Boards of Canada poll

I'll be voting for 'In a Beautiful Place...'

peel session? never mind.

didn't know about trans canada highway but was unimpressed with campfire so meh.

gotta be mhtrtc really.

I'm a bit torn. "In a beautiful place" was my first taste of BoC so has a soft spot in my heart, and has "Zoetrope" which is my fave track of theirs ever. But then "Geogaddi" is a complete listen and reminds me of great times, and "Campfire" is a nice step forward and I'm very fond of that, and I think it's under-rated. But I've never been able to understand the love of "Music...", it sounds too basic to me, the ideas aren't as fully fleshed out as on later records. So, I'll vote when I've played them all again and decided. But it won't be "Music...", that's for sure.

it sounds too basic to me

that's almost the exact opposite of how i feel - certainly about campfire, where every tune seems to end just before it gets interesting.

geogaddi is their pinnacle, i think

Geogaddi

IABPOITC is incredible though, and possibly the BoC record i reach for the most

btw was this poll started because you were sick of seeing "Best of Canada" in the new answers page and not "Boards of Canada"?

There's a three-way btwn MHTRTC, Hi-Scores ('Everything You Do Is A Balloon' is their zenith imho) and IABPOITC. MHTRTC wins just for me Manish.

The answer is Boc Maxima

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/141406.jpg

worst cover tho

I'm with Rob. 'Geodaddi' was the first thing I heard and I worked my way backwards so by the time I got to 'Music...', it felt a bit embryonic compared to the later stuff. 'Campfire' has great textures and is the perfect soundtrack to picnic in the woods.

btw was this poll started because you were sick of seeing "Best of Canada" in the new answers page and not "Boards of Canada"?

Haha - exactly

I've never heard hi scores, what's it like? twoism struck me as a bit flat.

more like later stuff than twoism. "balloon" is beautiful.
other tracks worth er tracking down - "happy cycling" from the peel session & "red moss" from boc maxima.

"Happy Cycling" is on the US version of MHARTC. When that album came out, I told people it was my favorite hip-hop album of the year.

Geogaddi best full length, IABPOITC best EP. Between those two, I definitely grab for IABPOITC more. Every second of it is perfect.

IABPOITC
ditto

one of my favourite tracks though is the 'diving and lava on the sea bed' one from Geodaddi - it's about 1.30 and takes me back to when I was about 7 watching one of those 'educational' programmes on telly at school. It moves me.

Haha - yeah I also love that track.

campfire headphase

'geogaddi' bcz it's one of the greats. also '1969'.

one of my favourite tracks though is the 'diving and lava on the sea bed' one from Geodaddi - it's about 1.30 and takes me back to when I was about 7 watching one of those 'educational' programmes on telly at school. It moves me.

You probably already know this, but in case not: that's Leslie Nielsen speaking...

In the end I went with "Geogaddi". A complete listening experience, with "1969" as a centrepiece. Marvellous.

I thought I really liked them. But the other day I put in Music Has The Right...and some wanky trip hop sounding beat came in and I got a little disgusted.

^^^^ high

can this poll please just fucking end alreadY?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Exactly how I would've ranked 'em

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ooEWVKoZRQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO6i9YPtEd8

Yeah this completely reflects my own personal ranking. Well done ILM

Revive in an attempt to get Haidooo or some other guide to come in and persuade (with YouTubes to help the cause) which of the full lengths I should get.

This after realising the other day that I didn't own any BoC except the one song, Zoetrope, which has been fast becoming one of my favourite songs. So I got In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country which is completely perfect for me ATM. Where next? And why?

(I am quite sure there was an album that my former neighbour used to play quite frequently when I was over, but I'm damned if I know which one it was.)

The poll results seem ... fair for using as a shopping guide.

I'm curious as to reasons, because Haidooo told me to get Twoism next, based on my love of Zoetrope, which fared fairly poorly on this poll.

Yeah if you love In a Beautiful Place I think Geogaddi is closest in spirit, sonics and atmosphere. Music Has the Right is slightly less creepy and pastoral, synth sounds a little synthier I guess. Campfire is more polished and doesn't really use the "creepy shit going on in the woods" samples, and imo is more uneven than the previous 2. Different ways of listening to BoC tho and I think it misrepresents them to always listen in Wicker Man 2000 mode. There's a big slice of turntablist affection/nerdery for a start.

Twoism is a lot closer to MHtR than IaBP I reckon.

Cool, thanks for the comparisons, NV.

What I'd really, really like is if someone who knows the albums well could maybe reccomend a song that's ... representative of each album's feel for me to look up and listen to before pushing the iTunes buy button.

you really can't go wrong with anything pre-Campfire Headphase.. Though if you liked IABPOITC, I'd suggest working your way backwards (i.e. Music Has The Right To Children). Do not sleep on Geogaddi, though, it is truly righteous (if on a slightly different frequency than their previous stuff).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT0gRc2c2wQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRRTOnXOZsM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrBZeWjGjl8

Would argue that "Dayvan Cowboy" is less representative of its album cos the album isn't as consistent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLZ35TeGG-0

From Twoism. This is more In a Beautiful Placey than I remember tbh. There's a widely available bootleg/unreleased tape called BoC Maxima and I like the arrangement/versions of their early stuff on their most.

