Your controversial BoC opinions.

[Opothecary]

Can we start using "...is the Phantom Menace of" as some sort of Twoism inside joke when we want to let everyone know that we're making a completely over the top statement about the quality of something?

Sorry, I didn't know quality was objective when it comes to art.

Either way, you've misunderstood the analogy. It pertains to hype, not quality. It was the biggest musical hype of my LIFE...hence the analogy.

You are the only person that goes out of their way to let someone who doesn't share their same opinion know they still disagree with them. It's been two years, seriously?

I don't feel like I misinterpreted your comparison at all. Comparing something to that movie means that the thing in question had an unbelievable level of hype associated with it among a large number of people, and it subsequently didn't deliver one iota of that hype. It's shorthand for a combination of impossible to meet hype followed by complete disappointment. People wanted too much, and far too little was delivered.

This is an album that mattered a lot to maybe 50000 people, it's not like people were lining up en masse at midnight to pick it up. 7 years passed, not 15 or so.

Although I'll give you this - if this is Phantom Menace, TCH is Return of the Jedi, and ironically the latter has always been a more disappointing movie to me, and that was the first movie I'd ever seen in the theater as a child in 1983. It managed to be a disappointment despite the perfect lead in movie (or in BoC's case, an album, Geogaddi), momentum and a well loved, established set of characters.

Jedi is the most "accessible" movie of the originals (sound familiar?) but the comparison then falls apart completely - Phantom Menace is a movie that has a bunch of missteps that seem to want to cater to children, whereas TH is dark and sometimes inpenetrable - its more like skipping directly to Revenge of the Sith! Its a complete 180 from the prior album. The strange thing is, the people who don't care for it mostly came onboard with TCH but I guess that's not the case with you.

I suppose I had the luxury of having less hype and expectations for TH than some people did, mainly due to overall disappointment with TCH years before. Was I outgrowing this music? Had they lost their touch? I wanted new material from my favorite artists, but I would have been truly just as happy with them unearthing the archives as their comeback because part of me felt that they had lost it, and I didn't want to be disappointed again. Obviously, TH ended up being a huge sigh of relief to me. Now give me some old tunes, and then some more new tunes. They don't even need to sound like TH, they already made that album once.

It's not their fault that you built up your level of expectation to something that nothing could match.

It's not their fault that the new age/easy listening crowd glommed onto them in 2005 and wanted another TCH.

It's not their fault that a portion of their audience's taste evolved in a different direction than their own in the preceding years.

Yes, it's been 2 years. It's time for you to move on.

[Peacock Tail]

Here's something controversial...

BOC are nothing like Star Wars films because Star Wars films suck.

[Peacock Tail]

My comment about production was shitty and elitist, and I wish I could take it back but I can't because it's written in e-stone and self-censorship is a whole heap of bullshit.

Well, let's make bygones be bygones.

[Cupz]

[number-six]

My comment about production was shitty and elitist, and I wish I could take it back but I can't because it's written in e-stone and self-censorship is a whole heap of bullshit.

Well, let's make bygones be bygones.

Gladly, after you've proved i'm not alone in despising Star Wars.

[Jonse]

I'm not going to entertain the ramblings of someone I said something to who literally gave my words his own meaning. I did it years ago after the album came out but for once I actually have some shit to do so yeah, sorry. Go jogging or something.

Anyways, correct me if I'm wrong but last I understood, this is how this works: the guys above don't like any of the Star Wars films. I do greatly enjoy Empire Strikes Back.

Me. <-------

They do not.

I have no desire to tell someone who dislikes Star Wars for all their own personal reasons "no, wrong" when they tell me they don't like it by challenging every reason with my own and above all else I'm definitely not going to contort those subjective reasons.

And it's fine number-six. No, we can not get rid of what we put here (anymore) but I understand your annoyance of the idea that there are "theories" about "why [insert TH or anything else here] sucks" because that's complete nonsense. What appeals to one person will disgust another. I don't know anyone who can force their tastes to change manually and immediately and "explain" it.

Obviously TH appealed to you strongly in some way and that's fine. Geogaddi is tied with another as my favorite record of all time. It impacted my life in an irreversible, positive way and yet I know people even on Twoism that'd give it the same "meh" I give to TH. I don't think it's about production and understanding production. It's not difficult to understand production particularly as a musician and we have many of them here. I think it's ultimately just whether or not you like the material, at least it is for me.

[Aerial Boundaries]

My comment about production was shitty and elitist, and I wish I could take it back but I can't because it's written in e-stone and self-censorship is a whole heap of bullshit.

I wish you would listen to me! Speech is a craft, and self-editing is not self-censorship, it is looking at what you have said and realising that it wasn't precisely what you wanted to say. Ideas don't translate perfectly between one person and another, so if you have the opportunity to convey those ideas in a way that is more truthful to what is in your head, then take it. There is absolutely no shame in it.

I do it with every other post on this forum. Speech isn't a skill you are born with, you learn it. Ergo, there is always room for improvement. Even when you are an adult. There is even more room for improvement over text, where there is a whole deal of missing information from the lack of facial expressions and tonal inflection.

