Bibio talks about Campfire Headphase

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I went to look at Bibio's MySpace blog and noticed the great post he did about Campfire Headphase a couple months ago was gone! He deleted it along with a bunch of others. So I am rescuing it from the Google cache and putting it here for prosperity.

August 23, 2009 - Sunday

Campfire Headphasing
I was up late chatting with a fellow BoC fan the other night.

We were discussing that BoC is not just music, but it always points towards something ultimate and mysterious. It's impossible to say what that is, but it's palpable in their music, photography and films. Even when they do not create the photographs themselves, the discovery and presentation of such images, sounds, quotes or films seem to contain their consciousness. My friend said that they must have some form of cosmic consciousness and I couldn't agree more.

I think when I first heard the campfire headphase, I had massive expectations, a fault that I admit to being my own, and it affected the way I received that album in a negative way. I was one of those geogaddi obsessives who enjoyed hunting for meaning and messages, spinning the record backward and at different speeds, but only because I knew it was there, and it was intentionally provoked. So, greedily, I wanted more post-geogaddi.

There is an art to listening as well as to making, and what I have learned from Zen has made me reconsider how I hear albums. Hear it now, without dragging a past, without expectations, hear it in its own light in its own moment, not as a comparison.

Campfire seems to deliberately quieten after geogaddi, steps back outside into the fresh air and, perhaps, meditates. It still contains that pointer towards the mysterious, but it is not so concentrated. Geogaddi seems like an overwhelming psychedelic experience full of introverted claustrophobic entanglements of fractals, spirals and wholetone outlandishness. Campfire is like when soberness has started to return and you are staring into the fire, recalling perhaps, but the profundity and mystery is residually echoing around your mind as it begins to settle into its everyday condition. So if there is a link between the albums, it seems to be that.

I listened to campfire start to finish yesterday, no distraction, no analysing, no expectation. I felt like I had been on a journey, I felt like I had witnessed a whole day and night, or perhaps longer, maybe years. I felt like I had been on a road trip, looking out of a car window, waking up in a tent in the morning, and then in the latter part of the album, somewhere up in the clouds before watching the fire die and smoulder into a micro landscape of black and orange shimmering waves.

I was looking through the photos on their myspace, even they have this powerful indescribable wordless message that I became familiar and addicted to back in 1999 when I first heard MHTRTC.

I can't rate them highly enough. I don't think anyone has ever done what they have done. At surface level you may hear hip hop beats, synth melodies, vocal samples... all of which have been done a million times, but it's not those elements I talk about, it's what's between them, or within them, and I don't mean literally intervals, syncopation or timbre, those are but a vehicle for something far more mysterious that, as far as I have found, is only present in their music.

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i kinda had the same thing happen to me as far as my feelings towards that album. at first, I really only listened to "satellite anthem icarus" and "84 pontiac dream" and then would switch cd's, but now I let the cd just play through and have to agree that it really gives you that feeling of looking out a car window during a late afternoon.

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Here is one of the replies and his response that I thought was interesting.

I remember having a conversation about Campfire with you a while ago, interesting to hear your thoughts on it now. I haven't listened to it fully for a while, but am drawn to it frequently, usually only cherry picking a few tracks or listening to the last quarter. As I think I've said before, it's definitely not a bad album but always seemed to lack a certain depth that I was used to from them (Geogaddi was always going to be awkward one to follow up). Time to give it another spin.

I still think they ripped you off though........

Posted by Epic45 on August 26, 2009 - Wednesday - 10:06 PM


Nah, they didn't rip me off. I think there might be a nod in there but to be honest my music has been shaped by them more than vice versa, I honestly don't think the tiny portion of bibio-esque guitar in that album warrants it being called a rip off.

When I first heard Chromakey Dreamcoat and heard the wobbly guitar I couldn't believe the cycle that had happened.

If CH was released by some new unknown band, everyone would be thinking "who the hell is this?" but because it followed 2 boc masterpieces, then it was destined to have the heaviest burden of expectation put upon it. I was guilty of that as much as anyone, but I'm learning to listen to a piece of music in its own light and context, not an easy thing to do, the mind is so easily conditioned. There are many modes of listening, part of being an artist or just a music lover is exploring those modes... all the manual dexterity in the world don't mean shit if one hasn't got a creative mind. It's so rewarding when one gets into stuff that wasn't a hit on first listen... MBV, ISB, Cocteau Twins...

Posted by bibio on August 27, 2009 - Thursday - 1:13 AM

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Very cool & innaresting
The preparation for a dive is always a tense time.