You the best! It's really hard to tell from the 30 second clips on iTunes. Will listen to all of these when I get home and decide.

i should clarify - i wasn't so much connecting twoism with zoetrope/iabpoitc as recommending it because it's another i love

as for a track from each release... well this is part my favourite/part representative of the work as a whole. on another day i'd probably pick another track for each. also in chronological order (twoism, hi scores, mhtrtc, iabpoitc, geogaddi, tcm)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i7Z7UDOYvM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQEmaj9C6ko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOspuypdBmA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM2ZIWUJVGs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xU09AXhlkk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inDlIqpF5Eg

Surprised you haven't heard BoC as such a big Aphex fan, Masonic Boom. In fact I'd say they're probably better.

poll results are nearly the exact opposite of how i'd rank them

No, I have heard them before! Like I said, my neighbour was really into them. (I'd let him leave them on, but make him turn Autechre off.) I just wasn't that big of an Aphex fan when I did hear them (this was kind of in the middle of my "I only like dronerock bands" 30-something phase between two other phases of being more open minded about more kinds of music.)

Gonna be grumpy and say that I love IaBPitC and never really got Geogaddi. MHRTC and Twoism for me, nothing post-IaBP has done it for me.

There were some live performances circa 2001 (ATP + the Warp Lighthouse party) where they played some new stuff which I don't think ever got released and I would take over anything they did after them. Listened to the bootlegs so many times it'd probably feel all wrong to hear a studio version without the crowd conversations snaking in and out.

So far, the Geogaddi clips are the ones that have got me most interested. I'll listen again today and decide.

IABP is their peak, I think; I love bits of MHTRTC and Campfire Headphase and Geogaddi. Roygbiv is maybe my favourite thing they've done.

In terms of full-lengths, MHTRTC seems most consistent to me; Geogaddi has too many 'skits', and campfire is just less innarestin.

DAMN I WISH THESE WERE ON SPODIFY

Also more Andrea Parker. I like trying before I'm buying.

Oh wait, all of Twoism *is* on YouTube.

Music Has The Right To Children
- this was the first BoC I owned and I like it a lot. The quintessential BoC album, it captures the naiive/sad/dreamy/floaty atmosphere perfectly. Plus it has Aquarius and ROYGBIV which are contenders for best tracks.

In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country
- I didn't like this at all when I first heard it, but now I think it's possibly my favourite. I remember buying it on a snowy day in Colchester, and riding the bus home from town listening to it on my discman was one of these moments where the music and the mood fit perfectly. A brilliantly conceived EP with crepey undertones (cover and song titles reference WACO cult), it manages to bridge the two adjoining albums perfectly.

Geogaddi
- By far their most complex and conceptual album. Until this, I'd have never thought of BoC as being "frightening", but that's what it is. There's a subliminal uneasiness that runs throughout Geogaddi - warnings about energy, backwards nursery rhymes, beware the friendly stranger, the devil is in the details, a cover that looks like a psychedelic inferno - it's terrifying! There are also a lot of tracks that are kind of "nothing" tunes that just slip by if played in the background, but it wouldn't be the same album without them and if you listen to them properly, they are infinitely detailed. I think it's my favourite of the albums, mostly because I notice somethign new every time I hear it.

Campfire Headphase
- Boy was this disappointing. This was BoC basically showing their so-far-so-concealed hand. It was like all the mystery and magic that they'd built up throughout their career had been smashed to pieces with this record. Horrible acoustic guitars, basic melodies - it sounds like bad chillout music for mid-priced car advertisements. As a double whammy, BoC held an absolutely hideous interview with Pitchfork at the time where they revealed that they were in fact brothers and no longer had any intention in making the detailed kind of music of their past. They basically shot their whole career down and never released anything again.

Of course, seeing that, I have to go and read this interview where they "blow the whole thing" - because, never having had any sense of mystery about them, there's nothing to destroy.

Ha ha, I ended up buying Twoism coz it was cheaper.

(also I liked the really fuzzy sound of the YouTubes, I guess I understand what my friend was saying a few weeks ago, about the warmth of cassette tape decay as opposed to MP3)

like k8 i only discovered BoC pretty late on, 2005 in my case, so i picked up on the whole mystery entirely retrospectively. on the whole i agree with village idiot, though i don't think TCM is that bad - though i only really listen to it for reading and often skip whole sections.

What is this "TCM" you lot keep referring to?

i keep saying tcm because i'm actually an idiot and mean TCH - the campfire headphase. excuse me.

Ah! I thought there was a secret album that I might be missing. (It would be completley in keeping.)