In case it wasn't clear, this is a positive post. Not a shouty one

[Jonse]

Speech is a craft, and self-editing is not self-censorship, it is looking at what you have said and realising that it wasn't precisely what you wanted to say. Ideas don't translate perfectly between one person and another, so if you have the opportunity to convey those ideas in a way that is more truthful to what is in your head, then take it. There is absolutely no shame in it.

I do it with every other post on this forum. Speech isn't a skill you are born with, you learn it. Ergo, there is always room for improvement. Even when you are an adult. There is even more room for improvement over text, where there is a whole deal of missing information from the lack of facial expressions and tonal inflection.

This too. I wasn't so sure what the "self-censorship" thing meant. I think "self-censorship" is what I'd probably call "a revision".

[number-six]

I agree with you both, and again it seems I may have phrased things wrong again. I merely would rather think about what i've said and attempt to improve it than replace it with something more palatable (which is essentially what i'm doing with my follow-up posts).

[Mexicola]

Lol - it's ok No.6. We all do it chap. One of the beauties of this place is it's totally acceptable to change your mind, ramble, contradict, get things wrong and generally talk utter shite. I mean, seriously, just look at me! 6000+ posts of bollocks and they went and made me a mod f'chrissakes

[zeoevil]

meh

Meh+. Things change. People get older. I still skip more songs on that album than any other. If it was slightly less crunchy, less jarring, had the live version of Julie and Candy rather than the studio version, and didn't have You Could Feel the Sky AT ALL, I'd like it slightly more. But then I'd just being making my own version of Geo, now wouldn't I?

Come on, laugh. That was funny. To be fair, Music is Math, Alpha and Omega, and Diving Station are God-tier, so yeah.

[Najlepsiejszy]

On the other hand, TH is so clean it hurts

[FortonServices]

Clean? TCH is the clean one. Too clean.

[Najlepsiejszy]

No way. You have so many distorted, muffled sounds on that LP. Lots of MHTRTC-like sounds, too. On the surface, yeah, it's pretty clean, but it's so organic it just isn't as polished as TH.

[Jonse]

meh

Meh+. Things change. People get older. I still skip more songs on that album than any other. If it was slightly less crunchy, less jarring, had the live version of Julie and Candy rather than the studio version, and didn't have You Could Feel the Sky AT ALL, I'd like it slightly more. But then I'd just being making my own version of Geo, now wouldn't I?

Come on, laugh. That was funny. To be fair, Music is Math, Alpha and Omega, and Diving Station are God-tier, so yeah.

Welp, I'm going to have to disagree with you. Geogaddi comes off as the only BoC album entirely lacking filler with the exception of Magic Window. I love YCFTS, I love Julie and Candy as it is BUT I do like the live version a lot as well and it was a godsend when terekhova uploaded a far higher quality version of it along with a the untitled track 7 of ATP that everyone started referring to as Noatak.

That live version of Julie and Candy from the soundboard though...that's very underwhelming. Actually hearing the live recordings yields this big, booming sound appropriate for a live set. Kind of reminds me of the disappointment I had from hearing Gemini through someone's stream of the Tomorrow's Harvest listening party and then realizing it sounded nowhere near as intimidating or powerful and that was all distortion in the stream audio.

It's probably the cacophony of noises and layers, the "crunchy", "jarring" aspects of that song and the album that make it appeal to me. It seems like that's all a little much for others, I suppose. You should go ahead and make your edit of Geogaddi - won't bother me. Nothing wrong with a fan-edit.

On the other hand, TH is so clean it hurts

Can't say that it sounds "clean" because it's drenched in muffling filters with tracks like Nothing is Real and Seeds of the Dead. I get what you're saying though with the organic quality. It's clean in that it sounds as though the majority of the samples and synths were created in a DAW or something. I know they probably weren't, so I don't know why.

[arvy]

On the other hand, TH is so clean it hurts

sorry

[Peacock Tail]

On the other hand, TH is so clean it hurts

TH is far from clean. Probably their filthiest.

[number-six]

I think we need to define clean, otherwise we're all just imposing our own imagery on the album. I personally see TH as clean (on the whole, and from a production standpoint) when compared to things like the R35TT or even parts of MHTRTC. In terms of cleanliness of melody and track movement it's probably about on par with everything except Geogaddi.

EDIT:
As in, I see Geogaddi as somehow less clean than the others, but only because a lot of it has been obscured deliberately.

[Najlepsiejszy]

Clean, as in everything sounds sterile and soulless. Should have been more precise, sorry

[noisy]

Maybe its meant to be Sterile and and Soulless. A de-populated society, the military in white anti-radiation gear ,roaming the landscape, checking if the environment is safe again? so they can re-populate a Man -made barren Earth.

look at the Venue for the Listening Party, a broken down haunted playground(Theme Park), Theme being the operative word.
They have,in interviews,informed us of many of the references/influences that inspired the album,film,books,music, science,the theorists...

There is still lots of their"Dirty" aged treatments/manipulation of sound mixed into TH.

We can look at BOC in many different ways, the most prevalent being the Production of the sound and the feelings provoked and images conjured up by it. .
I see them as storytellers.
They somehow manage to Inspire so much variety of feelings and imagery in so many DIFFERENT people.

Maybe we are trying to look for more than is actually there, breaking it down too much...