If you go down in the woods today, you'd better not go alone. Join us as we venture deep into the dark forest with Boards of Canada's sophomore EP, In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country, and their kaleidoscopic occult classic Geogaddi.
If you go down in the woods today, you'd better not go alone. Join us as we venture deep into the dark forest with Boards of Canada's sophomore EP, In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country, and their kaleidoscopic occult classic Geogaddi.
Turquoise Hexagon Podcast Episode 5
"A Beautiful Place"
In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country & Geogaddi
A.1
Welcome Boarders to another episode of Turquoise Hexagon Podcast, a For Tune Telling series. I’m your host, Elroy G Biv. Each season of For Tune Telling profiles a band or artist and our first season focuses on the renowned electronic music duo Boards of Canada. Today - or rather tonight, Halloween night, while we're recording - we’ll be looking at their follow-ups to Music Has the Right to Children: the 2000 EP In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country, and their sophomore studio album, Geogaddi.
Following the release of their critically acclaimed studio debut in 1998, Boards of Canada gave a series of interviews, mentioning that they were working on a follow-up record they referred to as a “psychedelic behemoth.” (During this time, they also gave their only live, on-air radio interview, a brief chat with John Peel on BBC Radio 1 before performing four tracks - all but one of which, XYZ, were alternate versions of tracks from Music Has the Right.) In November 1999 they played a show at the Warp 10th Anniversary Party in London, and in October 2000, they performed at the Incredible Warp Lighthouse Party alongside other Aphex Twin, Autechre, Prefuse 73, and others, and it was here that bits of what they’d been working on first crept out to the general public. Although the security was tight and video/pictures were strictly prohibited, both of these shows were secretly recorded and widely distributed as bootlegs. They featured tracks from the upcoming releases hinted at in the interviews, which took a distinctively darker tone than Music Has the Right to Children. A track performed at the Lighthouse show contained a vocoded sample stating: “although not a follower of David Koresh, she’s a devoted Branch Davidian.”
On November 27, 2000, Boards of Canada released the four track EP In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country. Called "a BoC manifesto if ever there was one" by music journalist Richard Southern in a 2001 article, In A Beautiful Place showcased a more ambient and pastoral approach than Music Had the Right to Children, with achingly nostalgic melodies floating over sweeping soundscapes and lilting beats.
In many ways, it could be considered a concept piece, revolving around the Branch Davidian religious commune best known for being the victim of a brutal siege by US federal agents at their Mt. Carmel compound in Waco, TX, 1993. The title derives from a statement given by church member Amo Roden in an interview for the 1996 TV program “Mysteries Magic & Miracles'' which, in addition to its use on the EP, would later be reworked as a sample in BOC’s 2001 remix of Poppy Seed by Slag Boom Von Loon, and then on 2002’s Geogaddi. Track 2 of In A Beautiful Place, Amo Bishop Roden, is also named after her.
B.1
[Sample of Amo Bishop Roden interview]
The booklet that accompanied the album contained a picture of an eye that was cropped from a larger picture of David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidian sect at the time of the 1993 siege.
Like Pete Standing Alone from Music Has the Right, opener Kid for Today weaves the sound of a slide projector into the rhythm section, evoking faded snapshots of childhood memories suggested by the title. At 4:58 and again at 5:10, an unintelligible vocal sample, distorted and reversed, fades in and out as if from a distant radio transmission. The title as well suggests the impermanence of childhood innocence. Mike said in a 2002 interview: “Being a kid is such a transitory, fleeting part of your lifespan. If you have siblings, then if you think about it, you'll have known them as adults for a lot longer than you ever knew them as children. It's like a little kid lost, gone.”
Following up Kid for Today is the slightly more abrasive and upbeat “Amo Bishop Roden.” The track takes its name from a dedicated Branch Davidian church member and widow of George Roden, a former rival of David Koresh seeking leadership over the sect. At one time as well Mrs. Roden was the caretaker of the Mt. Carmel site and memorial to the victims in the years after the tragedy. While the federal government maintains that the church members committed mass suicide during the siege by burning down the compound themselves, Roden has never bought that story, explaining in the interview from which the famous “come out and live in a religious community” sample was sourced that in her view, it didn’t make sense for people living with their loved ones in a beautiful place out in the country to “suddenly be overcome with this suicidal impulse.”
The band themselves also have also expressed sympathies with Roden’s view of events. Marcus stated in a 2005 interview with The Wire when asked about the Waco connection: “I'm not a religious person… but what I felt seeing what happened there was a sense 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."
Throughout the years since the EP’s release, several fans have reached out to Amo Roden through the email publicly listed on her website. In 2013, Twoism user Radiobuzz posted an exchange he’d had with her on the forum, stating that he'd "asked Amo Bishop Rosen what she thought about her track." Roden replied:
"I can't be much help to you because I have never heard the tract (sic) named after me. I did meet the band and found them to be very pleasant people. Best regards, Amo."
In 2019, a member of the Boards of Canada Facebook Group posted a screenshot from his own email correspondence with Roden, saying:
Hey guys, I hope this story is interesting to you. Back in 2014 I was curious about BoC’s relation to the Branch Davidians after listening to ‘1969’ and the ‘In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country’ EP. Particularly I wanted to understand their fascination with a Branch Davidian woman, Amo Bishop Roden. Through some research, I discovered an email address for her and I reached out to her asking about her relationship with Boards of Canada. She responded rather quickly, and told me that the brothers visited the Branch Davidian property in Waco, Texas back in the 90s and spoke with her about what happened there in 1993. That’s where the inspiration for the track ‘Amo Bishop Roden’ came from! I still have the email too! Thanks for reading.
The email read:
“Dear Andrew,
I met the band when they came to the Branch Davidian property in Waco to visit. We talked for awhile and I believe that I told them that Koresh’s group did not commit suicide (as the government claimed). My comment was: Why would people living with their friends in a beautiful place out in the country kill themselves? So, the story was short, as was their visit. For more on the massacre, you can visit my website, www.amoroden.com. Love, Amo.”
AmoRoden.com went offline (within the last year, at some point), but can be viewed via the Internet Archive, with the most recent screen captures from 2022. The search preview describes the site as "Religious and political essays by Amo Paul Bishop Roden on the Branch Davidian Church history and message, prophecy, our evil world, corrupt courts, etc."
