your attention.

[zeoevil]

Here is a YouTube page that has multiple Disengage sets. Perhaps someone with more time on their hands can dig through them for more material. Maybe if we can figure out a date for the recording we can match it up with a set list or something.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8t0Xl ... eNv-lFu-Hg

[vballs]

Interesting topic Im usually wrong about everything but to my ears it really doesn't sound like them at all. I think by 1995 they made twoism right? Which in my opinion is was beyond what we here in this recording, so if the recording was infact them having not quite found their sound, it may have to be much much earlier than 95.

[Techboy]

sounds like jega a little bit, the slowed down drums have akai s1000 written all over them though and i think jega was maybe using emu smplers.

[Opothecary]

It sounds like 1995 to me. It's not bad, it just screams 1995 to me the way Chinook does - as in it's got a dated sound, and very few BoC songs have that feel to them, they usually sound like they could be from any time (don't get me wrong - I like Chinook, but it feels like them paying lip service to land a record deal with a label that releases a lot of music that sounds like that)

This music is really busy in all the wrong ways for a BoC tune. I think back to what they were doing in late 1994/1995 (Twoism, what we know of Hooper Bay) and it just doesn't seem to be moving at the kind of tempo that you'd expect. We know Circle, we might know some version of Noatak, I think Audiotrack B12 on R35TT is probably Geyser - this music doesn't fit in with any of that.

If I understand correctly, christ. had an important role in helping them transition their sound away from shoegaze to what we know them as now, in terms of gear and whatnot and this definitely doesn't sound like christ. either. You can listen to the shoegaze-y stuff on R35TT, you can still hear BoC in there somewhere. I don't hear them here.

[northernlite]

either way, this is awesome stuff!

[Negamuse]

Well, unlike most of these that turn up, it sounds nothing much like anything they've released! Trying to think if this sounds like 95 or maybe even earlier. There's a lot of "playing with S1000 stuff" about it, almost like whoever made it is kind of running through what you can do, like they've just got hold of it. Timestretch drums were done to death a couple of years earlier, by 95 they'd have been corny as fuck which makes me think this is either 93 or 94 or just someone doing it "cos they can".

A few things make me not want to rule out it's them though, pretty much everything from 3:00-5:00. The little zappy noises under the percussion, they've done. Reversed drum hits for accent notes they've done. The non-flute sound starting 3:09 sounds like a melodica, that they've sampled and used in a LOT of things. And the other sampled chord is coming off an organ, which they've definitely used a lot. The way they run out the drum beat at 4:20ish in reverse they've done I'm pretty sure. The winding through of that record pull they've done. Other people have used all of this stuff... but yeah I dunno. It really doesn't sound like them, but I wouldn't want to bet on it definitely not being them.

[herxagernsurn]

FWI there were definitely tracks floating around on Soulseek back circa 1999 2000 or so that were labeled with the word disengage. i do not recall them sounding like this though. I seem to recall the tracks being ones found elsewhere on BoCMaxima maybe.

[herxagernsurn]

Yeah I just checked and I seem to have two tracks labeled as being from Disengage and they begin with the same warbled 'disengage' as heard on the above linked bit but then its a mix of all tracks we've heard like XYZ, EYDIAB, Nova Scotia Robots, Statue of Liberty, bocuma, ROYGBIV, etc

[Omikron]

I'm not convinced that it's BOC. It sounds far too hectic. The early BOC we know is more repetitive, slower-paced (change-wise), and much easier to follow. It sounds more like Jega than BOC.

Yeah I just checked and I seem to have two tracks labeled as being from Disengage and they begin with the same warbled 'disengage' as heard on the above linked bit but then its a mix of all tracks we've heard like XYZ, EYDIAB, Nova Scotia Robots, Statue of Liberty, bocuma, ROYGBIV, etc

It's documented here: http://bocpages.org/wiki/Disengage

[Omikron]

Now I've listened to it again, I think it's the disengage ident that's making it sound like that at the start. It's hard to seperate it from the actual music while listening.