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Difference between revisions of "The Campfire Headphase"

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In 2005, Boards of Canada released their third studio album, titled ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]''. Perhaps the most organic of their publicly available output, ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]'' represents a significant departure both in mood and timbre from its predecessor, ''[[Geogaddi]]''. "We decided to make an escapist soundtrack," [[Michael Sandison]] said in a 2005 [[Above Board!|Playlouder interview]], "like a kind of sanctuary; a day-glo vista you can visit by putting the record on." 
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[[The Campfire Headphase]] is the third studio album by [[Boards of Canada]], which was released on October 17th, 2005 via [[Warp Records]]. The album marked a departure from [[Geogaddi]]'s dark, claustrophobic atmosphere to a lighter, more organic tone, with guitars taking a much more prominent role than in the band's previous works.
  
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== Recording ==
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Work on [[Boards of Canada]]'s third album began in 2002, with [[Mike]] and [[Marcus]] creating demos for tracks such as "[['84 Pontiac Dream]]" in early 2003.<ref> https://bocpages.org/wiki/Emotional_Abuse </ref><ref> https://bocpages.org/wiki/Music_of_Struggle </ref>. The band intentionally took a more relaxed approach to recording their third album compared to their previous album ''[[Geogaddi]]'', aiming to "switch everything off at six o'clock", as opposed to the "hellish" approach of working "until 4am every day" like they did on ''[[Geogaddi]]''.<ref> https://bocpages.org/wiki/Two_for_the_No-Show </ref> Over the course of approximately a year the band continued to work on new music, and in February 2004 they had a completed album. Following this album's completion, [[Boards of Canada]] undertook a new project of moving their studio.<ref> https://bocpages.org/wiki/La_Part_du_Feu </ref>
  
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In place of the dense and highly electronic nature of ''[[Geogaddi]]'', ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]'' favors a more stripped-down, acoustic approach, with a significantly reduced use of synthesizers. As [[Marcus]] pointed out to Playlouder magazine: "There's less use of synths on this record. We've leaned heavily towards a whole 'played, taped and sampled' backdrop this time. I guess sampling for us is different from a lot of other bands, because we routinely sample ourselves rather than other records, so most of the sound generation is coming from real instruments that we played ourselves, mostly recorded with microphones, and a lot of location recording. What you hear on the record is kind of a wall of sound created by sampling as many gnarled acoustic sources [as] we could find."
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By the time the studio move was complete, [[Boards of Canada]] had become dissatisfied with the album they had recorded, and decided to scrap it and start over with a new approach. This new approach was to create an album with a "simpler, more positive" tone and prominent guitars, described by the band as "like the acoustic counterpart of ''[[Music Has The Right To Children]]''". The band continued to work on this new album until mid-2025, with the last track to be started being "[[Slow This Bird Down]]", which originated in June of 2005<ref> https://bocpages.org/wiki/Music_of_Struggle </ref>, and [[The Campfire Headphase]] was completed around July of 2005.  
  
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== Release and Reception ==
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The first official word on [[Boards of Canada]]'s third album appeared in [[Warp Records]]' newsletter for July 2005, revealing that the album was finished and mastered, and would be released in October.<ref> https://www.twoism.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=90&p=724#p724 </ref> Around the same time, [[music70.com]] revealed the album's title to be [[The Campfire Headphase]], and also revealed the exact release dates for the album.<ref> https://web.archive.org/web/20050717021647/http://www.music70.com:80/boc_discog.html </ref>
  
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The most obvious of these acoustic sources is the frequent (and recognizable) use of guitar on ''[[The Campfire Headphase|TCHP]]''. "With the new album," [[Marcus]] explains,"we deliberately went for a lo-fi guitar sound on a few of the tracks because we were going for a sun-bleached, Californian summer kind of sound, it's almost reminiscent of a Joni Mitchell sound in places."
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The first interview by the band to promote [[The Campfire Headphase]], "[[The Downtempo Duo]]" by [[Wikipedia:Pitchfork_(website) Pitchfork]], was published on September 26th, 2005. It was in this interview that [[Mike]] and [[Marcus]] first revealed themselves to be brothers. More interviews with various publications followed in October, and interviews with the band regarding [[The Campfire Headphase]] continued to be published until early-2006.
  
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[[The Campfire Headphase]] was first released in Japan on October 12th, 2005, and was released in Europe and the US on the 17th and 18th of October, respectively. The album was generally received positively, but divided fans and critics, with some being disappointed with the change in direction away from the band's electronic sound to a more acoustic one.
  