Next comes the title track, built around a vocoded sample of Roden and wistful synth melody punctuated by a sparse beat, with the distant laughter of children fading in and out. Placed in the context of the Branch Davidian references, and the ultimate fate of Koresh's followers, the Invocations of childhood innocence and nostalgia in this track and Kid for Today take on a much more sinister quality. Mike said in the 2005 Wire interview: "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…"
The closing track is Zoetrope, a beatless ambient piece that seems to fade in and out like the early animation device that shares its name (though according to Richard Southern’s 2000 article Boards of the Underground, the title of the track refers to Francis Ford Coppola’s film studio in San Francisco). Shifting between uplifting and melancholy by turns, it ends suddenly, without any fanfare, leaving you wanting more, a brief and beautiful experience only missed in hindsight, like the lost years of childhood the band sought to evoke, and the years the children of the Branch Davidian families never got to live.
In an interview with DJ Mag published in 2005, Marcus summarized In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country:
“The theme of that EP was the idea that you can try to have an idealistic way of life out in the country, but only on the condition that the authorities approve it…The Branch Davidians were just an illustration for a bigger issue. Disregarding the fact that David Koresh’s beliefs were maybe crazy, that whole incident was a brutal reminder that we’re all basically toeing the line.”
Speaking to Richard Southern at the end of 2000, BOC discussed their upcoming second studio album.
Mike said of how it compared to In A Beautiful Place: “The nearest clue to where we're going is on the title track. But a lot of it will be even more outlandish than that. If you could call the last album electronica, you definitely couldn't call the new album that.” Marcus added: We've split and gone in two directions…There are some things which are just acoustic instruments playing acoustic music, while we've also done some even more electronic tracks. Some of the best ones manage to achieve both at the same time.”
But the most interesting indication of the direction they were going in came in the 2001 article “Breaking Into Heaven” in British publication The Face:
“Mike Sandison once had a dream that he was in Edinburgh, near the castle. All the stonework of the buildings and the roads were covered in flowerbeds sown with a tapestry of bright flowers in concentric patterns. [Sandison said:] ‘It was the most amazing thing, and it stuck with me for ages. It made me think: there’s nowhere in the world like this! Nowhere at all! So I thought we should try and make tunes that people in that town would be listening to’.”
On January 18 of 2002, Warp Records posted an unassuming update on their website:
“Over the next few weeks people will be gathering in special locations across the world to listen to the new Boards Of Canada album, Geogaddi.
We have 10 pairs of invites to give away for the London assembly taking place on January 30th."
Geogaddi made its public debut later that month, playing in six churches throughout Europe, Japan, and the United States. An article in NME, The Secret Life of Boards of Canada, described the event:
“Slides of children playing, of sunsets where the sky is bent into a hexagon, were projected above the altars. Small turquoise hexagons took the place of hymn books.
And then there was the album: 66 minutes and six seconds of music that is both soothing and disorienting, lushly beautiful yet creaky and unnerving. One track, 'Opening The Mouth', sounds like a heavy-breathing call from a banshee. Another, the truly horrible 'The Devil Is In The Details', alternates between the instructions on a relaxation tape and a desperately crying child. There are ghostly organs and distant tablas, warnings of volcanic explosions, an ecstatic vocal about ‘1969 in the sunshine’ and an overall feeling that this heady, saturated music is how My Bloody Valentine might've sounded had they released anything after 1991's 'Loveless'. Honestly, it's that good.”
As hinted by the tracks that the band had slipped into their live performances in the lead-up to the album’s release, Geogaddi assumed a more overtly dark and menacing atmosphere than Music Has the Right to Children (which had its own share of unsettling moments). Looking back on the record several years later, Mike said:
“'Geogaddi' was kind of exorcising demons, and even after we'd set out to do a record like that, smack in the middle of working on it, 9/11 happened. I remember there were a few of us in the studio that day, and we just ended up glued to the TV for the whole day. I think the months after that pushed us into making a darker record, as I'm sure it did with a lot of bands.”
The album art was built around a kaleidoscopic motif; the cover depicts silhouettes of people joining hands around a vivid orange hexagon, interspersed with trees, while the booklet within features mirrored images of children playing and grinning mischeviously. The imagery reflects the mirrored and twisting nature of the music itself.
So, what does the title “Geogaddi” mean?
One of the first possibilities that comes to mind is that it may at least partially reference the opening track of The Incredible String Band’s 1968 psychedelic classic “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter,” named “Koeeoaddi There.” Boards of Canada have mentioned that they’re fans of the group, and Geogaddi feels part of a lineage with The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter in particular - the music is wild, organic, overflowing with flutes, sitars, drums of all kinds, while children’s songs, nursery rhymes, and sunny melodies are interweaved with darker themes - Koeeoaddi There references the dry bones of someone murdered and a “basket bound with skin,” while a Very Cellular Song later on the record speaks of a "beast at the end of the wood" that “ate all the children when they wouldn’t be good.” The title of “Koeeoaddi There,” according to ISB member Robin Williamson, was created randomly by rolling a dice with letters on each side; as to the title of the record itself, the band said “you can make up your own meaning… your interpretation is probably just as good as ours.”
Boards took a similar philosophy with Geogaddi. Mike said in a 2002 interview with OOR:
“It's a combination of different words, there are a few different meanings you can take from it. We have our own meaning and we want the listener to make up his or her own meaning. It's more personal that way.”
In the article “The Color and the Fire” for HMV.com, the interviewer suggested “geo- or ge-: Earth: geocentric. gaddi n : a cushion on a throne for a prince in India,” and Marcus replied that this was not correct, saying “It can have several meanings. We have our own definite idea of it, a combination of words that describe an idea we had at the time of writing it, but we want listeners to make their own minds up.”
So what are some possibilities? Beyond the style of the word being a wink to the Incredible String Band, the “Geo” prefix suggests the Earth. Besides a “cushion for a prince,” Gaddi could refer to the Gadd, a semi-nomadic Indian tribe living in the Himalayas. According to the Tripoto article The Enigmatic Gaddi Tribe of Himachal Pradesh, the Gaddi are a “community of indigenous people with a rich cultural heritage that dates back centuries” and are “known for their close connection with nature.”
“The Gaddis have a unique lifestyle that revolves around their animals and the mountains. Skilled in animal husbandry and known for rearing and breeding sheep and goats, which provide them with milk, meat, and wool, Gaddis have [a] deeper understanding of the mountains and their ecosystems, and also have in-depth knowledge of medicinal plants, herbs, and local flora and fauna. Their profound respect for nature is reflective of their harmonious lifestyle.”
These elements combined could suggest the idea of living in harmony with Earth, which definitely resonates with some of the themes of the record and the more organic and pastoral sound when compared to the Boards’ earlier work. But like they said, draw your own conclusions.
