“I Saw Through Platonia” is a relatively sparse track drifting through amorphous clouds of unease and levity, the occasional harp pluck and synth shine, all the while a heartbeat dangles on a pendulum from side to side. As the track fluctuates, everything save the pulse eventually drops out, electrical interference grows louder, then the track suddenly cuts off.

One immediate connection to the heartbeat sound is the growing life of a foetus, the development of which is detailed on “The Word Becomes Flesh”. With this final moment it’s as if BOC are asking, after travelling through the album’s weirdness and wonder: what world do we want our children to inherit? What world are they going to be born into, or, should they be born at all?

“Platonia” has multiple meanings that BOC could have pulled from. Platonia insignis is a tree native to the Amazon rainforest, one of the most essential ecosystems on the planet and one of the most at risk, from deforestation to devastating fires. The planet Platonia features in an episode of the 60s British sci fi show Fireball XL5, in which the leader of a world rich in mineral resources must be saved from assassination that would spark war with Earth.

Perhaps the most potent, reflecting on themes of time and space throughout the album, is physicist Julian Barbour’s theory of Platonia from his book The End Of Time. In his conceptualisation, Platonia is a timeless mathematical catalogue or space containing all possible moments in the universe, not dissimilar to the spiritual concept of the Akashic records, “a space that contains information about everything in existence since the dawn of time.” Where BOC discovered a prophecy of “nothingness” at the beginning of the album, they seem to have found its answer at the end: everything.

I Saw Through Platonia

I Saw Through Platonia

Lyrics

No Lyrics Available Yet

Rate this song

Credits