"The Past Inside The Present"

Yesterday I bought Boards of Canada's most recent album (where 'most recent' actually means '2 years old'), Geogaddi. My reaction to this sort of music seems to always go from 'i'm not that impressed' to 'yeah, this isn't bad' to 'man, this is really good'. It's taken about four listens to the album to transition to the second reaction, and I'm currently on my way to the third.

Anyway, the original motivation for this post was the vocal sample

the past inside the present

which is in the album's second song, "Music is Math". I think it's a pretty cool sample, but I wanted to jot it down because I think it's of relevance to my PhD work, which is about the nature of information.

Consider the air particles vibrating against your ear drum (or whatever it is they vibrate against in your ear), "conveying" information about the sound source: the past (what happened at the sound source a moment ago) inside the present (the vibrations against your eardrum).

Not that I think that the line has any major relevance, mind you. (In fact, it hints at the view I think is wrong - that things carry something called information. That's why I put "conveying" in quotes earlier).