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The Campfire Headphase

Revision as of 18:51, 2 September 2006 by Fredd-E (talk | contribs)
The Campfire Headphase
Label(s) warp
Catalogue No(s) warplp123
warpcd123
Release date(s) 13 October 2005 (Japan)
17 October 2005 (Europe)
Format(s) gatefold 2xlp
cd (jewel case)
cd (digipak)
Running time(s) 62:05 (standard)
67:02 (japanese)


http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/7848/thecampfireheadphaseho3.jpg

The Campfire Headphase is the third full-length album created and produced by Boards of Canada. This album marked a departure from their usual sound. Instead of snippets of childrens laughter and age-old educational videos there is a wismical, untuned guitar. They first make their appearance from the second track, "Chromakey Dreamcoat". The duo have told stories about the guitar effects, citing their origins and such. They were made mostly by using the worst possible recording apparatus available, going to some beautiful place out in the country and playing the aforementioned guitar. Boards of Canada have once said that the persona of Boards of Canada as we know it is only one "step" on their plan, if everything goes alright of course. Maybe this marks their beginning to advance to that next level?

Track listing

  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)

Analysis

Album Cover

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.


Into the Rainbow Vein

This intro sets the mood of the album just like "Wildlife Analysis" set the mood for Music Has the Right to Children and "Ready Let's Go" for Geogaddi. The song plays itself to be a happier than Geogaddi's. "Rainbow Vein" is a band of quartz carbonate from which gold is mined, located in the Bad Vermilion Lake Area, 250 km west of Thunder Bay, Ontario. It was discovered and named by Stellar Gold Mines Co. Ltd in 1934. Link to more information.


Chromakey Dreamcoat

There are unidentified "samples" of computer game like noises near the end of the this track. There are also voices in the coda of this track. Between 5:16 and 5:35 is a recording of a woman talking and laughing. She laughs (5:20), says what sounds like "You know, this won't last..." (5:22-5:24), "I didn't like ... that before (?) ... times(?)" (5:28-5:30), laughs (5:32). It sounds like a sentence of some sort but a lot of words drop out. "Chromakey" (or colorkey) is a technique used in video production to swap in a separate signal source over a particular chrominance range across the source video, e.g. in bluescreen cinema effects. There appears to be a sample of a seagulls call at around 2:40 and again at 3:10. However these sound different from those sampled on "Happy Cycling".

The title Chromakey Dreamcoat could also be a pun on a musical by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber called "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat".


Satellite Anthem Icarus

Icarus is a character in Greek mythology who loses his wings when he flies too close to the sun. Icarus and his father were imprisoned on an island and determined to escape by constructing themselves wings and flying from captivity. During their escape, Icarus deviated from the careful lead of his father, flying too high, where the sun melted the wax holding his wing’s feathers together. As a result, Icarus fell from the sky and drowned in the ocean below. Icarus is also quite literally a celestial body orbiting the sun, and could even be considered a satellite, depending on the definition.


Peacock Tail

Clear voices. Apart from being the most colourful feature of the peacock, it was also a figure used by Euclid to prove the Pythagorean theorem. Link


Dayvan Cowboy


A Moment of Clarity

This track is very similar to the mislabeled third track on the Live @ Warp10 collection albeit without the flutes.


'84 Pontiac Dream

Part of the melody in a recurring section of the track is built from what sounds like a 1980's corporate jingle (e.g. at 0:27-0:30 on the right channel). This helps the listener remember (if they lived through it) the time period when corporations and organizations were using a certain type of synthetic sound for their catchy jingle melodies to seem "futuristic" and "forward-thinking" while their logo was displayed on the TV. For many this sound should create a nostalgic feeling. Contemporarily we still come across these audio-visual artifacts on certain old VHS tapes, which are usually pretty worn out and imperfect, further enhancing the nostalgia when we re-experience them. BoC, using a jingle in a track with such a title, might be illustrating how certain sensory perceptions experienced repetitively in waking life (as these jingles were in 1984) can become part of the texture in a dream and furthermore that the worn quality of the recording reflects the imperfect quality of memory.


Sherbet Head

Throughout the track is a recording of some human voices that are garbled and buried and are, therefore, hard to comprehend. The recording seems to be slightly detuned, probably by one or two semi-tones. The voices are clearest at the beginning, before the bass kicks in. Noticeable in this section is a man saying a word or two (0:00-0:04), a phrase said by a woman (0:10-0:12) and a phrase said twice by a third voice (0:20-0:24). It sounds like the microphone is being banged against objects as if somebody is walking around somewhere with a hand-held tape recorder. Also audible is the sound of a child screaming (0:57). Similar sounds continue on for the rest of the track's duration. Perhaps it is a field recording of some public space.


Oscar See through Red Eye


Ataronchronon

The ending sounds a bit like 'Gann', the short track off Boards of Canada's website. The Ataronchronon or "People of the Marshes" were a tribal people living in seventeenth century Ontario.


Hey Saturday Sun


Constants Are Changing


Slow This Bird Down

Near the end of this song is an aural collage of shortwave radio noise. Morse, teletype, and various data signals can be heard including a radio modem (called the Harris RF-5710) used by hobbyists and naval military services.


Tears from the Compound Eye

The compound eye is found on most insects and some crustaceans, which is composed of many light-sensitive elements, each having its own refractive system and each forming a portion of an image. Most compound eyes feature hexagonal lenses in an array forming the pattern.


Farewell Fire

The melody continues very silently until the end.


Macquarie Ridge

Macquarie Ridge is a song exclusive to the Japanese release of The Campfire Heaphase.

Reviews

External links

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