Campfire Headphase
- Boy was this disappointing. This was BoC basically showing their so-far-so-concealed hand. It was like all the mystery and magic that they'd built up throughout their career had been smashed to pieces with this record. Horrible acoustic guitars, basic melodies - it sounds like bad chillout music for mid-priced car advertisements. As a double whammy, BoC held an absolutely hideous interview with Pitchfork at the time where they revealed that they were in fact brothers and no longer had any intention in making the detailed kind of music of their past. They basically shot their whole career down and never released anything again.

― village idiot (dog latin), Friday, August 6, 2010 6:18 AM

don't agree with this at all

what a horribly formed "review"

The turntablism/secret hip-hop vibe is why I like Music Has A Right To Children so much; the beats are really meaty and offer a fantastic foundation to the often fragile/sparse instrumentation/sampling riding over it.

also I really really really love this track to bits (off of MHARTC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79SN8I9Fw8M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1LPwPdJsPk

^ fire

This might be a st00pid n00b question, but why do people hate on The Campfire Headphase so much?

Because it contains all acoustic instruments and OH NOES guitars and stuff? Or is it actually patchy in quality in a way that has nothing to do with the instrumentation?

Because from what I've heard so far, I think I do trust them to use guitars in an interesting way, and not just go all rubbish folky-tinged nu-gaze about it. (maybe)

it's because of OH NOES guitars

also (IMO) the beats are softer, making some of the tracks less compelling, but that doesn't mean there aren't straight-up genius songs on it like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ2BT3SBO9U

There's only one track I like on Campfire Headphase, and I don't remember the name of it - possibly '84 Pontiac Dream. I dunno, maybe it's an okay record, but it's not the kind of thing I want to hear from BoC. It reminds me of Air's "Talkie Walkie", which is an album I do dig, but that record already exists and Air already exist, so I don't really want to hear BoC doing it. Also, it's very much an easy-listening (as opposed to queasy-listening) album; it's pretty and dainty and unintrusive; and while I enjoy the breezier moments on MHTRTC, there was always a hidden depth to their work that's been all but completely glossed over on this album.

And yeah, the guitars are completely unnecessary, I'm sorry, they just wind me up.

Why do so many big electronic acts follow the pattern of Critically Acclaimed "Distilled Sound" Record > Adventurous Side-Stepper > Disappointing, Undercooked Third Album ?

I can already count BoC, Air, Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Prodigy... probably loads more.

Eh? Is this like the "difficult second album syndrome" of the electronic music world, because I'm not sure I see it.

Seems more like "OK, we've done that and we're sick of it, let's do something else. The fans put up with it the first time, don't bother the next."

Difficult third album syndrome really. Band bursts onto scene with exciting new sound, become critical darlings and gain a few fans. They then release another album that is a major technical and conceptual leap from the first, perhaps alienating a couple of people but on the whole providing evidence that they're at the peak of their powers. Then by the third album it feels as though they've really stopped trying any more. They release an album of tawdry b-side-a-likes or decide they're gonna polish all the fun out of their music. It's just something I've noticed, especially among a lot of big electronic acts. Don't know whether this is something that happens in other genres either.

weren't there, like, acres of stuff released (in a small way) before Music?

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Boards+Of+Canada

i'd like to hear some more of that (ok, twoism was released later). but then i'm one of the people alienated by the adventurous side stepper...

also, christ.

Is that "christ" a comment on the article or a reference to an artist? (I do recall you put a track by Christ on a mixtape you once made me, Koogs)

8) yes, he was linked somehow with them. ex-member, possibly, or labelmate, or geographically close. similar styles. haven't really followed his career post metamorphic reproduction miracle but saw him around that time and was a nice mix of the pastoral beats and home made films.

actually, the recent samples here sound good.
http://www.benbecula.com/artists/christ..shtml

("mixtape" track was probably pylonesque, a peel favourite)

i was one of those severely let down by Campfire Headphase, the Japanese only bonus track 'Macquarie Ridge' is great though and reminds me a lot of 'Zoetrope'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKSM-jyQh3o

Christ. with an irritating . was supposedly in BoC in their obscure tapes era before Twoism or something. His solo stuff was pleasant but fairly missable in my opinion, but I'm sure I haven't heard all of it.

I now have Geogaddi as well.