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Indeed, [[Boards of Canada|the brothers]] have admitted several times in interviews that the North American landscape (and its music) heavily influenced the direction of ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]''. "This time we set out to make something simple that had shades of a road movie soundtrack, like the musical score to a surreal journey across a late 70's North American desert highway," [[Michael Sandison]] explains, also characterizing the record as something "like a futuristic western or something...but [always with] something subtle and surreal going on in the tracks to remind you that you're hearing something that has been tainted or spiked in some way by unfathomable futuristic technology. It's maybe like campfire music played by android cowboys."
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== Themes ==
  
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== Tracklist ==
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But whatever the synthetic undercurrent,  ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]'' is noticeably lacking in one of [[Boards of Canada]]'s signature sounds: children's voices. "That was a deliberate thing," [[Marcus]] explained to Earplug magazine. "We got fed up with people saying that we're a formulaic band that you could kind of describe in a couple of sentences...I think it can become really dangerous for a band if you don't have a certain level of self-consciousness about these things. You always have to stay a few steps in front of your audience. We always have people putting fakes on the Internet before a new record is released, and the fakes are always really electronic with little kids' voices and things like that. Probably next time around all the fakes will include wobbly guitars like the ones we use on the new album ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]'' (laughs)."
 
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This sort of self-conscious reaction, however, may account in part for why opinion on this record has been so divided. When asked by Pitchfork about whether or not the brothers feared being pigeonholed, Michael responded that "[t]he new record is probably the slowest record that we've done. And it's got guitars on it as well. This is something that we've done slightly deliberately. We knew that we had to break away from this thing [being pigeonholed]. It bothered us that if you go into the big stores our stuff is always sitting in the dance music section. We never made a dance record in our entire career but our stuff still gets thrown in there. Our drive with this record is to try and get us out of the dance section and into the main section with all the other bands, like ABBA and A-Ha. We're just a band. Not an IDM band, not an electronic band, and not a dance band."
 
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This conscious break with the conventions of the so-called IDM/Dance aesthetic (which so informed their previous work) have lead many to describe the record as boring or watered down. Pitchfork's Mark Richardson complained that "Campfire is a sluggish record, weary, pointed edges dulled as if by the march of time. Boards could previously be counted on to offer a display of crisp, forceful drum programming to jar you out of your narcotic haze ("[[Telephasic Workshop]]" and "[[Gyroscope]]"). ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]'' is all midrange, the mid-tempo shuffles putting the mind-boggling array of instrumental processing front and center."
 
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Yet for some, the very same departure yields the record its charm, even garnering some textural comparison to My Bloody Valentine's classic "Loveless." Differences of opinion aside, the record continues to be a favorite among many fans, and in any case, probably our best indicator of what is yet to come.
 
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==Tracks==
 
  
 
# "[[Into the Rainbow Vein]]" &ndash; 0:44 ([http://www.bleep.com/player/?/WARP123/33198/midi/D3F9D3/575757/00D126 Bleep preview])
 
# "[[Into the Rainbow Vein]]" &ndash; 0:44 ([http://www.bleep.com/player/?/WARP123/33198/midi/D3F9D3/575757/00D126 Bleep preview])

Revision as of 20:02, 17 July 2025

The Campfire Headphase
The Campfire Headphase album cover.jpg
Label(s) warp
Catalogue No(s) warplp123
warpcd123
Release date(s) 12th October 2005 (Japan)
17th October 2005 (Europe)
18th October 2005 (USA)[1]
Format(s) gatefold 2xlp
cd (jewel case)
cd (digipak)
Running time(s) 62:05 (standard)
67:02 (japanese)


The Campfire Headphase is the third studio album by Boards of Canada, which was released on October 17th, 2005 via Warp Records. The album marked a departure from Geogaddi's dark, claustrophobic atmosphere to a lighter, more organic tone, with guitars taking a much more prominent role than in the band's previous works.

Recording

Work on Boards of Canada's third album began in 2002, with Mike and Marcus creating demos for tracks such as "'84 Pontiac Dream" in early 2003.[2][3]. The band intentionally took a more relaxed approach to recording their third album compared to their previous album Geogaddi, aiming to "switch everything off at six o'clock", as opposed to the "hellish" approach of working "until 4am every day" like they did on Geogaddi.[4] Over the course of approximately a year the band continued to work on new music, and in February 2004 they had a completed album. Following this album's completion, Boards of Canada undertook a new project of moving their studio.[5]

By the time the studio move was complete, Boards of Canada had become dissatisfied with the album they had recorded, and decided to scrap it and start over with a new approach. This new approach was to create an album with a "simpler, more positive" tone and prominent guitars, described by the band as "like the acoustic counterpart of Music Has The Right To Children". The band continued to work on this new album until mid-2025, with the last track to be started being "Slow This Bird Down", which originated in June of 2005[6], and The Campfire Headphase was completed around July of 2005.

