Weird, completely unfounded speculation on unreleased stuff

[mechanismj]

What I meant was that P.C and Cold Earth share the same drum track. Listen closely and you'll notice.

Man, I am not hearing that at all. Sorry. Are you sure you are thinking of the right track?

Yes, it's the same drums just time stretched and tampered with. At least I'm fairly sure?

I will admit that I do not have enough information to determine which one of us is definitively correct. But consider this from their interview in The Guardian:

Sandison: "We're definitely vintage hardware freaks. We've always used older gear. Everything we use is decrepit. Our studio is full of wooden things covered with red LEDs. We'll go to great lengths to get hold of a specific instrument just to get a particular sound. For example, there's a sound in Cold Earth that is something like only one second of audio. It comes from an obscure old effect unit that cost us a lot of time and road miles to source, and it ended up being one second of audio on the record. As for our percussion, it's never just a drum machine or a sample, we put a lot of real live drumming or percussion in there, woven into the rhythm tracks, and it brings a bit of chaos into the sound that you just can't achieve any other way.

That is commitment to sound design.

There are at least three different percussion layers in Cold Earth seemingly coming from different sources. The main snare, for example, sounds as though it was ripped from a record. I suppose it is entirely possible that they could have nipped a couple hits from that beat (or any other beat in their other tracks for that matter) but it is just as likely that they created something new. I just don't think, overall, the Cold Earth beat has the same timbre as the one in P.C.

And with that, I leave it to you to speculate! Have fun!

[Thatch]

I've been listening to the OT tapes and R35TT a lot lately and I have a few random probably completely false thoughts:

R35TT:

I reckon this is a compilation made around 1997 ish, mainly of the old albums. I think it features tracks from Acid Memories, Closes vol 1 and Play By Numbers primarily. I think most of the overlapping/cross faded tracks appear next to each other on their respective albums (or potentially as one track), with the exception of A06/A07 which was done by the compiler.

"She is P" is marginally longer than on OTV1 so I expect this track appears elsewhere in their discography under a different name.

I think Acid Memories is probably an album largely influenced by the Boards' love of 60s psychedelia, Incredible String Band type stuff. So I think the songs on that album are mainly guitars, organs, maybe a bit of singing, but light on drums. I think the songs are made up of shorter songs, like the Incredible String Band albums.

So, the Acid Memories tracks are: A09 & A10 are "Petina", and B13 to B15 are "Echo The Sun". They fit stylistically with the sample of Duffy and their lengths fit perfectly. They also don't fit with the other tracks on R35TT, so I don't expect any other Acid Memories tracks to appear on that tape.

I think Closes vol 1 is a compilation similar to Old Tunes. So there are tracks from 1992 but also tracks dating back to the 80s. I think a lot of the smaller tracks appear in R35TT although it's anyone's guess which are which.

A06 is likely to be 5d based on the YouTube video being added to the BOC official playlist.

A14 is definitely Godever as I downloaded the mp3 in the 00s from Soulseek. It does sound much earlier than 1992.

Helios Sound and Ithcus Sound are the same track, with one reversed.

I think Play By Numbers is exactly as described in that article - MBV influenced with some electronics. I think A07 is possibly the second half of Echelon, and B04 is Numerator. They fit with the sample of Wouldn't You Like To Be Free. However the name Numerator is putting me off a bit as the mathematically based names are normally more electronic and the more emotional names or organic names are more acoustic in sound. It could be that "Numerator (Original)" from Closes vol 1 uses the same drum track, and it was slowed down for this one.

Hooper Bay is a bit of an odd one for me. If it was released on 12", allegedly 200 copies, double the number of Twoism and four times the number of Boc Maxima, then I would have expected a copy to surface. I don't think it was ever pressed onto 12". In fact, I think Chris Horne's name appears on Twoism first pressing because he might have helped finance the pressing, so I doubt they would have had the cash to press 200 copies of Hooper Bay and not sell any of them. It was probably only put out on cassette.

I think Buckie High might be the same as Geiser. The lengths fit and the BOC twitter post saying it's from 1994 fits with the release of Hooper Bay. It would fit stylistically with the cold pads of Circle. I also think that Noatak on Hooper Bay was remixed into that live track, as it sounds much more 1999 than 1994.

I also think B12 might be part of a track from Hooper Bay. It fades out in a weird way, like it was faded out before the actual track ended.

OTV2 largely sounds much older than the other leaked material, particularly tracks A1-A17. I think this might be a whole album from the late 80s. Mukinabaht is clearly much more recent, as is most of Side B. The exceptions are Music For Pylons which is clearly from 87/88 (it heavily samples the drums from "Cocaine Sex" by Renegade Soundwave from 1987), Lick (samples the Techno Twins again so probably from same era as We've Started Up), and Powerline Misfortune which is almost definitely from Catalog 3. It's possible that Side A of OTV2 was recorded in chronological order.

Catalog 3 is a strange one, because the track lengths are enormous but the known material from the Boards from that era barely exceeds 3 mins per track. I think the material here is EBM / tape collage / organ drones, with maybe multiple shorter pieces making up the longer tracks.