As with Music Has the Right, Geogaddi opens with a short interlude to set the mood: Ready Lets Go (spelled without an apostrophe), a droning ambient piece over a wavering sound effect that appears to be a slowed sample of a radio burst from Jupiter.
C.1
[Ready Lets Go]
C.2
[Jupiter S Burst]
Then we’re off into Music Is Math, one of the Boards’ most iconic tracks. Like “In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country,” Music Is Math could also be called a “BOC manifesto.” Back in 1998, Mike told Space Age Bachelor magazine: “I believe we're all born with the potential to generate all possible melodies. Babies respond to tunes as though they're recognizing something. Music is maths, no matter how messy or atonal it gets, it can always be described by numbers.” This begins a major thread running through Geogaddi, the intersection of mathematics and art.
In a 2002 interview, Remix Magazine journalist Ken Micallef asked: “Does "Music Is Math" have anything to do with the mathematics and geometry that run through nature and, consequently, art, music and architecture?”
Mike answered: “We've been interested in these things for a while, but on this album, we thought it'd be fun to put it in as a theme. The golden mean is nothing new in architecture and music. All through history, there have been guys like Mozart who got into the Masonic knowledge and were fascinated by this stuff. On Geogaddi, there's a vague theme of math and geometry and how they relate to religious iconography.”
Music Is Math doesn’t just set the stage thematically, but musically as well. It’s composed in the key of G-minor, which famed classical composer Franz Schubert called the sound of “Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth.” Almost all of the chords in the progression are what’s called “suspended,” meaning they omit the third, creating an unresolved feeling that builds tension. Moving from one suspended chord to another to another leaves the listener in a state of growing uneasiness and anxiety.
At 52 seconds, we hear a voice saying “the past inside the present.” The source of this sample has never been located, though a number of listeners have pointed out that it sounds very much like the 90s psychedelic counterculture icon Terence McKenna, though no clip of him speaking this phrase has been found.
D.1
[The Past Inside the Present sample]
D.2
[Terence McKenna speaking]
Veering into the realm of speculation - Terence McKenna was known to have been in contact with the English electronic duo Coil, and Coil were evidently working with Boards of Canada on a collaborative project at the time of John Balance’s death in 2004. Balance said in a Soulseek discussion before he passed away:
"We've been in contact/communication/reciprocation with the lads from Boards of Canada. Our extreme appreciation for each other's work is mutual. Something may also come out of that in the near future.. Again, it's all in the aether."
Hexagon Sun representative MDG confirmed the collaboration in a 2011 post on the Twoism forums, saying:
"Yes, BOC and John Balance were working on something at the time of his death, a compilation album of some kind."
So, maybe Boards obtained a non-public recording of Terence McKenna from Coil. Maybe they contacted him privately. Maybe the clip comes from some obscure piece of media that just has yet to be located. Or maybe it’s someone else speaking altogether. Regardless, “the past inside the present” could also be seen as a statement of the band’s intent: they use purposefully degraded media to evoke the past, but not the past exactly as it was at the time, in a literal, realistic sense: the past as it exists now, through the distorted lens of memory. The past seen from the present. As the past only ever exists.
Starting at 1:15 a vocoded voice sings "we all fall down,” taken from the nursery rhyme “ring around the rosie,” which many people believe refers to the Black Plague. While most folklorists dispute this origin for the rhyme, taken out of its innocent childhood context, it does take on a potentially sinister meaning, hinting at mortality; it’s not the only time we’ll hear warnings from schoolyard rhymes on Geogaddi.
At 3:52 we hear a voice buried in the mix saying what's been heard alternately as "careful" and "purple." There's at least one other instance on the record of a voice stating a color ("yellow" is heard later on in Alpha and Omega), and it would fit in with the trend established by Aquarius’s “orange.” “Careful” also fits well as it could be a warning to the listener about to embark on a perilous journey. Again, draw your own conclusions.
D.3
[“Purple” Sample]
From there the beat churns hypnotically forward as the melody devolves into a cascade of echoing, distorted voices that trails off slowly, leading the listener deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole directly to Beware the Friendly Stranger.
A short interlude that served as many people’s introduction to Boards of Canada via the mid-2000s animated webseries Salad Fingers, it’s a brief melody over the crackling of a vinyl record or a campfire. The title likely comes from anti-drug flyers widely distributed by the Inter-State Narcotic Association in the early 70s, reading: “Beware! Young and Old- People in all walks of life! This [picture of a joint] may be handed to you by the friendly stranger. It contains the killer drug Marihuana – a powerful narcotic in which lurks Murder! Insanity! Death! WARNING! Dope peddlers are shrewd! They may put some of this drug in the tea or in the cocktail or in the tobacco cigarette.”
There is, however, also a coffee shop called “The Friendly Stranger” in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy of Discordian-themed novels.
“It was April 30, Walpurgasnacht (pause for thunder on the soundtrack), and I was rapping with some of the crowd at the Friendly Stranger. H.P. Lovecraft (the rock group, not the writer) was conducting services in the back room, pounding away at the door to Acid Land in the gallant effort, new and striking that year, to break in on waves of sound without any chemical skeleton key at all and I am in no position to evaluate their success objectively since I was, as is often the case with me, 99 and 44/100ths percent stoned out of my gourd before they began operations.”
But besides the direct references contained in the name, the title conveys the idea of danger lurking just below the surface of what otherwise seems fun or harmless (the “friendly” stranger), of threats faced by the innocent and naive.
The short lull in the action is broken with Gyroscope’s pounding beat, panning quickly from right to left such that, if the listener is wearing headphones, the sound feels as though it’s whirling rapidly around their head, while samples of a child counting drift in and out from the miasma - these samples were recorded from a shortwave radio numbers station in the 1980s by Sean Booth of Autechre. Around 2:45, reversed guitar creeps in and builds for the rest of the track.
In a February 2002 interview with HMV, Marcus named Gyroscope as a moment on Geogaddi that was “completely fulfilling from a creative standpoint,” saying:
“I dreamed the sound of it, and although I've recreated dreamt songs before, I managed to do that one so quickly that the end result was 99% like my dream. It spooks me to listen to it now.”
Following on the tail of the harrowing Gyroscope is another interlude, Dandelion. Sounding at first like dissonant synth drones interspersed with clips from a 1979 nature documentary narrated by Leslie Nielsen, when played in reverse, a beautiful, wistful melody appears.
