Strange Soup/The Thrift Store Tape Discussion

[Magic Orange]

It's like BoC decided to release the BoC Set but separated in several parts, and being something very rare.
The ARGs could be just a way to make this more difficult to unlock the songs, and the songs not having an official confirmation of an artist behind this, takes the possibility to BoC trying not to associate the BoC Set with his discography, so the BoC Set could be associated to other artists, or just an annonymous.

[Electronaldmcdonald2]

I totally agree with Magic Orange. I imagine BOC see their early stuff (like most bands do) as not being quite good enough for an official release, but they can’t have failed to notice the rabid interest in it.
One way to release it would be to take the best bits and turn it into a mix. They’ve then gone on to incorporate more well known tunes that existed as dramatically different early versions. They seem to have gone to great effort to find contextual samples that either call out the year they were made or place the listener in that time-frame. I’ve been listening through some of it today and I think I’m going to try decipher some of the back-masked parts

[SonnyJim]

As someone said they are signed to warp records so wouldn't be able to release anything high quality except through the label and not be any monetary gain other than stirring things up for the next album.

I still think it's someone who is just mixing in some samples and writing harmony tracks they are quite good at it whoever they are.

All the profile silhouettes have gotta mean something and the cover to random tunes has that lady and the kid at all different ages, very similar to the cover from music has the rights to children. The women on the cover have the same hair parts and colour. That's all I've got so far.. gotta start somewhere

[SonnyJim]

Also @ Magic orange I think you are missing a vid on the compilations, the one that was on the sure FredIn channel I don't got it though maybe someone does

[Electronaldmcdonald2]

I know this has been said before but since the track list for both 'Last' and "Random Tunes 2" share tracks with the first mix uploaded, 'Strange Soup' it's clear that the whole 'found this in a thrift store business' was indeed entirely a fabrication. Since the track list was present on that channel, despite there being no mention of any labelling on the VHS cassette.
It's a shame we can't get more information on the original poster. I guess this is an admission from them that the opening move in the ARG was a fabrication.

'Last' shares some tracks with 'Eleven Missing Tracks'. 'Gravity' and 'Firefleyes'.
Gravity is played backwards on both mixes and starts with a voice saying "Needed some help".
If you reverse the tune there's the same voice saying “Constantly aware of the pull of gravity”. Played in the correct direction, IMHO it sounds a lot like the kind of thing you'd hear on Hi-Scores or Twoism.

https://voca.ro/1kWsnDHIe9nd

'Firefleyes' starts with a voice similar to the one on 'One Very Important Thought' saying:

“The moon and the stars began to glow, ripples in the water yielded a wonderful sight. Like a dreaming landscape”

I can't find the quote anywhere. Does anyone else know how to identify it?

[Magic Orange]

Also @ Magic orange I think you are missing a vid on the compilations, the one that was on the sure FredIn channel I don't got it though maybe someone does

The name of the video of Sure Fredin channel is: Reveal

[Frindia]

phpBB [media]

[Fredd-E]

I've loaded the video to youtube I think it was titled "Last"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NikLPlyO5nQ

It contained this text in the description I haven't been able to find any codes so far not saying there isn't any.

01.Gravity
02.Strange Soup
03.Firefleyez
04.Lunardreamz
05.Untitles II
06.Eastern Seaboard
07.Cyto-Sine
08.Tilt-a-Whirl
09.Colleyedoscope
10.Bye 4 Now

The day was near, the end is here. A sultry sea, this ship I steer.

Compare your finding to what people already discovered one year earlier in the Big Thread.

GENERAL NEW RELEASE SPECULATION TOPIC
Wed Mar 23, 2022 10:14 am
viewtopic.php?p=304223#p304223

Interesting that if you Google the channel name UC0lL5hMzu0LkkKrw91GZd3Q, you get an alternative title and tracklist in the cache

https://www.google.com/search?q=UC0lL5h ... e&ie=UTF-8

Strange Soup

Tracklist:
1. Intro
2. Eureka
3. Tilt-a-whirl
4. Lunardreamz
5. Cytosine
6. Kaleidoscope
7. Fractal
8. Raindancer
9. 9teen70
10. Untitled

[SonnyJim]

@Electronaldmcdonald2 I noticed that too the voice sounds heaps similar to very important thought.
A lot of the samples from the original BOC albums have been identified where they came from if it hasn't been identified yet then that would be strong evidence for it being BOC

@Magic Orange my bad that vid was on the compilation

[Sky and Trails]

Wow, some more activity in this thread!

