I guess music really does have a right to children.
posted by piyushnz at 2:25 PM on October 8, 2025 [4 favorites]

Thank you for this post! My day is now totally different.
posted by eraserbones at 3:17 PM on October 8, 2025 [2 favorites]

Surely the PDP-1 arrangement is called Olsen.
posted by offog at 3:21 PM on October 8, 2025 [6 favorites]

I saw the PDP-1 video the other day but didn't know anything about the music. Thanks to this post, now I know!
posted by mpark at 3:22 PM on October 8, 2025 [1 favorite]

The fact that so many people can reproduce BOC tunes so beautifully attests to their timelessness. The BOC cannon might last as long as some classical compositions.
posted by DeSelbyofDalkey at 3:34 PM on October 8, 2025 [3 favorites]

BOC is great, ixi is awesome. Thanks.
posted by sauril at 4:37 PM on October 8, 2025 [1 favorite]

Well, that's a surprise to see this here. I just was re-listening to ixi's cover of it (last link in the FPP) an hour before this post went up, after like a year of not thinking about it. I think it's extremely beautiful and well surpasses the original and any other version I've heard. I thought I loved BoC's warbly textures and warmpth and so on but it turns out at least for this song taking all that away and paring it down as far as you can makes it even better.
posted by aubilenon at 5:22 PM on October 8, 2025 [1 favorite]

I'm not going to get into the string of connections that led me from listening to Olson for the first time in a while to sobbing to Gaelynn Lea but rest assured they are there
posted by phooky at 8:48 PM on October 8, 2025 [1 favorite]

What a lovely post, just what I needed. Slight derail, this is a nice cover of another BOC favourite ROYGBIV by Lone.
posted by Luther_Blissett at 1:50 AM on October 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

Fantastic post, thank you Wordshore. The music is haunting and lovely, and I had never heard it before, so now I paradoxically feel nostalgia for something I never experienced. I'm about the same vintage as the PDP-1 and my computing journey began on one of its progeny, so that makes the feeling all the more acute.
posted by The Bellman at 7:00 AM on October 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

The PDP-1 rendition sounded surprisingly good for 4 channels of square-wave PWM
posted by scruss at 9:22 AM on October 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

That was beautiful.

Hey, what color were the lights on the PDP-1 while the tones were playing?
posted by chimpsonfilm at 1:38 PM on October 10, 2025 [1 favorite]

so now I paradoxically feel nostalgia for something I never experienced

That's pretty much BOC's vibe, whether you're hearing it for the first time or the 1000th time.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:26 PM on October 10, 2025 [1 favorite]