I think I understood BoC's work.

Everything related to our favorite Scottish duo.

Moderators: Aesthetics, Drones, Hexagon Sun

User avatar
High Scorer
Status: Offline
Posts: 10637
Joined: 19 Nov 2005
You're welcome. :mrgreen:
Throw away your smartphone.

User avatar
Posts Quantity
Status: Offline
Posts: 138
Joined: 11 Jul 2025
Well, that's a LOT of planning and working out details for what was essentially at the time tweens potsing around with synths and musical instruments.

The problem with analysis that are done post-work is that it really is a reflection of one's own interpretation and as such, has to be taken with all the salt in the universe.

Another theory: They just follow musical aesthetics that are mostly molded by their growing up in a western culture of the 70s and 80s and as music would have it, of course it is littered with maths and cycles and whatnot of higher mathematical concepts because, they said it early enough in their body of work: Music is math, Nlogax, etc.
"People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do" -Isaac Asimov

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 751
Joined: 2 May 2011
Cupz wrote:Here's a de-slopped version of that wall of text for those tl;dr.

Venice.ai wrote:The author presents an elaborate esoteric interpretation of the Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada (BoC), arguing that their work constitutes a modern Atalanta Fugiens—a multimedia initiatory tool designed to guide humanity toward spiritual transcendence. Central to this theory is the concept of "Reality as a Mystical Simulation": a divine "school" where souls evolve through alchemical suffering toward unity with God, moving from the "666" world (materialism, Father and Son without Holy Spirit) to the "777" (Kingdom of Heaven on Earth).

The framework relies heavily on numerology and alchemy. The number 5 represents the Microcosm (Man, the Pentagon), while 6 represents the Macrocosm (Universe, the Hexagon); their union (11) symbolizes transcendence. The author decodes BoC's discography as a deliberate alchemical progression through the five elements: Music Has the Right to Children (Water/1998), Geogaddi (Fire/2002), The Campfire Headphase (Air/2005), Tomorrow's Harvest (Earth/2013), and Inferno (2026) as the Quintessence—the fifth element unifying the previous four. This final album, cataloged as 496 (the third perfect number), allegedly contains the "Golden Key" to humanity's emancipation.

The analysis hinges on "Giraud's Mirror" (track 19), referencing Moebius's Incal and the Möbius strip—symbolizing the eternal rotation between material and celestial consciousness. The author interprets BoC's use of samples, specific track lengths (encoding numbers like 54, 72, 153, 177), and the brothers' initials (M&M = 13² = 169) as evidence of their status as "Two Gods on Earth"—initiated guides transmitting Gnosis through "psychological priming." This connects to a broader "Initiatory ARG" (Alternate Reality Game) spanning sacred architecture (the Pyramids, Paris's chakra-aligned axis), cinema (2001, The Matrix), and current events (9/11 and COVID-19 interpreted as alchemical "Nigredo" phases necessary for collective evolution).

The author posits that BoC's music induces contemplative states to help listeners discover the "code of the Matrix," ultimately revealing that we are God experiencing Himself through individual avatars. The goal is the "Great Work" of alchemy: transmuting the "lead" of ego and ignorance into spiritual gold, achieving the "Christ state" or Philosopher's Stone—a process occurring individually and collectively as humanity exits Plato's Cave.


Could have just said that, but there it is.

In other words, a whole lot of text but nothing new, just rehashing what was said earlier in this thread.


