Rue the Whirl
Running time	6:39
Appears on	MHTRTC

Comments

• Describing the influence of nature on their art, Mike and Marcus related the following story to Virgin Megaweb about the production of "Rue the Whirl":

There's this track on the album called "Rue the Whirl", where you can hear birds singing. What happened was that I was listening to the track, and, oddly, I could hear birds singing. Then I realized that the window was open in the studio, and since the birdsong went so well with the music, we recorded it to capture the feel of what we experienced listening with the window open" (Virgin Megaweb Magazine, 1998).

• In a 1998 Interview with the now defunct Space Bachelor:

That's a simple track. It has a predominate woodwind riff, ascending over and over, which puts you in a trance, but there are some evolving textures in there which may or may not be obvious at first, such as birds and water. It has similar hypnotizing effect to something like the melodies you hear from a rusty swing, needed to be oiled or machinery on a journey, or even a windscreen wiper, the noise it makes over and over. The surrounding environment is continuously moving. I think it works well because everybody wants to rue the whirl."

• [Ken Stewart] - this might be a distortion of the phrase "rule the world". See the French language interview (on the links page) for more on this; the studio window was open when BoC listened to this track; the birdsong they heard outside went so well with the music that they recorded it and added it to the track.
• [Goatmancods] - suggests that Rue the Whirl might express regret over how quickly childhood passes by in the whirl of time.

Trivia

• Rue the Whirl is featured in a 2007 Mercedes-Benz C class television advertisement.
• The track title Rue the Whirl was probably inspired by the same sample used in "From One Source All Things Depend". At 0:56, a child describes God as someone who "rues the whirl"
• The first 20 seconds of the Flying Lotus track "shafiq evil man remix final" is very similar to the reversed section at the end of Rue the Whirl.
• Rue the Whirl was featured in a scene in the TV series "Spaced".