____twoism

Luke Haines reference aside, it’s so funny that the Hare Krishna sample is likely some good old, old tunes style, iraq says, hell interface, piss taking shennanigans, and so many po-faced fans are taking it seriously going “hare krishna, yeah that’s right!”

Anyone in their early, mid 50s growing up in Scotland is going to remember the hare krishna’s prancing around the toon in the late 80s, early 90s. When you’re a kid you’re like “what the hell are these numpties on about?”. The title of the track means hindu hell.

It’s kind of like the satire in the Rockstar games, if you’re Scottish you instantly see the piss taking. If you’re not, you take it dead seriously and a few months down the line, start coming out with your own unironic hare krishna sampling trip hop tracks, or home made artsy fartsy hare krishna videos. Here’s hoping Thim Yorke rips off the krishna sampling on the next radiohead album.

There is a serious side to the album, but there’s a ton of messing around and humour too.

I don’t think anything is either or with Boards of Canada. Of course there is a lot of humor in their work, that doesn’t mean the use of the Hare Krishna mantra is a one-dimensional piss-take. Naraka is funny in how it confounds expectations, and it is also beautiful in its musicality. One could also interpret the use of the mantra as a way to represent connecting with God, or something greater than oneself, through music amidst hell.

BOC aren’t religious, but if they can treat the Branch Dividians as a subject with sympathy then they can do that with anyone else.

I really like this interpretation. Holds true for Scottish humour of their generation, the Hauser brothers (with whom they have a lot in common) being representative and writers like Irvine Welsh too, and but so —quoting Foster Wallace— most of it feels post-ironic, a fancy word for things being deep embedded but also critically examined and played with, strangely intimate.
I sense, as with the rest of their albums, these elements are brought not too consciously but as through a child's eye, connotations stark and ambivalent. Of course I could be very wrong. I still grasp their output as a crucible simmering and entrenched in memory and influences and obsessions.

I’m thinking of all of the Beatles lyrics too.

Den wrote:I’m thinking of all of the Beatles lyrics too.

Same

Dunno, Hare Krishna is both goofy and fucked up so I'm not sure what the face value takeaway might be.

My top 2 goofy Hare Krishna moments are the time a group of them broke up a mass brawl between scene "emos" and teenage punks in Mexico, and the era in New York hardcore punk a bunch of tough guys with questionable politics got super into Hare Krishna in a super fanatical way.

It's definitely taking the piss since the next two tracks are Acts of Magic and Memory death, like the Hare Krishnas keep chanting to themselves as they're dragged to hell

multidimensional



https://web.archive.org/web/20191210050 ... hools.html

https://www.iskconcommunications.org/is ... -1971-1986

WATER_CAN-_- wrote:multidimensional



https://web.archive.org/web/20191210050 ... hools.html

https://www.iskconcommunications.org/is ... -1971-1986

Well, of course. That's part of what cults do.

I wonder if 10 years from now BoC will release an album featuring references to Internet addiction schools (the East Asian equivalent of the troubled teen industry).

The Hare Krishna bit has been done/overdone in early tunes & mixes already I feel. I was listening to The Lucky People Center last week and that had a bit of the auld Hare, Hare in there.

Living in the north east of England we had the Hare Krishna brigades & born again tambourine bashers in the town/city centres back in the eighties too. The tambourine bashers were largely recovering addicts and half of them had questionable skinhead tattoos.

We still send our smack heads to some secluded religious retreat in Scotland. Plenty of them beat the addiction but come back born again young earth creationists.

Rex Reynolds wrote:Living in the north east of England we had the Hare Krishna brigades & born again tambourine bashers in the town/city centres back in the eighties too. The tambourine bashers were largely recovering addicts and half of them had questionable skinhead tattoos.

I think that's wonderful.

Yeah, Unfortunately the town centres were full of actual skinheads back then too.

akirako wrote:

WATER_CAN-_- wrote:multidimensional



https://web.archive.org/web/20191210050 ... hools.html

https://www.iskconcommunications.org/is ... -1971-1986

Well, of course. That's part of what cults do.

I wonder if 10 years from now BoC will release an album featuring references to Internet addiction schools (the East Asian equivalent of the troubled teen industry).

not only cults
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/1/27
https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cg ... context=qc

Rex Reynolds wrote:
Living in the north east of England...

Way off topic, but another north easterner?! That makes you, me and Mexicola that I know of…


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WATER_CAN-_- wrote:

akirako wrote:

WATER_CAN-_- wrote:multidimensional



https://web.archive.org/web/20191210050 ... hools.html

https://www.iskconcommunications.org/is ... -1971-1986

Well, of course. That's part of what cults do.

I wonder if 10 years from now BoC will release an album featuring references to Internet addiction schools (the East Asian equivalent of the troubled teen industry).

not only cults
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/1/27
https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cg ... context=qc

I'm not partial to organised religion, or religion in general. Sometimes I feel like cults take on a different form when they become powerful enough and don't need to resort to some of the most cultish social control tactics anymore. But it's a very thorny subject and it has many sides, and both fascists and general bigots like to exploit it no matter the religion or cult, or maybe targeting religions associated to ethnic groups they hate, be it Muslim, Jewish, Catholic or whatever, and some people will still call the queerest, most radical communists "fedoras", "redditors" or something to the effect whenever they express dislike of religion, so I'm hesitant to dive into a discussion. At any rate this thread is about BoC's track so it's not the right place to discuss this matter anyway.

To bring things back on topic, I don't think BoC sampling Krishna chanting makes the cult cool, and I don't find it too funny other than the inherent goofiness of Hare Krishna antics. I think it's grim, befitting BoC's general aesthetic. But that's just me!