Next question: how do I *stop* myself from listening to Boards of Canada too much so I don't become one of those annoying nutters?

pick up some Apparat albums?

embrace the nuttiness

I'll second the Apparat suggestion.

ppl The Campfire Headphase is *absolutely awesome*, at least for the first half

I quite like TCH, especially Dayvan Cowboy but my relation to it is complicated (from my <url="http://ohrensause.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/500/>;blog</url>):

"There is something about this instrumental that makes me feel uncomfortable. I first got into it a couple of years ago when the album cd played on the car-hifi and we were coming back from a family party in the South of Germany. The noise in the car made it a challenge to make out the melody of this piece, it took me two or three listens to fully realise the beauty of it. The synthesizer crescendo slowly building up, the reaching of the plateau, the sudden intrusion of a whirl wind and the transformation into a wonderful, simple, serene guitar tune. And then an even huger crescendo starts building up. What a richness of sounds, e.g. a kind of xylophone, some solemn strings, lots of nature noises and the strong pull of the drum programming. Somehow I associate this song with fascism, it totally grasps my aural sense. It sounds so incredibly rich, as irresistible and in the end unsatisfying as a marshmellow. I love it but I am very suspicious about it. I am afraid of the manipulative potential in this music. Quite similar to the Wagner preludes this washes and sweeps over me like an ocean wave and when the wave has passed I feel empty and somehow betrayed. Know what I mean?"

Weirdly, I already have Apparat albums due to the Ellen Allien connection.

And OK, I was wavering on what to think of the opinions on the Campfire Headphase, but that has just clinched it for me that it is in all likelihood as awful as everyone says it is. x-post

The Campfire Headphase is great (in case you need an opinion from another lol-ilxor).

It's not the LOL-quality of Louis, it's more that I have noticed repeatedly that he likes completely different ends of the same genres. That we are perhaps responding to different qualities of similar musics.

hated on campfire too when it was release but time has revealed it to be a solid album from a group that had released a couple of game-changing classics back-to-back so what else were we gonna think.

I am starting to understand the obsessional nature of lots of BoC fans - like, there's a reason that they are listened to by lots of wild-eyed nutters who talk about going off to live in an abandonned nuclear bunker on the Isles of Scilly while waving around a pirated copy of the Wicker Man.

But, like, that's an aspect of myself I try really, really hard not to indulge.

scratch that, it's pretty damn good all the way through

p.s. it doesn't sound anything like the sort of multi-layered electro-gaze we disagree about - it's still very much BoC, just a bit richer, less elfin

some of us just enjoy the synth timbres

^

(and the songwriting!)

speaking of the wicker man - have you read up on the influence of various older works on their album artwork? it's all here - http://bocpages.org/wiki/Misc - i'm not sure i buy the wicker man connection, but since you mentioned it... makes for interesting reading anyway.

p.s. it doesn't sound anything like the sort of multi-layered electro-gaze we disagree about - it's still very much BoC

strongly disagree

just a bit richer, less elfin

with this bit too

I once tried syncing Geogaddi with Wicker Man. It worked quite well for the first 15-20 mins.

come on then where's yr refutation

admittedly it's not QUITE as melodically tweaked or off-sounding or deliriously wrong-headed as some of the best stuff from beforehand (ahem, Aquarius, also quite a lot of Geogaddi) but at its peak it purveys beautiful ambient pop with some really subtle touches

haidooo, that page you link doesn't exactly disprove my "BoC fans are a bunch of obsessive nutters with too much time on their hands making too many weird links between stuff that doesn't really go" theory, now, does it?

LOOK, LOOK, HERE ARE TWO MEMBERS OF INCREDIBLE STRING BAND SITTING IN A FIELD!!!

HERE ARE THE TWO MEMBERS OF BoC SITTING... ON A BEACH!!!!

DO YOU SEE? DO YOU SEEEEEEE?!?!?!??!?!

::backs away slowly trying not to make any sudden motions::

xp refutation is tricky when even apparently objective things like "richer/less rich" can be in the ear of the beholder. but, TCH era Boc seems to me to have a markedly different aesthetic to their earlier stuff, much more towards the new-age side of things, and if i were to call either period "elfin" it would definitely be the later one.

"off-sounding" and "wrong-headed", yes! that's what i miss.

Boom - did I not already encourage you to embrace the nuttiness?

maybe we have different sensations of what an elf is

What Would Galadriel Listen To

Can't say I follow BoC too fervently at this point but I have max respect for the way they troll the swivelheaded end of their fanbase by teasing them w/ all this stoner apocrypha and probably non-existent cassettes

Also, is elfinness something to be encouraged or denied? (What are your thoughts on "whimsical" and "twee" while we're at it)

haidooo, you don't understand. There's parts of my life you don't know about. (Actually, it's funny, I had forgotten until I saw the cover again while looking to buy it, that Geogaddi was one of the CDs on top of a pile of HSA's collection that I was always too scared to play. So that's the kind of people I associate this artist with. You know, my screen name is a bit of a joke, but there were those that took it all a bit *too* seriously.)

But what I like about this is the *off-ness*. That this kind of thing could very easily degenerate into whimsy and cutesiness and ooh-wasn't-childhood-fun but instead it manages to capture the kind of terror and odd fears and subtle shift into nightmare. That picture Tuomas posted a while ago that scared the shit out of me, of that owl-horse-antler thing.

There's a part of me that misses those weirdoes.

I'd argue there's still offness in TCH, although the aesthetic is obviously more skewed towards beauty and away from horror

Fucking hippies.

