B-Side Guys

Discovery transforms into haunting through repetition. boci’s album opener “the lake” operates as nightmare logic made audible, where approaching a still body of water becomes meditation on loss of identity. The track functions less as traditional song and more as psychological documentation—what happens when recognition fails and familiar features dissolve into abstraction.

The lyrical structure mirrors the disorientation it describes. Those initial scene-setting lines—”trees and grasses – navy green / the sky is purple”—establish surreal landscape where natural order feels slightly wrong. Purple skies suggest twilight consciousness, that liminal space between waking and dreaming where perception becomes unreliable. When the floating body appears “just below the surface,” proximity creates intimacy that makes the subsequent dissolution more disturbing.

boci’s production choices serve this unsettling narrative through downtempo restraint. Rather than building toward climactic revelation, the arrangement maintains steady pace that matches the protagonist’s approach to the water. This musical patience allows the repetitive “your features / they disappear” section to achieve hypnotic rather than annoying effect. Each repetition erases more of what was recognizable, musical erosion mirroring lyrical content.

The track’s positioning as opener for “scenes from uniXia” reveals ambitious conceptual thinking. By introducing listeners to unnamed creature discovering nameless body, boci establishes rules for an alternate reality where identity remains fluid and memory unreliable. This isn’t folk music in any traditional sense—it’s experimental storytelling that uses familiar instrumental frameworks to explore unfamiliar psychological territory.

Most remarkably, boci achieves genuine eeriness without relying on horror movie tropes. No dramatic instrumentation or artificial scares—just the slow horror of watching someone you might know become someone you don’t recognize. The “wildcard” description makes perfect sense; this is opener that announces artistic ambition rather than commercial accessibility.

As introduction to larger narrative, “the lake” establishes boci as artist willing to prioritize atmosphere over accessibility, creating music that lingers in consciousness long after features disappear.