E.1
[Dandelion played forwards]
E.2
[Dandelion in reverse]
The “dandelion” referred to in the narration is a deep sea invertebrate; the NOAA calls them one of the ocean’s most “unusual” animals, describing their appearance as “pulsating, faintly glowing, orange-yellow ball[s] that [seem] to hover just above the bottom.” The crew of the ship shown in the documentary, Dive to the Edge of Creation, is attempting to bring one of the strange and delicate creatures to the surface without destroying it. The beauty in the world of bizarre creatures hidden in the harsh environment at the bottom of the ocean could be seen to mirror the melody buried reversed in the track.
Also worth noting that the documentary itself has a really cool score, and plenty of tunes reminiscent of the reversed version of Dandelion.
Next up we have another one of Boards’ most iconic tracks, Sunshine Recorder. A sunshine recorder is just what it sounds like - an instrument that tracks the amount of sunlight in a particular area throughout the day by focusing the sun through a glass sphere, burning a trail on a paper card behind it.
Keeping up the trend of alternating between interludes and high-energy beat-driven tracks, Sunshine Recorder kicks off with an off-kilter rhythm, 10/4 time signature by my count, with chopped up vocal samples reminiscent of Telephasic Workshop or Nlogax fading in around 2:50. From there, more samples are layered on - starting at 3:12 and repeating throughout, we get “a beautiful place,” which calls up an association to Boards’ earlier EP; this is taken from a Sesame Street episode:
F.1
[Sesame Street: “A canyon is a beautiful place”]
F.2
[Sunshine Recorder clip: “a beautiful place”]
Starting at 4:04, and again repeated throughout the song, we get a stretched sample of a child’s voice saying “an eagle in your mind,” apparently referencing the track from Music Has the Right to Children. Combining all the vocal samples, chopped, stretched, and layered into a psychedelic groove, we jam on that 10/4 beat for a little bit before finally wrapping up with a clip from the same Sesame Street segment used in BOC Maxima’s Whitewater and Sixtyten from Music Has the Right, again, stretched and distorted.
F.3
[Sesame Street: Bye, bye, bye]
F.4
[Sunshine Recorder: Bye, bye, bye]
We then move into another interlude, creating space from the dense soundscape of Sunshine Recorder’s ending with “In The Annexe.” The track consists of a sparse melody with barely-audible samples of what sounds like children singing and playing. Some resourceful Twoism users - Oliveoil22 and Dmitrii - were able to isolate and locate the source of the sample:
G.1
[In The Annexe segment with vocals]
G.2
[Slowed version]
G.3
[Cleared and isolated]
We can most clearly hear “she’ll be buried in red, red, red, she’ll be buried in red, buried in red today,” followed by “red is for danger, danger danger, red is for danger…” and then “she’ll be buried in white.”
The recording comes from a 1983 compilation, “Children’s Singing Games,” and is titled “I've Come To See Your Janie Jones.” It’s a version of a traditional singing game also known as “Jenny Jones.” The poet and folklorist Matthew John Williams wrote of the game on his website:
“ This is a chase game: a group of kids go away and return singing verse 1; then a girl (for this is a secret girls' game it seems) sings 'Jenny she is dead...'; the group then stand in front of her and sing 'What colour...?' the girl answers; children sing 'Red is for danger...'; girl choose[s] white; children sing 'White is for angels...' then the group stands over the girl who is Jenny Jones and sing 'Ding, Dong' etc, after which Jenny springs out of the corner and chases everyone away - the first one caught becomes Jenny Jones.”
The complete version as recorded by Williams goes like this:
“Please, we've come to see Jenny Jones, Jenny Jones, Jenny Jones;
Please, we've come to see Jenny Jones,
And how is she today?
Jenny she is dead,dead, dead;
You cannot see her today.
What colour is she going to be buried in?
Red. [Or “she’ll be buried in red” in the compilation version]
Red is for danger, danger, danger;
Red is for danger, so that won't do.
White.
White is for angels, angels, angels;
White is for angels, so that will do.
Ding, dong,
The castle bells,
Ringing for me;
I'll be buried in the old churchyard
Beneath the great yew tree.”
So once again we have a children’s song warning of danger and death, but you can’t actually hear what it’s saying until you dig it out from deep in the mix.
An “annexe,” referred to in the title, is like a self-contained smaller living area attached to a house; containing sleeping quarters, a bathroom, and a kitchen, where a caretaker, servants, or a relative might live. For me this conjures up an image of the children whose voices we hear playing in an annexe, an indoor area, instead of outside like you’d assume. Why? Maybe they’re hiding from the danger that lurks in the woods. It also could suggest the track as a smaller, isolated respite from the more chaotic tracks surrounding it; but even in this seemingly placid resting place, darkness lurks just below the surface.
Venturing back out into the woods, we find ourselves at another fan favorite, Julie and Candy. Some have interpreted the title as a reference to the 2000 killing of 10 year old Candace Newmaker in a so-called “rebirthing” attachment therapy session gone wrong, as one of the (again, so-called) “therapists” responsible was named Julie Ponder. While this would fit with the references to childhood dangers present elsewhere on the record, I see a more likely origin as the Summer of ‘72 porno that Boards sampled in a number of other tracks, including Niagra from BOC Maxima and Sixtyniner from Twoism: two of the characters are named “Julie” and “Candy.”
Right off the bat, along with the opening notes, we hear a conversation taken from the 1972 George Romero film “Season of the Witch,” where the characters discuss smoking marijuana.
H.1
[Julie and Candy clip]
H.2
[Season of the Witch comparison]
The track then launches into a darkly whimsical melody seemingly played by a deranged chorus of woodwinds. Marcus told Remix magazine: “sometimes it's nice to make a track that just sounds like a weird cacophony of undefined instruments. Most of ‘Julie and Candy’ was actually made up of recorders and flutes.” Mike said of the track: “[W]e just played the melody on a couple of whistles and then we bounced it back and forward between the internal mics of two tape-decks until the sound started disappearing into hell. Like when you look at an image reflected within two mirrors forever, in the distance it gets darker and greener and murkier.”
After 4 minutes, a vocal sample of a woman saying “hey!” on beat can be heard deep in the mix. 4:33:
H.3
[“Hey!” sample clip]
We’re then taken to the interlude “The Smallest Weird Number.” What is a weird number? University of Georgia mathematician Jim Wilson wrote:
“A number is said to be ‘weird’ if it is abundant without being the sum of any set of its own divisors.
An example of this is 70 because the sum of its divisors is 1+2+5+7+10+14+35 = 74. As you can see 74 is greater than 70 so it is ‘abundant’ and in addition, no set of divisors when you add them up will give you 70. Therefore 70 is a ‘weird’ number.”
