Boards of Canada: Classic or Dud?

'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 They make beautiful textures, tones, and melodies with very few synths and outdated samplers and that is no simple feat!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 can't think of many examples of tracks where the beat seems a real problem to be honest - anyone have any specific examples? it seems like a bit of a shot in the dark otherwise. i can think of many examples where the heaviness of beat compliments what else is going on - 'Whitewater' from 'Boc Maxima' for example - but i can see what is meant by the suggestion that more could've been done with the beats - they just come in and seem to trundle from A to B without varying much of the time, but somehow they manage to seem quite deft rather than leaden (Orange Romeda! Amo Bishop Roden!). it may just be the tempo of most BOC songs that makes the beats seem leaden rather than the sounds used to construct them (muffled, dirty, retro - to match the overall sound).

i think the drums on something like Mort Garson's Plantasia would have been a better approach

i nearly always find the beats a welcome addition, and BOC always seem to have valued electronic rhythm to a fair extent and they tend to prefer it heavy. it's usually one of the last things to come in, which can give the impression the track has been built to support the beat rather than the other way round, no? which is an understandable criticism if true, only i don't hear it as a big problem myself - i don't think it would make a significant difference to how i hear BOC. 'ROYGBIV' seems as good an example as any of the beat being useful, if only for the bit where the bassdrum drops out again just for 4 bars - that's possibly the best bit, but it couldn't work without the beat beforehand.

how about Autechre or Biopshere? do their beats sound better because they're complex or 'modern', or 'lighter'?

what are the drums on 'Plantasia' like (hint)?

It’s pretty coincidental; I listened to Music again last night and it didn’t work for me as well as it usually does. (I believe) I too felt the beats slightly lacking. But hey, some of my favourite moments are things happening to the beats. There is a wonderful bit in ‘Kid For Today’ where the heavier beat enters and plays two snares in a row (so that one is on the spot of a bass drum). And the lo-fi drums at the end of ‘Aquarius’. And the fantastic beat fucking in ‘Pete Standing Alone’. And the sonically beautiful drums in ‘Roygbiv’, ‘Turquoise Hexagon Sun’, ‘Last Walk Around Mirror Lake’... yeah, they’re not so bad after all.

yeah one reason this album rewards repeated plays is there’s a lot of musical and rhythmic layers in it

i only just now noticed after 10 listens that they're chanting hare krishna on naraka, even though i knew from the discourse that the chant was somewhere on the album. i think it rules

I was one of the hyperbolic posters that was claiming on release day that this might be the best BOC record

With the benefit of time I am prepared to say that yes, this is indeed the best BOC record

will need a little more time before making that declaration but I can definitely say it's the one I liked the most right off the bat, all the other ones slowly grew on me. this one also sounds better the more I hear it so yeah, maybe

was BoC ever POLLed?

missed this when the album came out but can be listened to now - looks cool

https://www.djfood.org/dj-food-i-hear-the-sun-an-inferno-promo-mix

I listened the other day on Apple Music. Decent, but for me its best moments were the songs from Inferno. Love DJ Food, though.

I’m getting the sense that the robotic deep bass voices and other computer voices on their new album are the most controversial aspect of it. I can see how those may seem outdated and may be alienating and off-putting, but I feel like they serve to sweep us into a very real undertow dream state.

Boards of Canada have always been interested in outdated sounds

There is a lot of occult stuff. On “Age of Capricorn” there is a reference to Mabus, a 16th Century figure from Nostradamus who is supposed to represent the antichrist

“Father and Son” is such a fascinatingly weird track. Apparently the lyrics in multiple robotic voices from that track come from an actual recorded interview exchange between a father and son, where the father is wanting to drag his son out of the Children of God cult (the same cult in which Christopher Owens from Girls grew up)

It's about the son being resistant to any reason or persuasion. A metaphor for our current world

xp For me the surprise was how front and center (and in Father and Son, unmanipulated) many of the samples were, rather than buried in the mix or just as rhythmic punctuation (“orange”) as previous.

I hear the rhythmically sequenced robot voices as electro. An influence they and other Warp/Rephlex guys have always worn proudly. I don't know why anyone would dislike those more on this album.

i don’t

was BoC ever POLLed?

― scanner darkly

No, but we might as well - they're probably done for another 10 years at least, if not ever.

it is apt that BoC fandom has become a religious cult

I love them, but I love the Lord - more than any physical being

actual lol

I might need to revisit their old stuff but what also strikes me as novel is the pure musicality of the sampled voices. The Father and Son voices are driving the rhythm of the song, while in other songs the samples nearly play the role of a top line melody. Totally love this album

cf Telephasic Workshop

FYI re: "Father & Son"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQvNlXZhl4

was BoC ever POLLed?
― scanner darkly

No, but we might as well - they're probably done for another 10 years at least, if not ever.

― octobeard, Saturday, 20 June 2026 04:22 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yes please!

i guess the question is, how soon after the latest release is it reasonable to poll to let the new tracks saturate

--

testing my husband's patience by occasionally employing "why can't you bring that same feeling home"

xxp in the track it’s eerie and disembodied, but to see the people makes it terribly sad to me.

^^yes

i think i genuinely love how this manages to sound extremely menacing but also very clean, like a vision of hell in total focus

― ivy., Saturday, May 30, 2026

Naraka feels maybe more resolute than the previous tracks and more ominous but it also has the same very clearly defined cinematic quality

I love that it's followed by the murk and buzzing flies and birds and dark intimations of menace on the short track Acts of Magic... and also then with a cardiac monitor, sighing voices and a sense of resignation on Memory Death. Not sure what it all means

i think i genuinely love how this manages to sound extremely menacing but also very clean, like a vision of hell in total focus

― ivy., Saturday, May 30, 2026

Naraka feels maybe more resolute than the previous tracks and more ominous but it also has the same very clearly defined cinematic quality

I love that it's followed by the murk and buzzing flies and birds and dark intimations of menace on the short track Acts of Magic... and also then with a cardiac monitor, sighing voices and a sense of resignation on Memory Death. Not sure what it all means

I only posted that once, sorry

uh, let's see, I've lost track

I love that it's followed by the murk and buzzing flies and birds and dark intimations of menace on the short track Acts of Magic... and also then with a cardiac monitor, sighing voices and a sense of resignation on Memory Death. Not sure what it all means

― Dan S, June 22. 2026

This section brings to my mind those crazy "synchronizer" session sequences in Boorman's Exorcist II.

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