Campfire Headphase Production Techniques Part 2

This is part 2  on The Campfire Headphase Production Techniques.

This one is going to concentrate on Dayvan Cowboy, a track which i think is closer in spirit to My Bloody Valentine than anything BoC have done before or since.

I hinted in my last post at the influence MBV have had on BoC and BoC have also revealed them as an influence on their work.

In recent interviews last year,BoC also stated that they don't really listen to electronic music for inspiration but are more inclined to listen to a wide range of genres far away from the genre that they themselves operate in.

Here are a couple of quotes from BoC on their influences

Apart from these soundtracks, you also name drop Joni Mitchell and the Incredible String Band when it comes to instrumentation. What was so special about their musical aproach?

"Much of the music we like is not electronic, although we've probably been influenced by Devo. We love acoustic music on old recordings because they tend to have natural qualities such as tape compression and distortion. But I think Joni Mitchell's voice is so beautiful it almost sounds synthesised, so maybe there's the connection. The Incredible String Band still sound unusual today, because they changed the arrangement for every song, and their own influences were far and wide apart, and they always wrote emotional melodies which were a bit unusual, you know, with melodies which took unexpected twists. A unique band."

What else do you consider important musical influences, past and present?

"Devo, Walter/Wendy Carlos, DAF, television themes, corporate jingles from TV and film, Jeff Wayne, Julian Cope,My Bloody Valentine, 80's pop music."

For Dayvan Cowboy, The guitar part is the signature of the whole song and holds everything together.This shows that BoC were focusing on more traditional ideas such as traditional song arrangement.

The opening part of the track is typical BoC.The atmosphere is a hazy half heard half imagined melody,suggesting the more definitive melody that kicks in when the main guitar part kicks in.

The sounds in the intro are heavy on the reverb and sound really distant.The Equalisation on this part is interesting as most of the low end is filtered out as is the high end.All the sound is concentrated in the mid frequencies,similar to the telephone effect.The way BoC use reverb and EQ is also interesting.

When most producers use EQ ,they search for the resonant frequency and then cut it.From what i can hear in this intro,BoC tend to find the resonant frequency(usually stands out like a sore thumb,ie whistling type sounds) and then mush the sound using reverb.

This brings out the resonant tones and uses them to enhance the sound creating notes ,tones and drones within the patchwork of the music.It all adds to a wall of sound effect where the sounds start to become indistinct from each other but BoC do it so well that the sounds don't end up being a mush.

The track really kicks in when the guitar part come in. The part is simple but in typical BoC fashion it has been played by them into the sampler.The guitar part may be in a drop D tuning which is ideal for extra drones and character.

There seems to be 2 guitar parts going on.The main part is a simple 4 chord progression ( try A C G D), which tends to pop up in different forms in other BoC tracks, Alpha Omega being an example.

The other guitar part stays on the one chord and is a clear sample but adds to the feel of the track by creating an obvious sample to a backdrop of a fairly conventional chord progression.

The beauty of the guitar sounds is in the way that BoC degrade the sound instead of the boring way in which most producers treat acoustic instruments(as if acoustic instruments are holy and must be preserved in all their natural beauty or else).

Here's a quote from one of the BoC guys on their philosophy behind this.

   Mike: We're not huge fans of electronica specifically. Technology has made it so easy for anyone to get into producing music, especially electronic music, that the whole electronica scene has been diluted. It's allowing a lot of mediocre music to be released.'

 "On this album it's interesting," says Sandison, "because we are really overtly playing riffs on guitars, and although we've aged it and made it more like it's been recorded 25 years ago or something, with each track that we've used the guitars on, we've put things in it which are impossible on a 1970s record. Sometimes we'll construct an entire song out of samples that we'll make, so we'll maybe take instruments and play parts or play notes and we'll make entire spans of notes out of sounds we really like, and then play them in ways that the original instrument couldn't have played. You could take a span of lots of notes on the guitar, and then you would play chords on t"hat guitar by hitting them all at once, in a way that a real guitar could never be played. And then of course we would do a lot of other things to the guitar to really tweak it and make it sound very, very gnarly and damaged.

This way of degrading acoustic instruments and creating a new type of sound from them is inspiring and inventive.

I think the way they treat the guitars on Dayvan Cowboy is very similar to how they may have done it on Chromakey Dreamcoat (check my previous post for this).

 

In my next post, i'll take a look at how BoC create some of their beats.It's a part of their sound that often gets overlooked but they really install great character into their beats so i'll do that.

Cheers for now Papas St Germain

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