I love hippies.

(What are your thoughts on "whimsical" and "twee" while we're at it)

Pleaaaaase don't open this can o' worms here...

Nothing against elves per se but... early BoC is all vinyl and 70s TV and as Dan mentioned, a subtle hip-hop sensibility. Later period is guitars in the forest as sunlight dapples through the leaves. I know which one I'd more expect to hear in Lothlorien.

Though it's OK to take the piss out of the kind of hippies that all take their powerbooks out in the forest so they can network them together to play D&D. Which, let's face it, is a big part of the swivelheaded core fanbase.

Or so it seems.

x-post

Thing is, I already have SO MUCH of that "guitars in the forest with dappled sunlight through the leaves" music that I really don't need BoC to deliver it.

Delia Derbyshire soundtracked 70s science documentaries with a turntablist undercurrent, that's something I find a bit rarer in my record collection.

xposts Haido OTM. Half the fun (not to mention the point) of Boards of Canada are the secret messages and hidden references that have been deliberately stashed within their material, and then wondering exactly how serious Mark and Marcus are about trepanning/WACO/chakras/numerology/Sesame Street. There's a wilful the aural equivalent of reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy I suppose, which of course isn't everyone's cup of tea; but it's their aesthetic statement - one of intrigue, information overload with a naiive facade - the wolf in sheep's clothing, the friendly stranger. The music is beautifully uneasy, simple yet complex. It's a bit like when I was a kid, listening to the news on the radio and being terrified that everyone I knew would die of AIDS or pollution or drugs or anything else I didn't quite understand yet; but also being very much attracted to novel or magical things.

I think I remember hearing Kid For Today when it first came out and thought it was dull and repetitive - I listened again today, and I couldn't have been more wrong. I love that part half way where the music grinds to a halt temporarily and there's a noise like a hatching egg, then a synth like a nightbird takes centre stage. Love this tune.

Thing is, I already have SO MUCH of that "guitars in the forest with dappled sunlight through the leaves" music that I really don't need BoC to deliver it.

this is OTM too.

Oh, me? OK. A LOT of my favourite music is 'whimsical' to some degree. I mean that in the sense where the music doesn't append to an accepted pattern or standard, but wanders how it will, according to a capricious and often unpredictable artistic vision. Forced whimsy, where the desire to seem different supersedes the desire to create a narrative that works or the artist's ability to convincingly conjure the dreamscape and bring you down the garden path, can be exceptionally frustrating and at worst thoroughly unlistenable. My favourite band, Cardiacs, were a bit like that in their (very) early days, at times, but with maturity came the ability to create songs that were both even weirder, more fanciful, than their early fuckabouts, and also incalculably *better*, in conception and execution. There's a band from Liverpool called a.P.a.T.T. on the other hand who are yet to square their immensely whimsical ambitions with not sounding like a load of show-offy kids on maximum annoying mode. It's a sort of cutesy-arty-sans-craft melange of not-actually-very-good ideas with the occasional bright spark.

'Twee' then. For me, twee is the location of warmth within a climate of adversity, and only becomes sickening when there's no adversity to play it off. Sadly, this is all-too often the case. Gratuitous twee is fucking annoying, meaningful twee can be great.

I dunno. At this point it kinda reads like this mishmash of just general late 90s early 00 paranoia stuff that was floating around alternaculture at that time. It's fun in a nostalgic kinda way, I guess. But taking it seriously is a bit like taking the X Files seriously.

I guess it's like that MIA interview that someone (Dorian?) posted recently, where she was talking about art school culture from the same time period, and "no one questions my right to make films about UFOs"

I suppose it's because I've been so closely involved with so many people like that, that it is both attractive in some way, yet also at the same time, I want to roll my eyes and say "oh, not all that again." It's nostalgia, for me.

x-post to Dog Latin, that. Sorry.

In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country is def. my favorite. Dog latin's description of "Kid for Today" is perfect, and I love how "Zoetrope" is such an oddity in their discography — instead of the usual LFO warp we get clear, crystalline shapes echoing onto infinity. Gorgeous.

Twoism is a close second — that title track! Has BoC done anything so obviously melancholic?

I will admit that I was way more engaged with BoC when they were wearing their hip-hop on their sleeve (I think at the time I told a lot of my friends that MHARTC was my favorite hip-hop album of 2000). That doesn't change the beauty of tracks like "Dayvan Cowboy" and "Chromakey Dreamcoat".

I definitely get preferring one mode over the other but really they haven't put out any bad music.

Zoetrope is one of those things that snuck up on me and I'm not even sure how it ended up in my collection (no wait, yes, I've already said, it was on the shoegaze compilation) but it was one of those things that I kept hearing that my ears perked up every time. And at the time, I was really annoyed and THIS IS NOT SHOEGAZE at its inclusion. But it seemed to have lead down an avenue that, although not shoegaze, gave me more of what I was *looking* for in shoegaze than that genre could give me.

