the campfire headphase is the sound of life at 35
This is what I think. The Campfire Headphase is the sound of my life at almost 35.
A life lived in patches, a life with many gaps and just as many moments of abundance, in which a boy born in the early '90s has faced, up to now, technological innovation, video games, the mad speed of society, but also starting a family, dealing with psychological struggles, his own story and weaknesses, his changing body, travels, nature, wars, and the climate crisis.
In this sense, every Boards Of Canada album could accompany a phase of my life, or the last decades of the world, from East to West.
The Campfire Headphase is my favorite Boards Of Canada album, and it is steeped in a unique atmosphere. It’s an album nearly twenty years old, considered by many critics and experts to be their worst work, yet their most-streamed tracks on platforms come from this very album—a documentary I watched on YouTube talked about this too.
The way it integrates guitars, synths, and samples so organically makes it particularly appealing to me and a source of inspiration for my own music production.
There’s no need to discuss the elements that make this album famous among electronic music enthusiasts: nostalgia, psychedelia, the story of a road trip interrupted to make room for a moment of relaxation around a campfire before setting off again, as if that campfire were more important than the journey itself...
This is an album that brings back memories of my youth and carefree days, the freedom I myself didn’t fully embrace, but that I still savored.
Me, who now divides my days into moments that act as proxies, to escape boredom.
Me, who only now realizes that I am an IT professional by trade, and that it’s not just the job I have or the environment I work in that makes me one, but first and foremost the intention and approach that must come from within me.
Me, who doesn’t lack opportunities, skills, or joys in my days, but who is too busy feeling sorry for myself to see all of this.
This is the "campfire headphase," that mental state I often go through while I stop to write and listen to this album, or while I empty the dishwasher and tidy up the house on a Saturday morning with Tears From The Compound Eye playing in my head. It’s the same state I experienced as a boy, sitting with my friends around a campfire, chatting, singing, joking, or simply observing, reflecting, listening, praying.
A moment of detachment from reality, whether beautiful or not, that one lives. Removing oneself from daily life, if only for an evening, to delve even deeper into oneself.
The Campfire Headphase is a moment of clarity, stopping to look at the entire changing universe and realizing that it’s normal, there’s nothing to fear—not because everything inevitably flows as time flees, but simply because we are mortal, infinitely small compared to the vast infinity of a starry sky, and yet we are so much more than the little worker ants of "work, eat, sleep, repeat." It’s a spark of good pride, a lifting of the head in the face of the "king of the world," which, of course, is money—a great servant, but a terrible master.
Sometimes, in the evening, from my little house on the outskirts, wrapped in railway tracks, highways, ring roads, and parking lots, beyond which rise factory chimneys, the logistics hub, and the power plant, in one of the most polluted cities of the heavily polluted Po Valley, a thought rises. It flies toward the hills of Val Luretta, where I spent the summers and weekends of my childhood.
I think of my mother, how she loved me, how I forgot her after she passed, and how I can remedy that.
I can’t do much, only stop in front of this mental campfire, look at the map, recalculate the route, and be myself for an evening, until the fire dies down and it’s time to say farewell to the embers as they slowly fall asleep.
Boards of Canada - Photo by Peter Iain Campbell