LP5 - Inferno

[Sofa_Kartoffel]

Received my red vinyl today and there is quiet a bit of surface noise. In the medium loud sections it‘s pretty distracting.
Anyone else experience this?

[The Other]

Kind of happened by accident while I was spinning the record this morning.

[2020k]

Bloody hell, lads - this marketing campaign is getting out of hand:

Wildfire tackled in Pentland Hills

This was probably BOC burning their cell phones the 59th time Warp called that day asking if they'd take an interview. Whoopsie.

[green calx]

Do you think the bros are reading this forum to see what's being said about the record? With Tomorrow's Harvest they were "curious to see what hidden messages get picked up on". How do they receive that information? The most plausible explanation is to just read the conversations yourself. It should be more entertaining too than relying on MDG or whatever to give them the highlights. They are the only ones who know exactly what messages were embedded in the music.

Gotta boast a little bit again. I once caught "I like you" at the ending of New Seeds, the synth melody goes hand in hand with very soft vocoder plus the word can be heard during the fadeout in the left channel. I can't forget it.
Once I wrote to BoC on messenger with that information that I found it, and I'm thankful for such nice, unexpected message in their work,
plus sent them my cat picture (to rate it), and they've opened the message. I'm happy till this day, been really in love with TH, I've been a bit dissatisfied with inferno... but it's fascinating me, bit by bit and I already consider it very good.

[Den]

Kind of happened by accident while I was spinning the record this morning.

I wanted to share this here from the flexi-disc thread. These images from the album art seem to confirm 747’s interpretation of Giraud’s Mirror.

After reading some more in Giraud's book.... I really wonder if Metis blood flows in the veins of BoC. There is a good section in this chapter talking about the, and I quote: "Scottish half-breeds." And it seems The National Film Board of Canada has very much been a big help for the native community. I think they promise to ensure a certain amount of budget allocation of resources towards native culture and also just love the native culture because its awesome. That may be the kind of organization that's worthy to want to honour. The incredible, creative, spiritual nature of their music may have the mixed roots in the similarly incredible, creative, and spiritual nature of Native American and Scottish culture. Both roots feel celebrated in their catalog, What a beautiful mix we end up with,
That is entirely just speculation after a small amount of research, of course. I could easily be wrong and talking out of my arse.

I opened up the album today, and the hexagon flexi-disc is placed inside the booklet between the double-page spread of people on horseback. The Métis were horseback riders. I think you are spot on.

Can someone else let us know if the flexi-disc was placed within the same pages in their record?

“Bison hunters rode horses known as “buffalo runners.” These swift, powerful horses were needed to run straight and to maintain their speed while the hunters loaded, aimed and shot their guns. Good buffalo runners had to be carefully trained so they would not panic when running in the large bison herds. Hunting took a great deal of skill for both the horse and rider. Many Métis became successful ranchers and cowboys due to the useful skills they acquired from bison hunting.”

https://indigenouspeoplesatlasofcanada. ... n-hunting/

[dcom]

Just a completely apophenic thing to throw out here, but there's the labyrinth in Hellraiser, with the god-entity Leviathan floating above it; there is also a movie in the franchise called Hellraiser: Inferno. It wouldn't be a huge undertaking to find more strings to attach to Barkerian body-horror, cults and atheism, hellscapes and whatnot, and why not even make "solving" the album a parable for the solving of the Lament Configuration to call up the Cenobietes...

We have such sights to show you... shall we begin?

[Syberia]

I've only listened to Inferno a few times so far, and I feel like it's an album that will need time. Some tracks haven't fully revealed themselves to me yet, and I suspect my feelings about the album as a whole will change over the coming weeks and months.

But there's one track that stands out: You Retreat In Time And Space.

I've been listening to Boards of Canada for more than 25 years. They've been with me through different phases of life, different states of mind, different versions of myself. There was a time when their music accompanied experiences that felt larger than ordinary life, moments where the boundaries between memory, imagination, self and world became blurred.

That chapter of my life is long gone, but somehow this track opened the door to it again.

It's difficult to explain, but listening to it feels like drifting out of time and space entirely (oh the title is so fitting!) Not in a purely nostalgic way,more like being reminded of something vast that has always existed somewhere beneath the surface. Like the beauty that holds us all together.

What amazes me is that after all these years they can still do that. They can still create something that reaches that deeply.And they have already given me this so many times before. I wasn't prepered to be floored like this once again.

I don't know if others hear it the same way, but for me this track somehow contains everything I've carried with me from a lifetime of listening to Boards of Canada. It feels like a summary of something that can't really be put into words.

Because of that, it almost doesn't matter how I end up feeling about the rest of the album.

One piece of music that can do something like this is enough.

