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.

"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