HighLowView wrote:Thanks Cupz for the bot summary!!! It was a really good idea, it's great that you thought of it, and I'm satisfied with what the bot said ^^



Time to puncture a few myths about Boards Of Canada. "The kind of thing that gets up my nose is when people describe us as 'approaching New Age' or soemthing like that," moans Sandison. "To me that's completly missing the point. If we do something that remotely sounds a bit like that, it's because we're actually doing it deliberately, we're doing almost as a pisstake." Google Boards Of Canada and you'll soon find fans with plenty of time on their hands, identifying all manner of psychedelic Easter eggs in the music: reversed samples and tapes, aural palindromes (sentences like "I've been gone about a week" that sound like the same when played forwards or in reverse) buried phrases that hint at paganism ("You Could eel The Sky" contains the words "a god with hooves"). Titles like "Music Is Math", "A Is To B As B Is To C", and "The Smallest Weird Number" (the number 70, which they adopted for the name of their own label/production company, Music70) imply numerological sorcery; musical structures arranged, tuned and sequenced at root level according to mathematical equations such as the Fibonacci sequence and Golden Ratio. Someone's even found that the toal playing time of Geogaddi is 66:06, and it's total hard drive space when ripped to MP3 is 666 megabytes, etc. All of which leads to speculation that they are involved in in some kind of cultish activity - a belief that gathered pace with the release of their 2000 EP In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country, which contained overt references to David Koresh's Branch Davidian community and its annihilation by the US military in 1993 during the Waco siege. "Not in the slightest," counters Sandison when I ask him for a definitive answer on their 'cult' status. "We're just purely coming at what we do from the angle at being interested in subjects. You get a lot of painters or film directors who are complete atheists who'll make films all about religion, or Christianity, not because they're obsessed with the subjects or they're actually evangelists, but just purely because it's something they're interested in for that project. It's exactly the same with us - we'll hit on some of these things, but at the end of the day we're just totally ordinary people that just happen to be making music." And why the particular focus on Waco? "We take a great interest in the spectrum of everything, religions and cults, anything connected to that," says Eoin. Because they are a break from the norm. So when you see something like that, a group of people doing their own thing, going away and living together like that... it's the fascination with that, and a sense of injustice..." "And the outrage at what happened," interjects Sandison. "I'm not a religious person," Eoin continues, "but what I felt seeing what happened there was asense of outrage - they're devoutly religious people, but what happened to them - were they just singled out because of this, and attacked? The victor always writes history, and the only history we know of David Koresh and those people is what's been written about by reference to things like what the FBI were investigating afterwards." "Which was why," Sandison swings back to the record in hand, "we thought we'd make a record that on the surface feels really sweet and very spacious and it'll be titled In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country, but what were these people doing in a beautiful place out in the country? They were getting shot and burned.. [Laughs] It's a typical thing that we would do..." Eoin: "Even when you go away and have that existence, something still chases you there, still follows you home. And that's the impression I get off that story." With every retreat form the world comes the need to protect and survive.

https://bocpages.org/wiki/Protect_and_S ... (interview)

one could fairly say with a high level of confidence BOC are at most mildly spiritual atheists by their own words

BOC words > listener hypotheses
ImageImageImageImage
My heart is full of light and love and sugar and caffeine
I live inside an antiquated obsolete machine ♪

User avatar
High Scorer
Status: Offline
Posts: 10637
Joined: 19 Nov 2005
in other words just a couple of nerds making cool music
Throw away your smartphone.

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 751
Joined: 2 May 2011
that isn't to suggest that it's not meaningful
I think it's about as loaded with meaning as art can be
but that meaning has a natural basis rather than a supernatural one
ImageImageImageImage
My heart is full of light and love and sugar and caffeine
I live inside an antiquated obsolete machine ♪

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 665
Joined: 17 Jun 2025
Location: Sheffield
its the foundation of many thoughts, thoughts are like water though, to much and you will drown!
Bovirl

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 665
Joined: 17 Jun 2025
Location: Sheffield
Cupz wrote:Here's a de-slopped version of that wall of text for those tl;dr.

Venice.ai wrote:Boards Of Canada: Neon Genesis Evangelion


Could have just said that, but there it is.

In other words, a whole lot of text but nothing new, just rehashing what was said earlier in this thread.


Doing gods work mate. Cheers there!
Bovirl

User avatar
Boqurant
Status: Offline
Posts: 67
Joined: 23 Jun 2026
Hi everyone !