I agree with statements that this is a nice way for BoC to put some stuff out there for those interested, while bypassing any issues with the label, etc.

It's also interesting what Fredd-E pointed out.
If that was ONE YEAR ago, then this has all been planned ahead of time, laid out strategically?

If so, then this is one hell of a ride. I CAN see how some of us here would have the time and energy to try such a thing, but at the same time, there are LOTS of things at play. The music seems to match the aesthetic and vibe...all the bits seem to fit into the mythology and lore of BoC...there's the ARG aspect that fans really like.

It's a LOT of things for one person to do in their spare time. But, even if it is one person - holy hell, they're good.

I still lean toward BoC. I'm embarrassed of my old work. If I found that I actually had fans, and that they were interested, being nearly 50, maybe older, I think the hostility would have worn off to the point that I'd indulge my fanbase with something like this.

Also, let's just assume there is a new album floating around waiting to be pressed into vinyl. BoC isn't Fort Knox. Try as they might, they can't hide it forever. Maybe out of boredom they have been dicking around on the internet and decided to give us something cool.
Or, maybe this is the early stuff released finally, like someone else mentioned.

Sorry I'm not quoting and linking.

Electronaldmcdonald2: I like where you're going with this.

I still agree with you that this is a lot of work for someone just screwing around. Too much work for that, honestly. This isn't trolling but it's something. Maybe this is BoC dangling the world's biggest carrot and they know how to play this game well.

I'm rambling...

[Electronaldmcdonald2]

Also! While I remember, I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that when you listen to the last two mixes whenever there’s a recognisable BOC song, like Oirectine or Redmoss for example, it just says untitled on the tracklist. They’re just being a massive tease.
Thinking about it, they probably made all these during the COVID lockdown.

I agree with Sky and Trails about these being the old BOC pre SKAM recordings. They’ve tried hard to supress these old recordings but this would be a good way to assert control over their release.

[Sky and Trails]

Also! While I remember, I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that when you listen to the last two mixes whenever there’s a recognisable BOC song, like Oirectine or Redmoss for example, it just says untitled on the tracklist. They’re just being a massive tease.
Thinking about it, they probably made all these during the COVID lockdown.

I agree with Sky and Trails about these being the old BOC pre SKAM recordings. They’ve tried hard to supress these old recordings but this would be a good way to assert control over their release.

I totally agree!

And I think you nailed it - lockdown boredom.
I feel like the girlfriend of an emotionally unavailable guy when he finally mutters, "Yeah, I guess I love you, too."
All it took was a pandemic!

I didn't realize the titles were left off the most recognizable tunes. Smooth move!

[Fredd-E]

I still agree with you that this is a lot of work for someone just screwing around. Too much work for that, honestly. This isn't trolling but it's something. Maybe this is BoC dangling the world's biggest carrot and they know how to play this game well.

Why do people keep assuming all this (events since March 2022) is the work of just one person?
I think all of this is:
- the work of a group of fans in some kind of Discord server coordinating all this (or similar)
- lots of the new Twoism members, operating primarily in this topic, are part of the scheme
- this strange soup definitely is no prime audio soup, if you catch my drift

[karpeggi]

Is there a chronology of the events and videos so far somewhere, maybe on a wiki?

[Eliotsworld1985]

I always wondered if this person (Prohibited Broadcasting) a channel on youtube was behind the thrift store tape. This channel emerged back in august of 2020 when there was all this hype about speculation of a new BoC album. This was posted and some of us were slightly convinced this was a lost tape until, of course other videos were posted. Then became less convinced. They did a BoC cover on the channel and it was clearly fan-made. The music is interesting non the less. Slightly sounds like it could've fit in BoC's earlier stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQdlvMy3CkE&t=1418s

[Electronaldmcdonald2]

@eliotsworld1985 that sounds pretty good. I like the atonal synth solo at the end of Man is The Beast.