In fact, 70 is the smallest weird number referred to by the title. 70 is also referenced in the name of BOC’s homebrew label, music70, and “Sixtyten” is another way of saying 70, which is both the title of a Music Has the Right to Children track, and one of the numbers spoken in Aquarius.
So, why the fascination with 70? Well, Mike was born in 1970; beyond that I haven’t found any particularly compelling theories. Most people have favorite numbers, just as they have their favorite colors and letters. [“Favorite letter of the alphabet?” “M.” clip] The track itself begins with a clip of bird calls taken from the 1983 documentary “On the Tracks of the Wild Otter,” which was also the source of the narration from “An Eagle in Your Mind” off Music Has the RIght. Immediately after follows a reversed and slowed sample of the ending to “When the Music Starts to Play” from the Incredible String Band’s 1966 self-titled debut, leading into the melody.
I.1
[Smallest Weird Number intro]
I.2
[Smallest Weird Number intro reversed]
I.3
[When the Music Starts to Play intro]
The track has a total duration of 1:17, due to some padding from the birds at the beginning and silence at the end - but the music lasts for exactly 70 seconds.
We kick back into high gear with the follow-up, 1969, which stacks warbly synths, live drums mixed in with the programmed beats, tamborines, and backmasking to dizzying psychedelic effect. At 1:05 we hear the first vocal sample come in, vococded, saying: “Although not a follower of Hserok Divad, she’s a devoted Branch Davidian.” In this clip the name “David Koresh” has been reversed. It was taken from the 1996 episode of the TV show Mysteries Magic & Miracles called "Visions, Cults, Alchemy & More” from which the sample “come out and live with a religious community in a beautiful place out in the country” was also drawn; the host is introducing Amo Bishop Roden, whose husband George was a former rival of David Koresh for control over the sect.
J.1
[1969 “Although not a follower…”]
J.2
[Mysteries, Magic & Miracles sample: “Although not a follower of David Koresh” clip comparison]
1969 goes on to layer repeated vocal samples in much the same way as Sunshine Recorder did. Some listeners swear they can hear a scream repeating throughout the track, quietly, in the right channel, buried way down, especially at 2:09, 3:42, and 4:09, but isolating the section wouldn’t do much good. When you get into the really deep listening invited by albums like Geogaddi, you’re closer to the territory of reading tea leaves than any kind of repeatable science. As I’ve said before, draw your own conclusions about what you think is there. Explore the music for yourself.
Starting at 3:20, we hear a vocoded voice repeating “1969 in the sunshine.” Asked about the significance of that phrase, Mike said: “[I]t refers to a specific period in the history of a religious group, and at the same time the period in general, the hopefulness of a forward-thinking generation that wasn't aware of what was coming in their collective future.” Speaking to Buzz magazine, he went on to explain: “The underlying message in both ‘1969’ and 'In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country' are rather similar. The general lifestyle changed quite dramatically around this point in history and structure and regulation were becoming evermore part of the lives of the general population.”
In other words, “1969 in the sunshine” represents the last high of the revolutionary 60s: acid, communal living, free love, and everything else, before the spirit was crushed: by the explosion of unchecked corporate power, ever-present surveillance, the police state. Before May 1970, when the Ohio National Guard massacred 4 students at Kent State on what’s been called “the day the 60’s died.”
Author Hunter S. Thompson wrote of the failure of the 60’s counterculture and its ideals in his 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
“No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers are going out of style. This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling ‘consciousness expansion’ without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously.”
It may have been for different reasons, but both the hippies of the 1960s and the Branch Davidians of Waco tried to leave behind the mainstream society of unbridled consumerism and government control, and in both cases they were crushed by the authorities for daring to step out of line. As Marcus said, you can “try to have an idealistic way of life out in the country, but only on the condition that the authorities approve it.” So it makes sense that both are referenced in the same track.
And what was Mike referring to when he said 1969 represented a “specific period in the history of a religious group?” There doesn’t seem to be any connection of note between 1969 and the Branch Davidians. Theories abound but I think it most likely refers to the publication date of the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey. LaVey’s form of Satanism advances the sort of social Darwinism that was contrary to most of the values that embodied the pastoral, communally living hippies.
The interlude after 1969, Energy Warning, marks a transition to the second half of the album. It kicks off with a sample that sounds pretty similar to a jamming signal called the Havana Gurgler used to block non-government approved stations.
K.1
[Energy Warning intro]
We then hear a young boy speaking about the depletion of resources and the need to conserve energy, sampled from an old PSA heard in the 1991 documentary The Falls, which was also the source of clips used in the BOC Maxima track Niagara.
In the narrative of Geogaddi, if 1969 represents a last moment of collective innocence before the destruction of the counterculture and its possibilities, then Energy Warning and its alarm about the future could signal the harsh realities to which the flower children awoke.
Following straight after is The Beach at Redpoint, one of the most sinister sounding tracks on the album, named after a beautiful spot on the Northwest shore of Scotland. Strange sounds and voices - including what might be a roaring lion - echo off into the void, under a pulsing, feverish beat and Pied Piper flutes.
We move next into Opening the Mouth, which a writer for NME described as sounding like a "heavy breathing call from a banshee." The title comes from an incredibly ancient ritual described in the oldest of the ancient Egyptian funerary writings, The Pyramid Texts, carved in and on Sarcophagi and subterranean pyramid chambers dating back to the Old Kingdom's Fifth Dynasty. The Global Egyptian Museum says that it is "a ritual intended to open the mouth of the deceased and his statues and thus return to him the use of his faculties. The ritual was designed not only to enable the mouth to speak and eat again, but also the eyes, ears and nose to again carry out their functions."
Essentially, it was believed to assist the deceased with rebirth into the Afterlife.
The following track, Alpha and Omega is, appropriately, the longest on Geogaddi, at 7:03. The most overt of the Biblical allusions, the title refers not only to the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, but God's own name for Himself given in the Bible.
Revelations 1:8: "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."
The beginning of the track sounds like a radio being tuned; we hear distant conversation and a voice saying "alpha and Omega" before we launch into the primary synth line, accompanied by hand drumming.
L.1
[Alpha and Omega opening clip]
The entirety of the song is dense with voices and field recordings, not all of which are intelligible, but here are a few notable catches:
At 3:34 we hear a pig squealing and children’s voices.
L.2
[Alpha and Omega clip, 3:34]
At 4:17 we hear a woman saying “yellow,” a possible counterpart to the “purple” heard in Music is Math.