Magrathea :
You're absolutely right: our analyses inevitably reflect our interpretations, our projections. We all operate like that, all the time. Even when we're aware of our cognitive biases, well, we still do it... Your messages, to Cupz, Watercan, and you... basically, you're doing the same thing as me! You're projecting your understanding of the world and what you want to see onto your interpretation of the work of BoC.

I'm convinced by my theory about BoC because it's based on numerous elements, some of which are quite strong (Atalanta Fugiens, Giraud’s Mirror & the Incal, 177, 496, 169—in short, everything that demonstrates consistency from beginning to end).
Do you know of any other artists who have such coherence in their work and who, on top of that, offer us « never heard elsewhere » music? Either we are dealing with possibly the greatest geniuses in history, or there is something else going on... or both ?

As for the interview excerpts you showed me, the problem remains the same, and it's already been addressed quite a few times now, so that's the last time I talk about this. Yes, your excerpts greatly weaken my theory, BUT other excerpts greatly strengthen it. So, what do we do? If BoC say "A" in one interview and "B" in another, there's obviously something to be understood. It's up to each of us to interpret what they meant. If we only retain the quotes that fit our own narrative, we're simply engaging in confirmation bias and cherry-picking.

All my interpretations should be taken with a grain of salt. But mathematical correlations don't lie, and neither do the accumulation of esoteric symbols (Atalanta Fugiens, 666 and Inferno tracklist & the "interrogation mark" from TCH²)… that’s why I’m so convinced.


And on another subject, but within the same theme: :

I just rewatched Disclosure Day (which I mentioned in relation to my "199 Prophecy", with the recurrence of the number « 77 » annoncing a great event for this year, and the Jubilee next year).

In the movie, the date of the footage they show worldwide is 7/7/47. Officially it was the day that the US army took control of the place ; the crash happened between the second and the third day of July, so we see another 7/2).
DD = 44, so… maybe, it’s to be linked with the three « 44 » of Aquarius ?

There are a few clues I find overall quite strong that allow us to connect this work to the Initiatory ARG I'm talking about:

-of course, the story itself…

-Some repeated clues with numbers : I didn't bother to write them down because I’m a bit overwhelmed by numbers, but for example :
Channel's name is KCXE4 = 11 3 24 5 4…
11 x 3 = 33  or 11 + 3 = 14 ;
24 + 5 + 4 = 33...
And it also ends with the 5 4 of Inferno ^^

-And also: the remote control is an "elongated hexagon." If that were all, it would be a stretch, but...

-the tire track that the film's antagonist observes at 1:53:40 ("153" ; the vehicule led the heroes in a hidden place) is an hexagonal tiling... There are no lines, nothing but these hexagons. I asked two bots, which told me that this is extremely rare…


As Emily Blunt says at the end :

"The truth belongs to everyone; we all have the right to see and to know."

But it's fortunate that we weren't confronted with this secret decades earlier, because we weren't ready, and it could have unleashed monstrous chaos.
That's why they've been preparing us psychologically for decades, whether it's for extraterrestrials or the "mystical simulation" of reality, and for many other things.

And given that this is Spielberg's 4th film about E.T.s, and considering the almost "cliffhanger" ending… if he’s in the ARG like I believe, maybe it's not impossible that he will do as BoC, and release a 5th film on this subject soon, in "quintessence" mode…


Watercan : what’s the distinction between natural and supernatural, when our science ignores the answer to most of the profund questions we have about the universe, the origin of life & consciousness ?


Llydia : sorry if you felt drown by all my numbers and stuff.
For me, it’s quite the opposite : I was drowning before I started to manipulate this kind of data & knowledge.


See you soon, take care ♥♫

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 665
Joined: 17 Jun 2025
Location: Sheffield
HighLowView wrote:I was drowning before I started to manipulate this kind of data & knowledge.


Image

Edit: You will not escape the boctrix. Zion is a lie! The architect tells the truth!
Bovirl

Previous

Return to Boards of Canada

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 193 guests