I think the thrift store tapes etc are a lot more melodic. But thats only my opinion. It’s just good to find more enjoyable music out there isn't it. BOC or not

[Electronaldmcdonald2]

@karpeggi I haven’t seen a chronology and it feels like it was so diffuse and random I can barely remember the order of events now!
Trawling through the 35+ pages of this thread might give you some insight. But it would probably feel rather tedious too

[karpeggi]

Did anyone happen to grab a copy of the original randomstranger random tunes video? I've seen Magic Orange's compilation (which is excellent) but I'm also looking for a dump of the original video and ideally description text to archive

[karpeggi]

Did anyone happen to grab a copy of the original randomstranger random tunes video? I've seen Magic Orange's compilation (which is excellent) but I'm also looking for a dump of the original video and ideally description text to archive

Found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnW90kSGd5k

[Electronaldmcdonald2]

I re-read a load of the interviews on BOCpages recently and pulled out a few choice quotes. They're more or less chronological. I didn't bothered with attribution, you can search the text on the website if you like. Obviously it proves nothing, but it adds context. It's BOC/ or someone who did their homework properly.

"We were both about 10, something like that. We had started playing instruments even younger, and very soon we were playing around with recordings on cassettes and magnetic tapes, making audio collages. We began writing and playing music in a more serious way at some point around 1987”

“(Michael) When i was around ten years old, i got an old mono cassette recorder and started recording piano pieces with it. I started borrowing instruments from my friends afterwards, things like electric organs. The first time that I played a synthesiser was around 1983, when my music teacher bought a Juno 60. I got addicted to that thing. When he heard some of my home recordings he arranged a way for me to play for a studio. I created a few tracks, this is in 1983, when I was 12 years old, and from there I started forming many bands, all of them different from each other, but always with some electronic instruments"

“We started in the late 80s playing together in a guitar band but using a technological environment like samplers or synths, in the same way as Killing Joke, Nitzer Ebb or My Bloody Valentine”

"We sounded a lot more Gothic, much closer to experimental rock”

“We've been making music since school in the 1980s and no one will ever listen to it. Our friends and families are the only ones who hear everything we write and that's what we really matters”

“We've always been quite prolific and back then all that mattered to us was to give all our friends copies of our music, so we started making up tapes and packaging them, and circulating them. It was just for the love of it so we never asked anyone to pay for them.

“We've got all these tapes and discs going back 15 years or so”

“Every so often we rummage through old tapes and if we discover a melody that makes us feel something, that makes us nostalgic, we rework it”

"We might use a video we taped ten years ago, that we listen to like that, and we take one word from it. We let ourselves rediscover things by chance.

“Two weeks ago we got back to work on a song that we had not touched for two years. For us, music is never finished”

“We even sometimes recover a melody from some of our older music and go look for the rhythm on another”

“Sometimes we dig out an older melody which we wrote maybe ten years ago, and we re-work it, such as 'Turquoise Hexagon Sun' on this album. Usually we let the rhythms fall into place on the melodies”

“I guess one year we might hunt through it all and release some of it”

“Mike: We still play live instruments all the time… We record music like this a lot, though we just haven't released any of it on the scale that we are releasing the Boards of Canada tracks. But one day we will”

Eoin: We both play piano as our first instrument, and we both play guitar. Mike's a good drummer, and you can hear bits of that in there, too. We record a lot of stuff that doesn't make it onto BoC records because, stylistically, it doesn't fit. Maybe one day, we'll put that stuff out somehow.

"A couple of years ago we decided to start collating and cataloging all our early recordings, just for ourselves really, to know that we could tidy it all up and hand it on to our kids someday, but there are literally thousands of tracks going way back into the ’80s. It’s a huge task, and this just seemed to eat up time. We’ve been working on new music all the time throughout this, so we have a lot of material to wade through."

"We kept surprising ourselves, finding old things we’d completely forgotten about. We have cases full of tapes. The thing I notice about the really early stuff is how empty and abstract a lot of it is, so that reminded me of my love for a kind of “distance” in the music.”