[The Other]

Stills from the looping videos on Spotify in order from ‘Introit’ to ‘I Saw Through Platonia’ I normally don’t pay attention to these if/when I listen to Spotify.

Didn’t see these posted anywhere else on the forum. Apologies if it is a repeat post.

[Gazebo4]

Anyways, I was having a 2nd listen and there are two interesting points that left me wondering about its narrative:
2- Do the heart monitoring beeps from Memory Death echo the heartbeats on Platonia? Interestingly, Memory Death is followed by The Word Becomes Flesh whose lyrics evoke embryogenesis. It's also right at the middle of the album, while Platonia is last.

So it seems like first half of the album ends in death, while the 2nd one focuses more on rebirth. Could this be a way to suggest the concept of reincarnation? Given the album's overall religious theme…
It could very well be an overinterpretation but who knows

Okay this is very interesting to me as well!

In Memory Death we hear the heartbeat monitor but it's stable as in, no physical death, only memory death. The track has to my ears these eerie deep breaths of relief, like letting go of a heavy past (memory). Track number 9 and ending the first half of the album.

Last track I Saw Through Platonia has that heartbeat and my far-fetched interpretation is that the track title would suggest something along the lines of seeing though the illusion of time, breaking the chain of past-presence-future all together. So yes perhaps a rebirth in a more consciousness oriented way, memory death of the past and consecutively seeing through the illusion of time meaning a new way of seeing, leaving the old behind.

Of course it wouldn't be Boards of Canada to leave us with that "realization" so abruptly as to what it means, it should be interpreted by the listener as such.

Also I don't know what it means but Memory Death and I Saw Through Platonia both signal an aliveness but one is attached to a monitor and more importantly the implication comes from a machine, the last one is an actual visceral sound and sensation. I just found the contrast interesting.

[Cupz]

from the top AGAIN

[Essential Life]

Inferno..., I'm just going to say it, is my favourite album of the 2020s no question. I know it's kind of a recency bias over here but my god do the sound design, atmosphere and structure these songs have been absolutely immaculate. I can't stop listening to the album after me and a few of my friends had done listening party sessions in a Discord server.

Naraka, Deep Time and You Retreat in Time and Space made me tearing up so much. In fact, the latter of which has now replaced Nothing is Real as my favourite BOC song and potentially my favourite song of all time. It's just ugghh... It's just so beautiful and heartwrenching.

[Gazebo4]

What a fantastic way to end the album by the way, wow!!!

[shinealight]

Someone on another forum said that they looked at the publishing credits on PRS and that Mike has 100% of the rights on roughly half the tracks and Marcus has 10% on the rest. Can anyone confirm that? They should have done a double album where they got their own LP each to play with! All but confirms Marcus had a very limited role on this album, which for makes how good the album is even is more impressive that it was a mostly singular achievement to compose, though insane credit goes to Mike Colton for the mastering of the album too.

[detit tani]

I put on a small session and played Societas x Tape before Inferno.

Societas was the clue.

[Den]

I agree. The form of Inferno has a mixtape quality that feels deliberate.

[Redd Panderson]

Okay...wow. Damn. Just finished my first listen and it is sticking in my head. I was confident based on the reaction from others I'd accidentally seen, and from my own belief in this band, that Inferno would be good.

I was NOT prepared for it to be my instant favorite BOC album, and easily as good as any of my favorite albums ever. I don't mean to sound hyperbolic, but this was operating on whole other level from their previous albums while sounding like a perfection of their sound in many ways. True absolution here. It was awesome how ghostly and inscruitable yet spellbinding this thing was.

Gushing over!

[KINGofCRA5H]

Stills from the looping videos on Spotify in order from ‘Introit’ to ‘I Saw Through Platonia’ I normally don’t pay attention to these if/when I listen to Spotify.

Didn’t see these posted anywhere else on the forum. Apologies if it is a repeat post.

Beautiful. I noticed these as well, they all seem to be different and I couldn't find them anywhere else? It would be nice to be able to get a copy of those somehow

[The Other]

I put on a small session and played Societas x Tape before Inferno.

Societas was the clue.

Lovely. Need to do this too.

I agree. The form of Inferno has a mixtape quality that feels deliberate.

Good call! It really does.

[Den]

It is amazing how the remix work and Societas X Tape was illuminating their new direction this entire time. Inferno’s mixtape quality is subtle as a formal effect, but present.

[skunkman]

Stills from the looping videos on Spotify in order from ‘Introit’ to ‘I Saw Through Platonia’ I normally don’t pay attention to these if/when I listen to Spotify.

Didn’t see these posted anywhere else on the forum. Apologies if it is a repeat post.

Beautiful. I noticed these as well, they all seem to be different and I couldn't find them anywhere else? It would be nice to be able to get a copy of those somehow

they're all in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ksRe0oMeXY