Release and Reception

The first official word on Boards of Canada's third album appeared in Warp Records' newsletter for July 2005, revealing that the album was finished and mastered, and would be released in October.[7] Around the same time, music70.com revealed the album's title to be The Campfire Headphase, and also revealed the exact release dates for the album.[8]

The first interview by the band to promote The Campfire Headphase, "The Downtempo Duo" by Wikipedia:Pitchfork_(website) Pitchfork, was published on September 26th, 2005. It was in this interview that Mike and Marcus first revealed themselves to be brothers. More interviews with various publications followed in October, and interviews with the band regarding The Campfire Headphase continued to be published until early-2006.

The Campfire Headphase was first released in Japan on October 12th, 2005, and was released in Europe and the US on the 17th and 18th of October, respectively. The album was generally received positively, but divided fans and critics, with some being disappointed with the change in direction away from the band's electronic sound to a more acoustic one.

Themes

Tracklist

  1. "Into the Rainbow Vein" – 0:44 (Bleep preview)
  2. "Chromakey Dreamcoat" – 5:47
  3. "Satellite Anthem Icarus" – 6:04
  4. "Peacock Tail" – 5:24
  5. "Dayvan Cowboy" – 5:00
  6. "A Moment of Clarity" – 0:51
  7. "'84 Pontiac Dream" – 3:49
  8. "Sherbet Head" – 2:41
  9. "Oscar See through Red Eye" – 5:08
  10. "Ataronchronon" – 1:14
  11. "Hey Saturday Sun" – 4:56
  12. "Constants Are Changing" – 1:42
  13. "Slow This Bird Down" – 6:09
  14. "Tears from the Compound Eye" – 4:03
  15. "Farewell Fire" – 8:26
  16. "Macquarie Ridge" – 4:57 (Japanese release only)

Artwork

TCH inset image (top), IIT yearbook photo (bottom)

The liner notes include a grid-like collage of apparently seventies-era photos, degraded in a manner similar to the cover. The source of a few of these images have been discovered:

Comments and Trivia

  • When asked if the record (and especially its artwork) was a throw back to Music Has the Right to Children, Marcus replied that "it's deliberately reminiscent of ‘Music Has the Right to Children'. Musically it's like an echo of that record, all bleached-out blue skies and so on. In some ways it sounds older than ‘Music Has the Right…' because of the choice of instruments and the sheer amount of damage we've done to the sound."
  • The bottom left corner of the front cover (and onto the spine of the digipak) has a smudge that strongly resembles the hexagonal Geogaddi cover. The front and back covers are repeated in the smaller pictures inside the digipak. The smaller pictures are less distorted than the covers.
  • On the vinyl release, a bird's chirp can be heard in the runout grooves, typically sides C and D.
  • Playing the vinyl release at 45rpm evokes a completely different listening experience.
  • When inverting the colors on the back cover art, the child's expression changes into a ghostly, almost horrified, stare.

Reviews

External links

Artwork

Discography Overview | view • edit
Rare/Early releases Catalog 3 • Acid Memories • Closes Vol. 1 • Play by Numbers • Hooper Bay • Boc Maxima • Old Tunes Vol. 1 • Old Tunes Vol. 2 • Random 35 Tracks Tape • Geogaddi (test pressing)
General releases (albums) Music Has the Right to Children • Geogaddi • The Campfire Headphase • Tomorrow's Harvest
General releases (EPs/12"s) Twoism • Hi Scores • Aquarius • Peel Session • In a Beautiful Place out in the Country • Trans Canada Highway
Mixtapes Marcus Eoin's Campfire Mixtape • Societas x Tape
Live Sets Live @ Warp10 • Live @ Lighthouse • Live @ ATP • All Gigs
Promotional Releases Telephasic Workshop • MHTRTC (promo cassette) • Orange Romeda • Geogaddi (promo lp) • Geogaddi (promo cassette) • ------ / ------ / ------ / XXXXXX / ------ / ------ • Reach For The Dead (promo cd) • Come To Dust (promo cd)
Produced by BoC for Others Here Come The Rubber Cops • Orangutang
Bootleg Releases Unreleased Tracks
Other Kaleidoscope • Promotional Events • Promotional Items • T-Shirts • Web media
To Be Determined LP5 • BoCset


  1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20050717021647/http://www.music70.com:80/boc_discog.html
  2. ↑ https://bocpages.org/wiki/Emotional_Abuse
  3. ↑ https://bocpages.org/wiki/Music_of_Struggle
  4. ↑ https://bocpages.org/wiki/Two_for_the_No-Show
  5. ↑ https://bocpages.org/wiki/La_Part_du_Feu
  6. ↑ https://bocpages.org/wiki/Music_of_Struggle
  7. ↑ https://www.twoism.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=90&p=724#p724
  8. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20050717021647/http://www.music70.com:80/boc_discog.html
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