^^^basically this, also correctly nominates two of the best songs on TCH

xpost to Dan ;)

"Zoeotrope" is amazing, yeah; it's really the only track off of IABP... that I still listen to

(haha I was really perverse in what I was calling "hip-hop" in 2000; I was also telling everyone that the single best hip-hop track of the year was "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" lol @ me)

That was the period where people were calling Aaliyah IDM though so it evens out.

Aaliyah's production is really shoegazey and psychedelic! :D

and to bring things full circle, solange sampled slow this bird down...

Everything is circular in the end.

I just want to go back and slap my 2000 era self for not being more open minded but hey, she had other things on her mind.

xxxp I think I was reading a thread from 8 years ago (not here, I think it was on Last.FM) about Best IDM Tracks where someone put "We Need a Resolution" with the explanation "If any IDM person released this everyone would be shitting their pants over it", which seemed so quaint and 2001-like, before file-sharing became really efficient and EVERYONE was a music expert.

It does make me think, though, WHAT AM I MISSING RIGHT NOW?!??! that I won't realise I've missed for another 10 years.

I'd say Vampire Weekend but knowing what I know of your tastes, I suspect you'd hate them.

It somehow doesn't seem comparable.

I'm saying nothing. Although I suspect you'd rather dig Murcof.

not directly, no; totally different genres of music for one thing

I was mostly mentioning them because I offhandedly bought Contra after seeing heated debate on it and was completely taken aback by how much I liked it, kind of akin to what happened to me with MHARTC. I do also like Dandelion Gum by Black Moth Super Rainbow, which at least treads similar ground to BoC only with the whimsy factor cranked up to 11.

I didn't like BMSR very much, so Kate will presumably love them :D

I guess I asked the question wrongly. It's not "what sounds like this, now" because trying to sound like Boards of Canada in 2010 is just nostalgia.

It's more... what is happening now that my ears are closed to, in the same way that my ears were closed to BoC, back in 2002. I don't think the answer to that is "Vampire Weekend" though I might be wrong.

I got what you were initially asking; that's why I said tentatively said Vampire Weekend! Your response made me think that maybe you were looking for something more like what you were finding in BoC and BMSR does something similar in a VERY different way, which is why I mentioned them.

A lot of people would say 'dubstep' but that wouldn't be my answer - strikes me as a big blind-alley for people who prefer theory to invention

I was also telling everyone that the single best hip-hop track of the year was "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors"

¯\(°_°)/¯

Watched 2 BMSR youtubes and just... no thanks.

I guess I'm going to have to wait another 10 years to find out.

And OK, I was wavering on what to think of the opinions on the Campfire Headphase, but that has just clinched it for me that it is in all likelihood as awful as everyone says it is. x-post

― let me mansplain that to you (Masonic Boom), Monday, August 9, 2010 10:08 AM

u know u could i dunno listen to it yourself instead of relying on ilx fanboy reviews. its pretty easy to preview albums in 2010 iirc

Thanks for mansplaining that to me. I had never ever thought of that option.

Hah, it does still rile me when Southall revives threads going "Would I like this album?"

ya why did i even bother

i don't think it has been mentioned but the trans canada highway release has some nice not-completely-acoustic-influenced vignettes, for want of a better word, more in line with geogaddi type fuzz sounds. though as the p4k (gasp) review said at the time, half of the release is basically dayvan cowboy. which, bizarrely i think, is nowhere near my favourite track on TCH.

but yeah, under the coke sign is pretty great (i think that's it anyway, i've not really listened to TCH [trans canada highway i mean] in some time)

You know, I really didn't wander in, revive a thread going "will I like this?"

I walked into the thread of a band with a huge and varied back catalogue (none of which is available on Spotify, which is my usual way of previewing albums) and asked people which album they rated, and to post examples of YouTubes they think are representative of the albums and/or eras. All of which people did, and that was all very helpful.

When you've been on ILX for a long time, you start to build up a profile of which poster's tastes align with yours, which don't, which people like similar stuff about different genres of music and vice versa. It's a hell of a lot easier to just ask than it is to try and tackle an entire 8-hour or more back catalogue of a band with a 15+ year history. With a resource like ILX, that means you have a guide before you plunge in.

There isn't that much, really. The only stuff that isn't mentioned in the poll (BOC Maxima, A Few Old Tunes, etc) are mostly inessential and available through p2p channels. I think you'd like pretty much all their stuff, though. tbh I'm surprised you didn't already like them!

o nah i didn't mean tackle their whole catalogue by yourself. i just meant campfire headphase, where theres a lot of waffling back and forth, love n hate. avoid the ilm thread on it though, its kinda funny but pretty worthless

hah oh god. i'm wading my way through it. a month of lots of posting and one person has been to a listening party and a lot of posters downloading fakes.

boards of canada is a idiot
― amon (eman), Monday, 5 September 2005 02:27 (4 years ago)

warp doesn't care about black people
― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 5 September 2005 02:27 (4 years ago)

why does boards of canada never want to rock?
― russignonald's, Monday, 5 September 2005 05:22 (4 years ago)

the highlights so far

Reading old ILX clusterfucks a couple of years later is always hilarious.