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Bibio summarizes a lot of the thoughts and feelings I have toward BoC. Eerily so.
Viper.

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hmmmm

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BoC ripped off Bibio... What a lame attempt at kissing his ass, Epic45.

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well each album is different from the next. so i hope they are finished. because if they keep going in the direction of the campfire headphase? no thanks.

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judging by how amazing the tracks on "Trans Canada Highway" sounded, im pretty pumped for what they have in store for the next lp. "Skyliner" is a masterpiece and that is one of thier most recent songs to date.

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The only thing wrong with Campfire Headphase is the artwork, imo. Being so similar in both style and colouring to MHTRTC almost forces you to compare it to their earlier records. Geogaddi will always be the standout record for me, but it's not one I can visit too often. It takes me some places I'd rather not go.

Campfire is the one I play most these days. I think there's more musical depth to the tunes on there (if not the same arcane reference depth of Geogaddi) and I love the lighter journey it takes me on. I think it's also a more mature, reflective record which better suits where I am in my life.

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polar sky wrote:well each album is different from the next. so i hope they are finished. because if they keep going in the direction of the campfire headphase? no thanks.


agreed. and this is where things can get fun. where else to go?

angular and propulsive progressive rock with live, amplified instruments

aggressive mechanical punk rock

fey bard's ballads

comedy album

spare, cold and binary electronica?

and who thinks they invented the wobbly guitar?

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Christopher C wrote:judging by how amazing the tracks on "Trans Canada Highway" sounded, im pretty pumped for what they have in store for the next lp. "Skyliner" is a masterpiece and that is one of thier most recent songs to date.
Those were tracks that they didn't include on The Campfire Headphase, so they were recorded the same time.

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dave_from_2001 wrote:
polar sky wrote:well each album is different from the next. so i hope they are finished. because if they keep going in the direction of the campfire headphase? no thanks.


agreed. and this is where things can get fun. where else to go?

angular and propulsive progressive rock with live, amplified instruments

aggressive mechanical punk rock

fey bard's ballads

comedy album

spare, cold and binary electronica?

and who thinks they invented the wobbly guitar?


Hahaha, I know. I like how it's called wobbly guitar. It just sounds like they recorded it to tape and fucked with the tracking. simple as that. But yeah, if their new one (if they are still making music) sounds anything like the last full length? Ugh...

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polar sky wrote:But yeah, if their new one (if they are still making music) sounds anything like the last full length? Ugh...
According to the dutch interview in OOR magazine the new album will shock people. So my guess it will be nothing like their last full length output; how else would it be able to shock people if it were more of the same. They also literally stated people won't expect this from them.

So it must be something really different...

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Yeah, i bet they're going all 80's disco tech on us.
Scott

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Fredd-E wrote:
polar sky wrote:But yeah, if their new one (if they are still making music) sounds anything like the last full length? Ugh...
According to the dutch interview in OOR magazine the new album will shock people. So my guess it will be nothing like their last full length output; how else would it be able to shock people if it were more of the same. They also literally stated people won't expect this from them.

So it must be something really different...


I hope its shockingly beautiful. Its always beautiful. Who knows what aesthetic decisions they've made since that interview though,...time will tell

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I work as a driver and latley all I've been listening to is TCH with the Trans EP songs at the end. I have to say it's the perfect soundtrack to keep me from loosing it driving around rainy Houston. Those EP songs do sound a bit "thicker" tho.

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It will be shockingly different, yet make perfect sense.

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Fredd-E wrote:
polar sky wrote:But yeah, if their new one (if they are still making music) sounds anything like the last full length? Ugh...
According to the dutch interview in OOR magazine the new album will shock people. So my guess it will be nothing like their last full length output; how else would it be able to shock people if it were more of the same. They also literally stated people won't expect this from them.

So it must be something really different...


Where is this OOR interview? Are you talking about "Play twice before listening"?
"We're just a band. Not an IDM band, not an electronic band, and not a dance band."

"An imaginary road trip in a rusty pick-up heading west through the brain"

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nick47 wrote:
Fredd-E wrote:
polar sky wrote:But yeah, if their new one (if they are still making music) sounds anything like the last full length? Ugh...
According to the dutch interview in OOR magazine the new album will shock people. So my guess it will be nothing like their last full length output; how else would it be able to shock people if it were more of the same. They also literally stated people won't expect this from them.

So it must be something really different...


Where is this OOR interview? Are you talking about "Play twice before listening"?


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