Wiki
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Release Date
22 February 2022
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Length
172 tracks
Taken from:
https://bullofheavenfanclub.bandcamp.com/album/essential-bull-of-heaven-2008-2016
Between 6 June 2020 and 19 February 2022, I listened to the entire Bull of Heaven discography (or, at least, as much as I could reasonably do.) During this time I decided to make CD edits of chunks of their catalogue to share with family, trying to capture the best and/or most important moments and collage and crossfade them into relatively accessible 80-minute blocks. These CDs were specifically made for someone with no apparent intention of listening to most or all Bull of Heaven albums in their entirety, and certainly no plan to make their way through all 1,453 hours of a piece like "The Chosen Priest and Apostle of Infinite Space". But even as someone who adores even BoH's most outlandish experiments, I really like how these discs turned out, and I'm posting them online because I think they're great for people who want to get a feel for the band's discography without spending years on it, as well as fans of BoH who might just want to hear their oeuvre in a much more condensed package.
The music was selected not based solely on how much I like it or how important I feel it is in the Bull of Heaven discography, but also in an attempt to make discs that flowed well while remaining in chronological order. Some pieces I like a lot and/or think are very interesting, such as 136, 220, or 322, are not included because I didn't think they worked especially well in the context of the surrounding pieces, or because I found them to be redundant. Some arguably very important staples of the Bull of Heaven discography, such as the bass-pulse pieces (i.e. 310) or Acharya Shree Yogeesh spoken-word passages, make little to no appearance in this collection because I didn't think they would mesh very well with the other pieces. If an album does not appear here, that does not automatically mean I dislike it or don't recommend it, but I believe I have included most or all of my absolute favorite moments. Many individual pieces (particularly in the later discs) have many different key sections spliced together, most obviously in the case of long pieces such as 118 and 210, but also in more subtle places, such as 018, 261 and the entire "Inflame Thyself in Praying" series, which appears here as a single track including elements of all 13 parts.
The music contained herein was originally released as 192kbps mp3 files. I personally have never found there to be any apparent loss of quality as a result of this, but to any audiophiles that may be reading this, this is not quite lossless-quality audio and I unfortunately do not have any control over that.
This is not intended specifically as a substitute for the original versions of these pieces; rather, I consider it a simple, accessible way to get an impression of the thousands of hours of music Bull of Heaven released over the course of nine years. In a way, it's a way of "speedrunning" the Bull of Heaven discography. Hopefully, this will help to create a larger audience for some of the most fascinating music of the internet age. Burn your own CDs! Send them to your friends! Spread the word! Bull of Heaven is not an easy band to get into or even really understand, so if this collection helps at all to make their discography seem less daunting and more alluring, it's done its job. Thanks for listening!
Tracks 1-25: Disc 1 (001-041)
Tracks 26-41: Disc 2 (042-100)
Tracks 42-67: Disc 3 (Roman Numerals)
Tracks 68-85: Disc 4 (101-117 + Alephs)
Tracks 86-98: Disc 5 (118-139)
Tracks 99-125: Disc 6 (140-200)
Tracks 126-131: Disc 7 (201-210)
Tracks 132-154: Disc 8 (211-299)
Tracks 155-172: Disc 9 (300-353)
Total time: 11h 50m 23s
All music by Neil Keener and Clayton Counts
Edited by Joséphine Paquette
Track 101 remastered by Roxy Radclyffe
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