The enigmatic Scottish geniuses return after a thirteen year album absence.
Boards of Canada, brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, are old enough to have made their first music in the 1980s. It wasn’t for another ten years that any of it found its way outside a circle of friends and family, following multiple line-up changes and the gradual transformation from a full band into an electronic… something. Built upon highly inventive sampling of old audio and video recordings as well as things they recorded from the wilds of Scotland, they quickly came to the attention of electronic pioneers Warp Records, who have stayed their label across the last thirty years. Debut album Music Has The Right To Children is a seminal release in UK music history, one that changed the course of how music is constructed and thought about. It is hard to articulate just how profound an impact it had on my listening taste when I first came across it at university. This and DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing broadened my horizons far beyond the indie-guitar music that dominated my listening habits at the time. If you haven’t come across Boards Of Canada before, park this album for a bit and go straight to Music Has The Right To Children and Geogaddi. You won’t regret it, unless the horror movie soundtrack edges of their work prove too much for delicate listeners. The bizarre samples, laid back beats, electronica with a style embedded in nature and retro-futurism construct a world that was unlike any other at the time.
Inferno could undoubtedly be the work of no other artist. It is shot through with all the things that are uniquely them. In places, it matches the high points of their output. Single ‘Prophecy At 1420 Mhz’ is a techno-paganistic classic with many of their signature moves and sounds. There are other moments spread out across the album where the ideas mesh and soar. In other places it just doesn’t have the same bite as their best work. Some tracks meander along, feeling like at least one element is missing, the beats are a little bit too laid back.
There is a strong thematic around religion on this album. Vocal samples capture a range of different religious people expressing a range of thoughts. It never quite directs you enough to make a proper critique though. Are Boards of Canada for religion or against it? Are they retreating from the issues of the modern world or embracing them?
If you are a long time Boards Of Canada fan then there is more than enough to get your teeth into here. If you come to it as a casual then electronica fans should find it interesting, you may find your attention wandering on some tracks though.
Essential Tracks: ‘Prophecy At 1420 Mhz,’ ‘Age Of Capricorn’ and ‘Naraka.’
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