L.3
[Alpha and Omega: “Yellow”]
An odd thing about this: it occurs 40 minutes and 51 seconds into the album as a whole, which translates to 2451 seconds. The total duration of the album is 66:06, which is 3966 seconds. The ratio between 2451 seconds and the amount of time remaining on the album, 1,515 seconds, is the golden ratio. As with so much else on this funhouse mirror Rorschach test of a record, I’ll leave it up to you as to whether or not this was coincidental.
At 6:30 is another backmasked voice:
L.4
[Alpha and Omega sample]
L.5
[Alpha and Omega sample reversed: "I'm no Satanist, but if I were, I'd be in this business too."]
This sample source originates from “World of Satanism,” an episode of Mysteries, Magic & Miracles (the same TV show from which BOC pulled the Amo Bishop Roden interview).
Now to reiterate, there is a lot more going on in this track. All kinds of voices, sounds, whispers, etc. I only included things I could be reasonably sure of. But if you put on headphones and listen closely you’ll undoubtedly hear much that I haven’t mentioned.
Following up Alpha and Omega, the longest and one of the most dense tracks on the album, is the shortest and possibly the most sparse, “I Saw Drones,” lasting only 27 seconds. The title could be a reference to unmanned aerial vehicles, I guess - the first lethal drone strike took place in Afghanistan, October 2001, while the album was in production, and the band did say that the September 11 attacks and the following period influenced the recording, but I interpret this as an reference to synesthesia: seeing drones as in sounds. Supporting this interpretation is the tracklisting on the old Boards of Canada website for the unreleased, lost album Catalog 3, which includes such titles as “Drone 18,” “Drone 2,” and even “Visual Drone 12.”
The album then transitions to the hypnotic with “The Devil is in the Details.” A simultaneously soothing and unsettling riff repeats over a crying child and a sound that can only be described as maggots eating someone’s brain. Speaking of the track to NME, Marcus said: “Sometimes we even design tracks musically to follow rules that you just wouldn't pick up on consciously, but unconsciously, who knows? 'The Devil Is In The Details' has a riff that was designed to imitate a specific well-known equation, but in musical terms.” The bass and melody are an octave and major sixth apart, and each repeats the first note three times, resulting in three sixths, or 666. The ratio between the length of the shorter section and longer section is approximately 1.618.
At 26 seconds a distorted voice fades in, speaking soothingly and quietly, low in the mix. This demonstrates Boards flirting with the subliminal, as I had no idea what it was saying for some time after hearing the track; it wasn’t until reading a transcript of it that I started to be able to make out the words. Back in 2014, Franklin Institute neuroscientist Jayatri Das demonstrated a similar effect: she played a heavily distorted clip of somebody speaking to listeners who found it completely unintelligible; she then showed them a transcript of what was being said and played the clip again; the words seemed to emerge from the previously incomprehensible sound. It’s like looking at an optical illusion containing a hidden picture you can’t quite make out until a friend points out what you’re supposed to be looking at; then you can’t unsee it. It makes you question the reliability of your perception.
Here is what the voice actually says in “The Devil is in the Details:
“Just relax and enjoy this pleasant adventure. Here you are, secure and protected, in this... your special place. Letting my voice flow into your mind. You don't need to concentrate, just gently as you go. Suggestions are going into your unconscious mind. Open yourself up to the greater wisdom and understanding. So now you're letting the sound of my voice reach the inner, healthy, receptive center of yourself. See yourself now, in your imagination. You are being transformed in a positive, healthy way. Slowly you are programming your unconscious mind, gaining new insight to your directions in the future. Allow yourself to be more aware of your pathway through this life. Enjoy new opportunities.
As the days go by, you will feel it in your mind. You are allowing this to happen. These things are happening day-by-day, just as I am telling you they're happening, wherever you are. See this happening, and trying to become a part of you. More and more rapidly, more and more surely, more and more powerfully each day. When it is necessary, you can program yourself, and be able to dream the information you require. This awareness will come gradually at your own rate. It will never be more than you can cope with. This guidance will help show you the way. This will only happen, if you choose, it will be so. Ready, now…”
While the song itself is incredibly unsettling, with the writhing insect noises and crying baby building tension and unease, what the voice is actually saying seems to be good: you’re being transformed in a positive, healthy way, you are being led to feel more confident, more determined, but you won’t be overwhelmed by the change, etc. But in a way, to me, this actually makes the track more ominous: the voice is speaking to you politely, telling you all the right things, but all the while your senses are warning you that something isn’t right. Can you trust this voice that’s trying to worm it’s way into the “healthy, inner receptors” and program you? Or does it represent the learning that can come from even the most difficult and frightening experiences? It’s up to interpretation. But one thing is clear to me, at least: the dissonance between the positive message and the frightening sound is far more unsettling than some outright Satanic mind-control ritual would be here.
The pulsing sound effects fade out, trailing away like footsteps leading to the next track, A is to B as B is to C. This is a simple mathematical formula describing the relationship of ratios between values; for example, if A is 3, B is 2, and C is 1, A-B = 1, and B-C also = 1. So A is as far from B as B is from C. While a general logical statement applying to many patterns, this is also true of the golden ratio, specifically when C = A+B.
A psychedelic warble leads us into synth drones and reversed vocals, before a cheerful flute comes in, accompanied by counting sampled from the song “Languages we Speak” on the album “Everyone Has Feelings and Other Children’s Songs” by Sarah Barchas.
M.1
[A is to B as B is to C counting]
M.2
[Languages We Speak comparison]
This shifts into a dense bubbling soundscape of instruments, field recordings, and backmasked voices. We hear “I’ll be gone about a week,” a clip also taken from Season of the Witch, the George Romero film sampled in Julie and Candy, the same clip reversed, then vocoded voices singing “we love you all.”
Like Dandelion, A is to B as B is to C is a song that has to be reversed in its entirety to really understand everything that’s happening. Played backwards, a dizzying array of detail emerges: the ending of the track, saying “we love you all,” becomes the beginning… and also says “we love you all,” creating an audio palindrome. Intelligible voices begin to emerge from the previously incomprehensible dense sound collage: we hear “if you go down in the woods today, you’d better not go alone,” repeated over and over, fading in and out of the noise.
M.3
[A is to B as B is to C sound collage]
M.4
[“if you go down in the woods today”]
This comes from a 1930s era children’s song “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic,” recorded by Henry Hall and His Orchestra, though many others have also done versions of it.