[Thatch]

Also, regarding She Is P, the audio channels are reversed from OTV1 and R35TT. The R35TT version runs faster but only by 0.04 of a tone. I imagine all of R35TT is fast by a tiny margin. It's well within the margin of error for tape decks.

[bakedsodium]

Powerline Misfortune = Alternate Mix of Powerline
Change my mind.

[funnnnpng]

I am extremely convinced that B09 was used in Wouldn't You Like To Be Free, and that the B09 we hear is from an even earlier album. They probably reused the same patterns but slowed it down so that it fit the rest of Wouldn't You Like To Be Free. I don't know, the progression on top of Wouldn't You Like To Be Free has me convinced.

[bungler666]

For the sake of fun, let's continue this crazy thread.

I'll start:

What if the Wouldn't You Like To Be Free excerpt is what comes AFTER B09 fades out on R35? Imagine the whole song slowing down and then, BAM. Shoegaze.

[bakedsodium]

I'm gonna list a bunch of stupid theories I've thought about:

- Echo The Sun is somehow related to or the same as Echus. The drones are similar to what we hear on Duffy, it's almost the same length (10 seconds off), the names are super similar too.

- Heysanna Hosanna is one of the earliest tracks publicly available. I think it must've been from around 1985.

- North Sea Arbeit and Chinook are a reference to the 6 November 1986 North Sea Chinook helicopter aircrash. Don't really have much proof apart from the names, but it's interesting to think about I guess.

- ATP-07 is NOT Noatak, it's a Geogaddi outtake.

- Buckie High is the same or similar to Geiser.

- B01 is Focus On The Spiral, the lengths are exactly the same.

- Tracks 1-5 on Catalog 3 are stylistically similar to the unknown track on Societas that people say is "Trillions". Tracks 6-8 are similar to stuff on OTv2, such as Powerline Misfortune, BMX Track, etc.

- Some tracks on R35TT (particularly A03) have percussion sampled from a breakbeat vinyl sampler.

- A04 is Close1. (unrelated sidenote, A04 and Zoetrope are the only BoC tracks I truly hate).

[NorthSaturnian]

- ATP-07 is NOT Noatak, it's a Geogaddi outtake.

The "Noatak" voice sample in ATP-07 convinced me it was Noatak from Hooper Bay, but now that I think of it, BoC have made several songs using the same samples. Maybe both Noatak and ATP-07 are different songs but share the "N o a t a k" sample

[bakedsodium]

- ATP-07 is NOT Noatak, it's a Geogaddi outtake.

The "Noatak" voice sample in ATP-07 convinced me it was Noatak from Hooper Bay, but now that I think of it, BoC have made several songs using the same samples. Maybe both Noatak and ATP-07 are different songs but share the "N o a t a k" sample

I think it sounds a bit more like Electric Star, if I heard Noatak I'd be convinced, but I can't hear it no matter how hard I try.

[NorthSaturnian]

- ATP-07 is NOT Noatak, it's a Geogaddi outtake.

The "Noatak" voice sample in ATP-07 convinced me it was Noatak from Hooper Bay, but now that I think of it, BoC have made several songs using the same samples. Maybe both Noatak and ATP-07 are different songs but share the "N o a t a k" sample

I think it sounds a bit more like Electric Star, if I heard Noatak I'd be convinced, but I can't hear it no matter how hard I try.

For me it's the other way around

[mthrndr]

The sample on atp07 has one more syllable than the word Noatak. I hear either "Noo-ah-kah-ta" or "No-ah-guitar". Could still very well be Noatak but they fucked with the sample.

[YELLOW]

ATP07 is definitely not an older track in my opinion. It is for sure a track from the MHTRTC or Geogaddi sessions.
Additionally, I also don’t hear the vocoded voice saying “Noatak” or anything similar.

[PurpleFlurp]

I for one have never been able to buy into ATP07 being Noatak. Firstly, the voice doesn’t sound like it says “Noatak” no matter how hard I try to discern it (admittedly, I have no idea what it really is saying), and secondly, if it indeed were Noatak, it would have to be a more modern reworking of the song, as it more closely resembles a Geogaddi outtake than anything else from their older discography- especially considering that we have heard their music from around that era (1994).

My money is that ATP07 is one of many, many, outtakes from the Geogaddi era, as I have a distinct memory of them saying in an interview that they had around 90 unused songs from those sessions. (If I’m remembering this interview wrong, please correct me!)

[mthrndr]

My money is that ATP07 is one of many, many, outtakes from the Geogaddi era, as I have a distinct memory of them saying in an interview that they had around 90 unused songs from those sessions. (If I’m remembering this interview wrong, please correct me!)

Their prolificity never ceases to blow my mind. Apparently they had ~400 tracks written between Geogaddi and TCH.

"Over the three-and-a-half years it took them to make The Campfire Headphase they recorded more than 400 tracks, working by themselves six or seven days a week."

https://bocpages.org/wiki/Two_for_the_No-Show

Of course, this is before they were married or had kids!! Having kids myself, I'm sure their production volume has taken a big hit.