Especially from the YSI days, when it was all HAS THIS LEAKED? YSI!!! which really changed the tempo of a thread. Still can't find that "fake BoC song titles" thread that had a broken link. Though I don't think it'd be as funny as the Fake Stereolab Song Titles thread.

Relistened to Twoism just now — it's definitely their darkest and moodiest release. Pretty much every track has a sort of menacing undercurrent, which might be why I come back to it so often.

the highlights so far

― haido, Tuesday, August 10, 2010 5:04 AM

you missed:

I just downloaded this... beautiful.. once again BOC prove to be masters of radiant divine joy... breathtaking... simply breathtaing... a religious experience.... fuck cutty and all the other techno haters... BOC are gods!

-andrew

― andrew b, Thursday, September 8, 2005 2:27 PM

music has the right in a heartbeat for me. maybe biased bc it's the first i heard. geogaddi is very classic also, but i think i generally like the earlier sound better. on geogaddi they sound much more conscious of their tricks and slicker in their production, where up to mhtrtc they sounded less calculated and the dark undertones were more mysterious. don't mind them trolling a little though. best troll was when people thought they had embedded a code for a secret party in a website or something

and to anyone who dismisses campfire as light forest shit -- i agree it's not as awesome as the other albums, but you should actually go to a forest and listen to it

Forests being so plentiful and easily accessible in Central London.

i had this idea once of trying to get BOC to curate an anthology of library music from the archives of the national film board of canada, where they got their name from

To be honest, Broadcast would probably do a better job of that.

u think?

The Focus Group certainly would.

That would make more sense, yes.

ya but BOARDS of CANADA (National Film BOARD of CANADA)

If it's The Focus Group who did/does Broadcast's excellent onstage visuals, well, have you seen them?

i have! and they're great

but i'm talking about a CD of music, not a DVD of fillums

I think Monster Magnet would be good at this.

or what about New Radicals? I think they should do it.

i think your mom would be good at 'this'

"Aquarius" vs. "200 Bars" by Spiritualized?

I'll have you know my Mum used to run the National Film Board of Canada

i'll have u know i used to run your mom, in canada

aha!

Oh, I thought you meant the films, hence the Broadcast/Focus Group suggestion.

GUYS I SAID THE MUSIC

OK, OK.

Or maybe Mordant Music if you want good library music?

i want boards of canada to do it goddammit

How about Boards of Canada live soundtracking a selection of Film Boards Of Canada shorts, as selected by The Focus Group? That way we can all be happy.

no cuz then it's not the original music

New Radicals soundtracking videos by Monster Magnet with your Mum in Canada.

yours iirc!

luke vibert, the lead singer of the board of canada, would probably do a better job at that

Don't be silly. Luke Vibert is the singer of Venetian Snares - you can tell by all the V's - who makes music, with a board, in Canada.

Oh, naughty Boards of Canada for having the listening party for their new album on Richard D. Jams birthday and lighting up twitter like a switchboard for dorks for about half an hour. :-(

uh, when has twitter not ever been that?

OK let me rephrase that: Twitter lit up like a switchboard for dorks ABOUT SOMETHING I WAS REALLY INTERESTED IN for about half an hour before descending back into a sea of #YouMightBeATwuntIf and #ChristWhatIsWrongWithYouPeople again.

could you expand on the "new album" news please? I don't see anything on the usual sites.

INTERNET RUMOURS

Chinese Whispers.

You know how it works.

RoughTradeShops tweeted to say that they had been to an amazing listening party at Warp Records.

2000 rabid AFX fans noticed the date was RDJ's birthday and leapt to the obvious conclusion.

RoughTradeShops tweeted to say HA HA FULED YOU it was BoC

2000 rabid BoC fans leapt to their photoshops and made up fake blurry album art in the "next colour sequence" or whatever.

RoughTradeShops tweeted to say HA HA U FULES IT WAS AFX AFTER ALL

Internet explodes.

RoughTradeShops say no it wasn't anything but it's out in September.

Internet unexplodes again.

The end.

So Rough Trade Shops are twitter trolls and there isn't necessarily a new album after all? Damn.

Well a friend of a friend talked to Steve Beckett at Warp20 and apparently he said new BoC album is coming out first, then new Aphex album but this is coming from a WATMM person after all so it might as well be written on sand and internets.

I did go sniffing around WATMM to try and find out for myself and found that yellow album art which is probably fake but still nice looking.

I can't spend more than 10 minutes at a time on WATMM without wanting to kill myself or other people violently and painfully but yeah, it's not the first faek I've seen there and won't be the last.

