Boards of Canada: Classic or Dud?

As for myself, I like MHTRTC. It's background music, but it's lovely background music all the same. My only consistent complaint with BoC is how analog and cheesy they occasionaly get. Like the last two tracks of the new ep. But at the same time "Bishop Amo Roden" redeems the whole thing. So...a "Classic", with reservations. But still not "where all art should be focusing at the moment."

BoC are at their most interesting to me when they move away from the two formulae I mentioned at the start of this thread. "Chinook", "Rodox Video", "June 9th", "Skipping Stones, "Red Moss" are all excellent - I think BoC Maxima is their best album; too much of MHTRTC is overtly unobtrusive and quiet as you say. Also, "M9", which makes all Parr comparisons redundant.

When they go "analog and cheesy" it's curiously endearing because I really don't like what they're copying at all - I like "Iced Cooly" better than any Roger Limb track I've ever heard. There's something in that faded-brown-to-gold process, I think.

boards of canada are really good. i'd say classic, for distilling the one ambient track that's on every idm album and basing a career around it. that's usually the best song anyway.

Fred: I'm not embarrassed with the phrase "on the money", it's just that the Pinefox has turned it into something of a cliche round here and made it hard to use without a moment's tongue in cheek.

'music has the right' took a while for me to love. much of it is classic but there are some boring parts. roygbiv is, of course, the highlight.

the best thing though is probably happy cycling on the peel session (is this on the US version of 'music has...'?)

i disagree about plone though, fernando. i think plone work when they are overly twee and fisher-price like, but too often (on the patchy album) they try and sound darker, or more ambivalent, or go the cod- morricone way, and it doesn't work.

Boc have done some beautiful songs (the last single was wonderful too), and i think its a bit of a shame that they often get categorised as 'smokers music' (which is pretty harsh criticism)

I'd have agreed with you about Plone once, Gareth, but now I find those tracks *unlistenably* twee; I can't get more than a minute into "Marbles" without choking, and don't get me started on "Bibi Plone". Conversely, "Busy Working", "The Greek Alphabet" and "Top And Low Rent" sound better to me than they ever did.

K-reg hits the nail on the head, as often, I think.

elliot

What better comparison point for a band who call a track "M9"?

and into a world where synthesizers coexist with hundred-year-old willow trees.

-----

love this. Also the term 'soccer children' = beautiful, somehow very BoC. Ah well, that used to be me ;)

Since one of my earlier threads seems to have been resuscitated, I'll just add that I probably rate BoC higher in terms of *magic realism* than I ever have. I can sort of see where Billy's coming from with the ISB comparison, as well: if you're looking for the halfway point, Bill, I'm waiting with a C90 of "The Fourth Dimension" ...

The 70's BBC children's television series, The Changes, is an
indisputable influence for MHTRC. Robin Carmody is well aware. His BBC Radiophonic Workshop essay is outstanding.

IABP and Geogaddi are minor shifts in the BoC sound. The whole David Koresh theme is creepy, but I love it.

I say they're ace, hands-down, CLASSIC. They make beautiful textures, tones, and melodies with very few synths and outdated samplers and that is no simple feat!

Any ILXors ever been to the Pentland Hills area or met the BoC or any of the music70 collective?

Boards of Canada = Near Classic; depends on what they do next.

re: the "british sound" as mentioned above: stirmonster (v. occasional glaswegan ILM poster) once mentioned elsewhere [heavy paraphrase ahead] that he found the prettiness of BoC's music a sharp contrast to the dreadful starkness of the north coast of scotland.

Not in the north of Scotland though, just next to Edinburgh. The Pale Saints recorded some of their records near there.

anyhow, classic, "geogaddi" included.

in some ways i think much of their back catalogue is a bit tainted by the beats. as in, they seem unnecessarily leaden. they certainly date the records to a particular time period (its less apparent on geogaddi i guess). i like pretty much everything still, but the beats detract for me, or, at least, are the worst parts of most of their stuff

I thought it was a bit odd that people found the religious theme of the album to be too 'on the nose' for them or whatever, as far as I know none of their stuff references mainstream religion much. the Hare Krishna part is something they never would've done in the past. it makes this album spooky in a different way.

also interesting they didn't use any kid voices on this one. obviously there weren't any on Tomorrows Harvest either but it comes off different here since there are plenty of other voices on it. you do faintly hear one on one of the last tracks though, the bit where it sounds like the universe folding onto itself

anyway right now I do think this is the best BoC album

I don’t know maybe we have different interpretations of what “on the nose“ means. To me in the past any sort of societal critique by board of Canada seems to have been subsumed under oblique references, like the Branch Davidian references that most people would only understand if you read the internet obsessively, (even in the artwork of A Beautiful Place Out In The Country). where here, and I’m including the album artwork, it’s rather out in the open.

I don't mean things I'm reading here I mean the initial reaction I heard from some people, "oh, another album about God and religion"...I don't think any of their albums have really been about that

ah

really, if anything is on the nose it's our current reality, in better times we'd be all talking about oblique references on the new BoC album

yeah, true, we live in unsubtle times

yeah unfortunately the excitement of knowing we were probably getting a new BoC album was undercut a bit by Donald Trump threatening to end an entire civilization on Truth Social

“You Retreat in Time and Space” is reminding me intensely of the Aeon Flux animated show today

Maybe there’s a bit of end of Mega Man 2 also

I think this album benefits more than any other BoC from a good subwoofer. I'm almost enjoying Father and Son right now.

As far as distinct moments go, the part when the guy says “Capricorn” and, in the word becomes flesh, “A vigorously beating heart is pumping blood” are some of my favourite BoC flourishes.