M.5
[Teddy Bear’s Picnic theme]
This eerie verse resonates with the themes of childhood danger couched in nursery rhymes and games we’ve seen interwoven throughout the record, and it’s fitting that it’s hidden between a counting song and “we love you all.”
There are many, many other samples layered in there; some of which I have at least a vague idea of what’s being said, while others are completely unintelligible. You’ll have to listen for yourself and see what you can pick out. A couple of examples - at 56 seconds we hear “it must be a musical computer!” slowed and buried in the mix.
M.6
[A is to B… “it must be a musical computer”]
M.7
[“it must be a musical computer!” from Joyful Noise]
This is taken from the children’s Christian music album “Make a Joyful Noise! Introducing Colby,” part of a series later adapted into a TV show called “Colby’s Clubhouse” that taught kids Bible lessons. A different track from this same album, ”Bless the Lord,” was sampled and backmasked to create one of BOC’s unreleased live tracks - the 7th played at their performance for Warp’s 10th anniversary.
M.8
[Warp-07 intro]
M.9
[Bless the Lord comparison]
Finally, the synth drones we hear at the beginning of the track (when played forwards) actually form an entirely new melody in reverse, overlaid with a clip of incarcerated murderer Tommy Silverstein talking about killing a police officer:
M.10
[A is to B as B is to C intro]
M.11
[A is to B intro reversed]
After this dense and chaotic experience, we’re given room to breathe with the follow-up interlude, “Over the Horizon Radar,” a beautiful ambient piece named after a type of radar developed during the Cold War. The Arcane Radio Trivia webpage describes it:
“With OTH, the broadcaster generates a powerful shortwave signal from a large transmitting antenna which reaches a receiving antenna beyond the horizon by bouncing off the ionosphere. A return signal (echo) is sent back from the receiving station by the same route. All other systems use low-frequency radio waves that due to diffraction follow the curvature of the Earth to reach beyond the horizon.”
The first working American prototype was developed under the lead of physicist William Thaler at the Naval Research Lab in the 1950s and was labeled “MUSIC”: Multiple Storage, Integration, and Correlation, again drawing a correlation between mathematics, science, and music.
The first rays of sun begin to break through into the dark woods with “Dawn Chorus.” Besides the dawn chorus of birds singing with the daylight, the “dawn chorus” is also an odd electromagnetic phenomenon. According to the WTF Nature blog, it occurs “at or around sunrise, and can only be heard with VLF(very low frequency) radio equipment. It's named so because it sounds like the chorus of birds that usually arises at the same time. It's thought to be caused by electrons getting caught in the earth's radiation belts and then falling to earth as radio waves.”
Describing the process of writing the song, Mike said:
“Sometimes, we make up sounds and then program them tightly in a really synthetic way. Other times, we want it to sound really rough, so we'll just jam on the drums live. For instance, ‘Dawn Chorus’ is a single-take jammed beat that I played, while ‘1969’ has a live beat all the way through mixed with other beat tracks.” (Northern Exposure, Remix, 2002).
Dawn Chorus as well is heavily interwoven with buried samples. At 1:04 we hear another “bye” from the now-familiar Sesame Street monologue about “many me’s,” the same “bye” that was heard at the end of Sunshine Recorder.
N.1
[“Bye”]
N.2
[Dawn Chorus “Bye” comparison]
Many of the others continue the occult themes found elsewhere on Geogaddi. At 1:35 we hear “marry you,” and at 1:40, “that you may be led in death.” These clips were taken from a BBC segment showing a Wiccan summer solstice celebration.
[Dawn Chorus /BBC segment comparison]
[[CUT THIS
Then, at 1:52, another : “That you may be led in death.”
[Dawn Chorus/BBC segment comparison #2] ]]
Wiccan solstice rituals celebrate light and fertility, which aligns with the more optimistic tone of the track; in the narrative of Geogaddi, you could imagine the dawn beginning to break after a long night lost in the dark forest - hope is on the horizon, but it comes with strange occult rituals, and we’re not out of the woods yet.
Next is the vignette Diving Station, an interlude that gives us some space and breathing room after the dense trip-hop of Dawn Chorus (literally breathing room - the sparse and melancholy piano part is underscored with what sounds like deep, time-stretched breathing or speaking, though it’s actually a slowed sample from the 1986 track “Ondulantes Serpientes De Agua” by Mexican musician Antonio Zepeda, who has scored documentaries for the BBC).
O.1
[Diving Station end segment]
O.2
[Ondulantes Serpientes De Agua clip]
According to a 2002 article in Buzz, Diving Station was composed by Mike. He told the publication:
“This is a song that I clearly wanted to express as bittersweet or as something that, on the surface, is comfortable but has an ominous feel beneath. That contrast of emotion is something we focus heavily on. Nothing is ever polarized to either positive or negative.”
The imagery this song conjures up for me through the contrast between the piano part and the shifting, unsettling drones in the background is a diver calmly standing on a platform atop a churning ocean, taking a deep breath and enjoying a moment of peace before plunging in.
This leads us into one of the album’s darker moments, the simultaneously sinister and serene “You Could Feel the Sky,” which opens with an unhurried, yet propulsive beat, which it slowly builds on. In a 2002 interview with the Spanish publication Mondo Sonoro, Marcus said:
“This time we decided to get some revolution and create some less conventional rhythms. We've always had that hip-hop sensibility haunting us, but on Geogaddi, we tried to let things grow stylistically, and this affected rhythms too. In this album, there's a beat that really satisfies us, the one on ‘You Could Feel the Sky,’ that sounds like someone stretching a rope over the surface of a wooden ship.”
You Could Feel the Sky also has a cinematic feel to it, even moreso than most of the other tracks on Geogaddi. Its slow build and sparseness is reminiscent of orchestral film scores. But even here, there are buried secrets.
At 2:10 low backmasked voices are audible; played in reverse, we hear “a god with horns,” along with a distant church bell and crackling fire, as if some dark ritual is being performed.
P.1
[“You Could Feel the Sky” clip]
P.2
[You Could Feel the Sky clip in reverse]
This is in fact another sample taken from the same BBC documentary on the Wiccan solstice celebration that appeared in Dawn Chorus. The speaker is here reciting a poem by Wiccan high priestess Vivianne Crowley:
P.3
[quote from BBC segment:
“In caverns deep the old Gods sleep
But the trees still know the lord
And it's the pipes of pan, which call the tune
In the twilight in the wood
The leaves they dance to the goat god's tune
And they whisper his name to the winds
And the oak trees dreams of a god with horns
And know no other king.”]