(Hell, some troll there turned one of my own childhood pics into fake BoC album art - actually mind you that was pretty funny.)

I have for years been in agreement with the general consensus that first two full lengths >>> last two full lengths, but after a weekend revisiting all four, I've discovered that both Campfire and TH have aged really, really well. In fact, I'm beginning to think the initial ho-hum response to these latter two albums had more to do with the ol' 'familiarity breeds contempt' (or indifference) than with the quality of the albums themselves. As in, if Tomorrow's Harvest was the first BoC you heard, wouldn't you be as bowled over as you were the first time you heard IABPOITC or MHTRTC? I wouldn't have floated this theory five years ago, but I've changed my mind.

Campfire is an anomaly, sure, but ignoring the context and expectations of what a BoC album is supposed to be, it's fantastic. TH is a little less immediately friendly, but once it clicked for me, it was suddenly all I wanted to hear. "White Cyclosa" is what I always wish Tangerine Dream sounded like, and "Cold Earth," is top ten BoC material! Am I alone here or what?

goddamn these poll results are otmfm

Not in my universe! The magic wooze of hi-scores/twoism/mhtrtt will always be the mostest. "Kid for today" is great, though

Beautiful Place is my fave too. It's rare for an album or ep to just completely, 100%, be perfect the way that one is.

I had two blue 12" of it and lost track of both of them after lending them out...

I think BoC fans or Morr Music fans would enjoy the Tochigi Canopy album from last year. Really nice stuff.

https://tochigicanopy.bandcamp.com/releases

I rate Music Has the Right to Children slightly above Geogaddi but yeah, the results are otm.

still mystified by love for IABPOITC. I don't think it's bad, just dull.
TC I liked more the 1st couple listens than I do now. Same thing...I find myself having listened to the whole thing but barely realizing it. Keep thinking "ok this is a decent track, but I can't wait for the really good stuff" but it never comes.

whoops meant TH not TC

I'm assuming TH would place somewhere near the bottom if we did the poll today, which is a shame.

Maybe one for the controversial opinion thread, but if there's one that hasn't aged well, it's MHTRTC. All those hip-hop beats!

are dope!

yeah, what's wrong with hip hop beats?

that does prob key in on what's lacking with the other releases for me tho. Campfire is my #2 and next to MHTRTC it has the most traditional "beats" and melodies.
xp

xp It's just the only element that sounds dated to me. Also, like the poster upthread talking about not checking BoC for sun-dappled acoustic guitars or whatever, I feel the same way about the, err, boom-bap elements on MHTRTC.

could be familiarity w/ hip hop beats breeding contempt?

;-)

Ha, could be! I loved Gang Starr before I ever heard a Warp release, so it could be that those particular type of non-breakbeat-y, grimy beats were the only thing about BoC that didn't sound totally alien to me at the time

I always thought that was part of its appeal: "abstract" """electronica""" (omg I haven't seen that word typed out in years) that was grounded by headnod-y beats

but can totally see your viewpoint PP

have this lingering suspicion that Tomorrow's Harvest is their masterpiece

sometimes the beats on MHTRTC bug me and sometimes they don't... but that one does feel the most grounded in a particular time/place, the other releases feel off in their own zone of atemporality (man)

Exactly! Whenever it's playing I still mostly love it, but every so often it takes me back to a time when Non Phixion was on Matador and Two Lone Swordsmen's Stay Down could be found in every used bin.

I still love all four full-lengths, wanna make that clear.

I like Tomorrow's Harvest but it's definitely a sustained mood piece and a lot more mature and less playful than their previous work. Would have made a great soundtrack, which is how I listen to it.

MHTRTC has gone up slightly in my estimation (not that it was ever low) and Geogaddi has gone down slightly. MHTRTC is the quintessential BoC and it's a good front-to-back listen. I still hear new things whenever I dig it out. A deserved classic.
Geogaddi used to be my favourite because it was darker and contained more of the cryptic backmasking stuff that I like about them, but it's disjointed and doesn't quite flow as well as MHTRTC. There's that horrible 'Beware the Friendly Stranger' track somewhere towards the beginning, which I always skip, and then I always get a bit lost around the last third.

i love to listen to "in a beautiful place out in the country" on noise-reduced headphones in the airplane. it has got this perfect heavenly floating quality which fits very well when you are in the air.

yeah. BoC are kinda the ultimate airplane music

MHTRTC has gone up slightly in my estimation (not that it was ever low) and Geogaddi has gone down slightly.

same, and good points. geogaddi should probably be mentioned as a starting point more than its predecessor, there's more to initially latch on to

Geogaddi too dense and creepy for beginners. I'd say. Like getting thrown in at the deep end of the pool first day of swim class lol. I'd say Twoism of MHTRTC which I've used as "Intro to BoC 101" for folks in the past.

*Twoism or MHTRTC

the EP is the best intro imo. but yeah, either that or MHTRTC