Very happy to see fresh new discussions about BoC, especially one that brings up the pretty fascinating and weird relationship between music and landscapes. And I love seeing hauntology and the Ghost Box crowd being brought up in relation to their work.
The musical language they managed to develop is a really compelling combination of cultural references and references to particular types of landscapes, and the only other artist who I think has executed that exact kind of alchemy so cogently is Biosphere, who incidentally is also the only other artist I’ve felt as impacted by as BoC.
As someone who grew up in California in the late 90s and early aughts, I knew that BoC’s sensibilities were not drawn from my childhood surroundings, but there was something about it that resonated so deeply with me. I think there’s a certain look and feel to some areas of central and northern California that align closely with their imagery, and they were an incredibly fitting and emotionally moving environment for listening to their work while on road trips. It was pretty interesting, then, to watch them emerge again much later with Tomorrow’s Harvest, whose promotion and album imagery was made up of images they’d taken while spending time in California. There might be something to be said about the fact that certain landscapes of the British Isles and the areas of California that I found so fitting for their music have histories of new religious movements and paganism/neopaganism in common.
As for hauntology, I recently watched Ben Wheatley’s latest movie In the Earth, whose score at times seemed to be trying to get at a kind of BoC allure, especially in combination with the imagery. At least on a subjective level, the movie for me functioned as a unique cinematic meeting point between what has drawn me into both BoC and the Ghost Box artists as well as Broadcast’s more collage-oriented music. The occult, psychedelia, the weird and the eerie of nature, and laboratory science were all on display, and the end credits by Julian House had that perfect BoC-inflected 70s science media flavor. If Berberian Sound Studio was the closest thing to “the Ghost Box movie”, In the Earth kind of felt like “the Geogaddi movie”.
I tend to think that it’s more about an era rather than a geographical location when it comes to hauntology. The Ghost Box guys have defined a kind of forever late 50s to early 80s (sometimes they’re as defined as “58-78” but other times they’re looser with the definition and I enjoy the poetic symmetry of it being the early 80s when the UK’s 3 terrestrial television stations became 4).
In an interview I’ve referenced in my studies, Julian House talks of the point where things could remain misremembered and kind of fuzzily undefined - before the “perpetual wide awake state” of the internet era. It’s absolutely the same rationale for BoC, too.
As far as the relationship between the US and the kind of paganism that informs (for shorthand) The Wickerman goes, I tend to subscribe to the Gaiman notion (the one he trades on, not the one he invented!) i.e. that all the people who arrived in the US from elsewhere brought their various gods with them and they mingled with the spirits that were already native to the land. Also, the likes of Ghost Box are informed by writers of the late 20th and early 21st century (Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen) which is obviously prime US territory - plus, thanks to that guy from Rhode Island, you have the very source of “eldritchtronica” firmly embedded in US soil.
In The Earth looks great, btw! My wife will have none of anything even faintly “horrific” but I think my youngest daughter would love it so I’ll probably watch it with her.
Great connection there re: Gaiman, I hadn’t thought of that but it really does ring true in this context.
I think I know the Julian House interview you refer to, it was in The Quietus if I recall. I remember really enjoying it, and as someone who grew up with the internet, there are few things as compelling to me as that notion of fuzzy/misremembered cultural memory. I’ve always had trouble coping with the overstimulating crystal clarity and reproducibility of cultural information in my lifetime.
Hope you and your daughter enjoy In the Earth! It didn’t hit all the marks I wanted it to but I enjoyed it overall, and considering that it was shot in 15 days I was really impressed. Its story really tapped into some of my favorite ideas and sensibilities, and I’ll always stan everything Wheatley does.
By the way, I’d also be very interested in reading your thesis and watching its corresponding video!
My own sensibilities were defined by pre-internet era media and the unmistakable sound of theoretically unwanted noise that accompanied the misrepresented sounds which were inherent in copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy (etc) cassette recordings.
But my love of those things has been fueled in ways that only the internet era itself could have afforded me: the access to information, sounds, videos and even the machines themselves (buying secondhand things from different parts of the country, never mind different parts of the world, wasn’t always all that easy pre-internet).
It’s the kind of collision of and collusion between the two eras that I find most interesting - and I think BoC are incredible examples of what can happen at the point at which those two elements meet and interact. Without the internet, how far would BoC have spread? How large would the cult of BoC (tongue in cheek, but also kind of a valid term) have grown? And at the same time, without living through a chunk of the pre-internet era their sound simply couldn’t have existed.
Hmm… good question. At the time (I guess like 2008) when I discovered BoC (from “tongue to cheek”) it was something very special for me. It was such a pleasure and special to then meet people who were also into them (I think everybody can relate). But it was not too often certainly. Back then you really had to be a vinyl store resident to keep up to date for all the new shit (vs. generation internet)
Thinking back … after I bought most of their stuff, they were the soundtrack of my life from that point on. Pure nostalgia.
My first exposure to their music was a video + electronic music performance. I forgot if it was one person who edited both the video bits and music bits together, or a duo with one person doing video and the other doing the music/sound part.
After the performance I asked about a certain part where I really liked the music, and it turned out to be a few seconds of “Roygbiv”
I honestly don’t think it’s all about nostalgia, I think somethings simply sound good/better, what is older or more nostalgic than a good piano, and yet the piano gets proper credit for it’s sound irregardless of the date and time that it is heard… I think there are more people mistakenly equating a quality/patch sound to the date and time it was released than there are people mistakenly thinking some nostalgic sound sounds good when really it’s just a case of nostalgia… of course I’ve been wrong on Tuesdays before but…
I still maintain that in the track Diving Station, the creaking sound is definitely vocals slowed WAY down. I tried compressing it and cleaning it up…and I SWEAR…its a group of people sitting around, someone says “we hate you all” and everyone starts laffing. making fun of the “we love you all” bit.
they went deep with easter eggs on Geo. DEEP!
where’d they go? I dunno. I hope theres more to come. but I would not be surprised if they just faded out. go as they came…under the Horizon radar
dunno how I missed this thread. they are one of my all times. IaBPOitC has been in my cars CD player since it came out. and I remember SCOURING Audio Galaxy for this unknown band ever since Twosim, finding occaisional rare tracks from the tapes even before Music Has the Right was out. they still blow me away.
they’ve done a bunch of music for commercials, produced some bands.
one werked at a school or something. but that would require digging thru old shit to find that, and I’m not motivated
the release of Harvest was something else. hiding the records in the shops, the codes, the vids…that was a trip. and when they had that listening party in the desert/water park…we were driving back from LA to SF and it was not that far off from where we were…we debated driving in for a listen. but just wanted to get home. anyways…it kinda seemed like that was it…the grand finale. it was pretty grand. still hoping for something some day tho.
Not long after Geogaddi came out, I camped at Canyonlands National Park in a remote part of remote Utah. I was playing it as I pulled up to the gate. The college age woman at the ticket gate said, hey that’s boards of canada….
Had BBQ and a campfire with my wife’s relatives last weekend. Her cousin’s kids are in high school and middle school. During the house tour they saw my “studio” and started asking me about electronic music. They said one of their favorite artist’s was BoC. There is hope for the younger generation!
They’re cool but mainly for people who are already fans of / obsessed with BoC. I’d say the Twoism is the best introduction to BoC, then Music Has the Right to Children after that. Geogaddi is my fave tho.
and I start listening them few days ago reading from this thread.
