A theory about BOH's recent surge in popularity, from a GenZ perspective
There seems to be a sentiment going around that BOH is experiencing somewhat of a rise in popularity as of late. Having a quick look around on the internet, this very much seems be the case. The RYM page has a ton of recent reviews, most Youtube uploads have comments on them made within the last few months (despite a lot of those videos being over a decade old), and communities like this one and the discord server have a steadily rising amount of active members. As one of these recent new fans, I've been wondering what exactly caused this to happen. How did an obscure, inaccessible, nearly 20 year old drone project suddenly have this growth in relevance? I've narrowed this down to three different points, going from easiest to hardest to pin down. Note that most of this based on anecdotal evidence and my own experiences as a GenZ'er, and that I basically have zero data to actually prove any of this.
1: ULTRAKILL
This one is pretty self explanatory. Hakita has essentially been BOH's strongest soldier since forever, and he hasn't shied away from both referencing the band and paying tribute to them. Because the most recent ULTRAKILL layer had a whole slew of direct references to BOH, a ton of people got exposed to them, including myself.
2: Leyland Kirby and The Caretaker
Introducing people to a specific project is one thing, but it's another to actually get them to actively listen to it. Drone has always been quite a niche genre of music and BOH works are generally pretty inaccessible even within the niche. A few years ago, however, something very important happened. The works of Leyland Kirby, though mainly "An Empty Bliss Beyond This World" and "Everywhere at the End of Time" went absolutely viral on social media. These works not only introduced a ton of people to new and strange sounds, but the latter also put longform musical works in a much bigger spotlight than it had ever been before. Tons of people were drawn to the allure of the gruelling 6 hours of gradual degradation that EATEOT offered and listening to the whole thing in a single sitting suddenly became quite the prospect for many. I believe that the interest in BOH's more infamous works, especially the likes of 045 or 209, rest on these same foundations. In other words, The Caretaker walked so that The Bull could run.
3: Yearning for Longform Content in a Shortform World
This point is by far the most vague of the three so bear with me. We live in a world dominated by shortform content and shrinking attention spans. We constantly consume mountains of bite-sized videos and edits to the point we become numb and barely even remember what we experienced a few minutes ago. A consequence of this development, I believe, is that longform media is increasingly becoming a form of counter culture, especially for GenZ'ers like myself. In a media landscape that seeks to ruthlessly overstimulate you, the act of actually just sitting down and listening to a single, relatively static piece of music for more than a few minutes can somewhat be seen as a form of rebellion. Speaking from personal experience in the rock/metal sphere, the slower paced genres are currently experiencing somewhat of a golden age. If I was talking to a fellow metalhead just a few years ago and told them my favourite genre was doom metal, there would be a non-zero chance that they wouldn't know what I was talking about. Now it seems that the likes of Acid Bath, Crowbar, EyeHateGod, Pentagram and Electric Wizard and more popular than ever, even with people that don't listen to a lot of metal. These bands not only heavily feature repetition in their riffs, but have a lot of popular songs that are quite long. Sound familiar?
I'm sure there's other views on this topic from people who have been around in this community a lot longer. I would love to hear your thoughts.