Review Summary: Geogaddi offers us a very concerning kind of energy, which strips satanism from horns and blood and offers sunshine and childhood instead. Combination of two opposite themes offer us a grainy, burning perspective.
I haven't been quite alright for some time. 2016 entirely felt like a surreal experience that passed by. To me at least, presumably because I had discovered Boards of Canada, a musical duo from Scotland that clicked with me harder than any other music project has. Now my first encounter with the duo was with the album, Geogaddi. Simply the name invokes a very familiar sense of primalism, a round name which refers to many things while creating connections with many astral and spiritual forces. It's very difficult for me to, in the end, describe the personal experience I've had with the album and how everything it contained opened to me. I'm not entirely sure as to why I was in a state of mind which compulsed me to attempt to hear the hidden lines and understand the great truth about this beast of an album. It was bocpages.org that really helped me get away from the album and clear a lot of the
details about this crazy thing, for from there many had already figured a lot of information for me so I had the strength to clear my head from this dark puzzle.
Puzzle it sure is. After 66.6 minute mark we have a song, From One Source All Things Depend, made out of a light synth and children speaking about God. That is, after 66.6 minutes. Before that time, everything you hear has either to do with scientific occultism, geography or that very unnerving sense you get from certain childhood experiences. The best song for experiencing what I attempt to describe is Sunshine Recorder, from which you can hear stretched child voices, warped synths and maddening percussion. There are some elements in Geogaddi's songs that play around with your own past shamelessly, forcing you to go through the unexplained experiences you had. They perform this trick over and over again and mix in their own perspective into your world, as in rewriting your own past to associate it with the music and the message it carries. I told you about things being unnerving here. With soundscapes being concluded as mind-altering, I'll try to explain the importance of subliminal messages in Geogaddi.
So, we're talking a level of subliminality that is difficult to master in music. For example, Corsair is said to contain a human voice counting from one to four. If you, good reader, can hear it too, you do understand what I am trying to say. Geogaddi isn't mere IDM- based downtempo with nostalgia triggers, it is also information about some very principle and hard-to-believe connections between familiar subjects such as science, occultism and spiritualism. Hints of these can be read from song names Music Is Math, Opening The Mouth, The Devil Is In The Details and Magic Window.
Everything in Geogaddi feels like a planned procedure, there is no "let's put this here instead so it'll make more sense", everything is exactly where it should be. All songs have been created to fit their places, from the interludes to full-fledged songs. Individuality has been stripped from the songs, they belong together.
As about the sound of the album, it is, as the duo puts it, done in the full believe that music can affect an individual's thoughts, for Geogaddi, when almost completely understood, opens new thoughts about existence. Such is the power of the hidden information this album offers, perhaps mere suggestions as to how things could relate to each other, how the rise of science meant the fall of Christianity, also bringing forth the rise of anti-Christian attitudes that have integrated into our society as norms. Maybe I'm rambling about the innovation the Sandison brothers were seeking of. They have captured, however, a very concerning kind of energy to Geogaddi, which strips satanism from horns and blood and offers sunshine and childhood instead. Combination of two opposite themes offer us a grainy, burning perspective to the meaning of the past, from which our present has stemmed from.
Even the release year of this album doesn't feel good, 2002. This album still feels like it came out last year, and year before that. Maybe you're less concerned having to share your existence with a musical work such as this, but my position to this album has become a more negative one as time has passed, I see it as a sinister force trying to worm into your brain and turn you smarter but all it manages to do to you is to make you feel insignificant and unimportant. This is my personal experience from 2016 entirely, my year of unwavering depression. I'm not pointing fingers, I chose to do to myself what I had been interested in. It is perhaps best for me to not come back to Sandison brothers for more entertainment, for art is a word more familiar to them. Before I attempt to depart to more positive and encouraging experiences in musical world, let me hand this a 5, because a work that functions like a trap is more interesting as music as electronic as art than anything anyone else will try to plan to do.