Word Becomes Flesh is an absolute banger, it's "at this stage" for me

i love the little “glerp” glitchy speech mutoid that finishes father and son

also there is a track that sounds like it has breathing or wind noise on one speaker low in the mix for a few seconds, creates a wonderful effect

the sheer density of this record is overwhelming, a beautiful achievement

also while loving BoC deeply i have always been pretty bad at remembering track titles - and even picking out individual tracks, often their LPs kind of float by in a haze for me - but i know every track on Inferno by name, each one takes you somewhere so distinct

anyway still loving this Lp but also trying to not overplay it

listening to it the other night it struck me as a profoundly sad album

Yeah

Their last two have been profoundly sad, for sure. Father and Son is almost too short for me now... when it cuts out it's almost a bummer; feels like it's just getting warmed up.

Yeah beyond the first week of this coming out where I listened to it over and over I've kind of been microdosing this album. I don't know the individual named of the tracks. And not because I don't like it. I just don't want to get used to it. I want to come back to it and hear new things

+1 re. the bit where the man says “Capricorn”. Feels like such a revelatory beyond the veil moment. Even tho I have no clue what this is is about and that meaningless enticing-ness might be the whole point of the song/album

Absolutely loving the DJ Food 'Early Hours' mix.

Couldn't find if this was mentioned already, but went to see Backrooms at local cinema today and was surprised to hear The Word Becomes Flesh over the end credits.

Is this a good time to mention that my favorite BoC track (Poppy Seed) isn't ominous or spooky, it has the melancholy 70s thing going but it's just ... a drive back from a camping trip through towering pines. A road they didn't take, probably would have been less fruitful than the one they ended up on, but gorgeous.

I almost like the reprise better!

Btw Poppy Seed is a remix of a Slag Boom Van Loom track.

The reprise was my alarm for a few years!

xp yeah since I've never come across that band anywhere else I've chosen to believe that it was made up so all those artists could do an album together

the reprise is great

If I were to rate them atm I’d probably rate Inferno in a top 3:

In a Beautiful Place… EP
MHTRTC
Inferno

If Eps don’t count then above geogaddi.

xp it's a collab between Speedy J and Mike Paradinas. It aged poorly almost upon release.

https://slagboomvanloon.bandcamp.com/album/slag-boom-van-loon

Everyone remembers the remix album more for the BoC tracks but some other remixes on it are great too, like Four Tet, Pole, and Matmos's..

Yeah I really like the Tipper and Matmos remixes especially on that

omg lukas thank you for recommending poppy seed rmx/reprise - had a pretty good day today and wrapping with blissful unheard (to me) BoC was just perfect

it is well

Spellbound by "Memory Death" today

What do you guys make of the cover of Inferno? I can't make out much on my LP cover, but online it looks like a couple of hikers in a forest coming upon - what? It almost looks like some kind of bloody sacrificial ritual. The person on the right appears to be smiling and engaging directly with the camera in a way that seems kind of creepy.

I guess there are endless interpretations, it's very enigmatic

Oh yikes, I guess I just assumed it was two people in those reflective "volcano suits"

the inside art makes it pretty clear it’s about “religion”’

To me there's a girl or a young woman on the right who's quite visible and wearing bright clothes - not really hiking clothes, more casual 80s party clothes.
Then to her right there's another person in silhouette. It looks distorted, and this is why my guess is it's a double exposure and the image on the right has nothing to do with the junk on the left hand side.
The shape on the left on the left could just be a random object from the other exposure. i'm not sure but I see a third figure sitting down on the ground.
The whole thing looks like people who have just arrived at either a religious campsite or a late night rave I guess?

I enjoy how it’s ambiguous and unresolveable

Among their album covers it's definitely the most ambiguous and difficult to parse. It's also the most disquieting. I doubt that anything sinister is going on in the original photograph. Just some folks setting up or striking a camp site. But the girl on the right's grin, the grain and blur, the decision to obscure a great deal of the image with giant text, it all adds to the uneasy atmosphere.

I do wonder how much of this is informed by existing familiarity with BOC and with the album's previous marketing. I'm curious if it would strike a non-fan in the same way.

The only elements that I find unsettling are the name of the album and the tree line at the bottom of the image paired with the orange hue of the background, which brings to mind the massive wildfires we've had in recent years.

the burnt-out tree line is a big element too (and it reminds me of some of the inner sleeve art of Kid A), I overlooked it but I was recalling the cover from memory

i keep seeing the person on the right as Aphex Twin

Inappropriate idle speculation: suddenly wondered if the brothers were dealing with a parent in the last stages of their life as they were creating this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lqPPyW8DNo

Repair of a synth (by Bill Oddie's ghost), actually belonging to the band, including a bit of an interesting playthrough of loads of the stored patches from about 14'23"

Pretty nifty!

Was not familiar with the VP9000 it's a sampler that perfectly maintains length when pitch shifting, allowing for easy chords for long source sounds, ie instant vocal harmonies. First patch demonstrated this very well! Really cool tool and sampler. YouTube comments mention recognizing two of them from early 2000s era works, so possibly was busted for a couple decades

Two of the patches I meant to say.

I’d agree that this one will probably have been broken for a while, but I wonder if they had a second one, because this sort of time stretching is all over the vocals in Inferno

Did a lot of hiking through redwoods this weekend and I discovered that coast redwoods are the only conifers with six sets of chromosomes - they are hexaploid. Do you see? Do you see?????

Only brothers though, not sextuplets

worked out what makes this tick for me. it is their bleakest album in some respects but its also their most playful. thats why in the preview track hearing the bit that goes "I am God, the ultimate resonance" in that creepy voice was what made me the most excited, exactly because that is the sort of thing Shpongle does. I think maybe thats why Tomorrow's Harvest is my least favorite, it tried pretty hard to fall into that BoC mystique. there's a strange edginess to their music sometimes and its all over this one.