The God with Horns being referenced here is Pan, originally a Greek fertility God. According to the Theoi Greek Mythology Project: “Pan was the god of shepherds and hunters, and of the meadows and forests of the mountain wilds. His unseen presence aroused panic in those who traversed his realm…Pan, like other gods who dwelt in forests, was dreaded by travellers to whom he sometimes appeared, and whom he startled with a sudden awe or terror.”
Pan has always been closely linked to the Wiccan Horned God, which prominent pagan author Starhawk described as “the personification of the life force energy in animals and the wild.” In other words - Pan represents pure wild nature, untamed by humans; though modern civilization gives the illusion of having mastered the wilderness, we ultimately live at the mercy of nature.
At 3:41 we hear a flute, slowed and sampled from the beginning of “When the Music Starts to Play” by The Incredible String Band (the end of this track was also sampled for the lead-in to The Smallest Weird Number).
P.4
[When the Music Starts to Play]
P.5
[You Could Feel the Sky comparison]
Looped sporadically throughout the song we also hear a voice, heavily distorted and disguised in a shifting electronic tone, that seems to be saying “take my hand.”
An example at 4:20:
P.6
[“Take my hand” clip.]
The source of this voice is unknown.
As with several of the other tracks on Geogaddi, close attention reveals that there are many other samples and voices hidden deep in You Could Feel the Sky beyond what we’ve addressed here. Whispers can be heard throughout, sometimes at a barely audible level. Listen for yourself and see what you find.
This takes us on to Corsair, the final track of music on the album, effectively its closer (unless you’re listening to the Japanese version). A beautiful layered droning ambient piece, Mike described its place in the album as a whole:
“'Geogaddi' is a record for some sort of trial-by-fire, a claustrophobic, twisting journey that takes you into some pretty dark experiences before you reach the open air again. It has a kind of narrative. That's why we ended it with 'Corsair', it's like the light at the end of the tunnel.”
A corsair originally was a term for a Privateer of the French crown (essentially a pirate working on behalf of a government), but probably more relevant to the song, is a name commonly applied to different classes of aircraft. In addition to a number of military biplanes and fighter jets, the Cessna 425 was originally called the Corsair. The title and the ethereal, floating feeling of the song give the sensation of flying over the world, observing everything from a distance, the forest that you spent a long night lost in now only a spot of green on the map below. Many of people have claimed to hear voices or other samples in the washes of sound, but there’s definitely nothing clear enough for me to be confident in isolating or pointing out.
Finally, track number 23: Magic Window. Just as the 66:06 duration is not a coincidence, neither is the number of tracks. 23 is a sacred number in Discordianism. From The Illuminatus Trilogy:
“He was launching into a peroration about the mystic significance of the number 23— pointing out that 2 plus 3 equals 5, the pentad within which the Devil can be invoked “as for example in a pentacle or at the Pentagon building in Washington,” while 2 divided by 3 equals 0.666, “the Number of The Beast, according to that freaked-out Revelation of Saint John the Mushroom-head,” that 23 itself was present esoterically “because of its conspicuous exoteric absence” in the number series represented by the Wobbly Hall address, which was 2422 North Halsted—and that the dates of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, November 22 and 24, also had a conspicuous 23 absent in between them—when he finally was shouted down, the conversation returned to a more mundane level.”
Note, of course, the Satanic connection as well.
But that's not all. To really nail the point home, Magic Window was listed on the discography section of Boards of Canada’s old website as “magic window fnord.”
“Fnord” is also a Discordian term. In the Illuminatus trilogy, “fnord” is a word that elicits fear and anxiety, but which people are subliminally programmed by public school teachers and other authority figures to ignore. “Fnords” are placed in newspapers, books, and sources of information by the secret societies that control world events, but not in advertisements, discouraging research & free thought while encouraging consumerism.
From Illuminatus:
"And further back, way back: my first-grade teacher writing FNORD on the blackboard, while a wheel with a spiral design turned and turned on his desk, turned and turned, and his voice droned on,
IF YOU DON’T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN’T EAT YOU, DON’T SEE THE FNORD, DON’T SEE THE FNORD …
I looked back at the paper and still saw the fnords.
This was one step beyond Pavlov, I realized. The first conditioned reflex was to experience the panic reaction (the activation syndrome, it’s technically called) whenever encountering the word “fnord.” The second conditioned reflex was to black out what happened, including the word itself, and just to feel a general low-grade emergency without knowing why. And the third step, of course, was to attribute this anxiety to the news stories, which were bad enough in themselves anyway."
While "magic window fnord" could just be a reference to Magic Window being the 23rd track and all its Discordian connotations, there's a potentially more sinister interpretation: if people are programmed to subliminally filter out "fnords," and Magic Window is a "fnord," could the implication be that we've been programmed to not hear whatever was in the track?
Beyond the artistic meaning of Magic Window, and the fact that the length of the silence brings the record to 66:06, it also serves a more practical purpose. Marcus explained: "We wanted to insert some silence at the end of the album so that there would be a gap before the CD would start again," also adding: "I like to treat it as a space. Its strange with an album focusing so heavily on the dynamics and intricacies of sound to suddenly be confronted with silence."
It does seem to add a certain weight to the experience, especially in the age of smartphones when autoplay keeps us listening to one thing after another after another without stopping to reflect.
And then on the Japanese version of the album there's one bonus track that closes out the album: From One Source All Things Depend. The title originates from the Corpus Hermeticum, a work by the mythical and pseudonymous figure Hermes Trismegistus, progenitor or the occult tradition Hermeticism.
The passage it's drawn from:
"From One Source all things depend; but the Source is from the One and Only. Three then are they: God the Father and the Good, the Cosmos, and Man. God doth contain the Cosmos; the Cosmos containeth Man. The Cosmos is the offspring of God; and Man, as it were, is the offspring of the Cosmos."
The track consists of children speaking of their beliefs about God.
So, Geogaddi is a dense, psychedelic, labyrinthine album, filled with not only infectious music, but philosophical and occult references. But how does it all tie together?
Well, let's return to the title: Geogaddi, which gives an impression of the Earth and those living in harmony with it. Let's revisit some of the recurring themes: mathematics (Music is Math, the Smallest Weird Number, A is to C as B is to C); religion and spirituality- whether it's the Biblical God, of Alpha and Omega and From One Source All Things Depend, Satan, of The Devil is in the Details, the Egyptian Gods prayed to by priests who were Opening the Mouth, or the Horned God. Warnings to children - in stories, in songs, in rhymes. Drugs - the friendly stranger, the weed offered in Julie and Candy's opening conversation, the synesthesia of seeing drones.