Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest (2013)

something 2 chill 2 dawg

gave it 3 or 4 full listens on a recent European car trip - probably the wrong context for it but I was listening closely & absorbing

I really like their first 3 albums, to clarify

if you want to say that something is overrated pretentious rubbish then the correct phraseology is 'i'm sorry but......'

if you just want to say you don't like something then never apologize

this is a very impressive album but it doesn't really embed itself in the subconscious like the first two and i seldom feel like i want to go back to it

i don't think it's pretentious. i simply found it boring. it's got a far more ambient remit than its predecessors, which i feel doesn't do their ideas as much justice

Yeah, I quite liked it, but haven't not returned to it once.

Oops, I meant haven't returned to it.

there's no need to apologize for finding something boring

although clearly if someone finds mozart boring and thinks that other people need to know how boring mozart is then certain inferences may be drawn

this isn't mozart though, more's the pity

it has taken me into the zone sometimes, and it has put me to sleep sometimes (but I don't think of that as a criticism- that kind of floaty / napping / lucid dreaming state is a positive place)

that kind of floaty / napping / lucid dreaming state is a positive place

listening to music in this state is one of my favorite activities in life

I'm loving this record myself, though I don't really have any defence for it beyond my being way more in the mood for this kind of record than I was in 2005 (or whenever the last one came out).

the last one was a completely different beast. it was practically a rock record!

That I don't remember! Do recall some critics at the time calling it their most "upbeat" record, though. Will have to give it another spin some day.

it's got some really spectacularly beautiful moments. probably more uh conventionally good-looking than the new one. fucking hate myself for saying that. perhaps more apt would be 'more melodically intricate'

the keeley hazell of the sandison oeuvre

oh and the songs tend to develop more loosely on Campfire Headphase - the new album seems to enjoy playing out fairly static themes on each song, as opposed to the builds & dynamics of its predecessor

idk i won't entirely discount anything they have done but it was trite in the extreme compared to the previous two

oh I'm not disputing that. hence 'rock record'

static themes are often weirder, harder to cling to, more oblique

think the first record found a fairly happy medium

The first album is their most explicitly hip-hop album, which is largely why it is my favorite.

There was a guy on the fan forum who said he had hung out with the brothers. Here's his proof:

http://archive.rebeccablacktech.com/boards/mu/img/0401/60/1379744385621.jpg

Shadows are consistent...

You wouldn't expect one of the Boards to wear their hat at a jaunty angle.

I listened to new one once and then never felt like putting it on again (maybe also because it didn't really scream summertime)
it might be me becoming boringly middle age but I think these days my favorite would be the reviled Campfire (+ EP). For me it really sounds like a sunny winter day - ie my favorite kind of days.

The last one (Campfire) was their most 'rock' in terms of having guitars and the way the melodies developed, but I don't think either of those things were bad moves for them to make; it's a really good record. I enjoy the new one a lot, (if enjoy is the right word) especially Palace Posy, but not much of it has stuck in my head. But neither did most of Geogaddi or MHTRTC (apart from Roygbiv). All their albums bar Campfire have needed significant time to bed-in for me, and it's still early days with this one in the scheme of things.

I hate Campfire Headphase. This one is good for sort of just walking around with headphones on. I'm sort of looking forward to the frosty autumn months to dig it out again so I can go for long walks through leafy woods.

weird - for me Campfire is the perfect thing to listen to during long walks through leafy woods.

'hate' is a very strong word. Why?

It is a strong word, but I've said why I dislike it a few times on ILM in the past. In short, it's the album that came very close to ruining BoC for me. The carefully constructed sense of intrigue they'd built up around themselves until that point was pretty much dashed against the rocks by it. It contained very little of the edginess/queasiness that I liked about the first two albums and opted for this drippy hippy building society vibe with acoustic guitars and lush spa-day production that rubbed dead-against the grain of their aesthetic. It reminds me of being on-hold to my internet service provider. It sounds like a sports car in a tropical fishtank and while one might argue that there's nothing wrong with that (I like albums like Moon Safari for pretty much the same reasons I dislike Campfire Headphase), it's not what I wanted from BoC. If anything I'd have preferred them following up Geogaddi with something even darker and more cryptic instead of that fluff.

I recognise barely any of that, and I suspect it says far more about you than it does about the record, given that every pejorative you've rolled out feels very subjective. Which is fair enough - this is music, after all - but seems a little disingenuous, somehow.

Out of interest, what release introduced you to them?

Yeah I don't know - I find the rock/guitar thing exagerated. Does "Slow that Bird Down" sound that different to previous albums?
I do get how Campfire feels somehow more sunny but to me it retains the core element of BoC's sound - that sense of pastoral wonder.

sorry xp (in my case I think it was geogaddi)

MHTRTC, back in 1998. I was onboard early!

Cool. I guess it was always the darkside/lightside contradiction in their music that I liked over pastoral pleasantness. There was an 'occult' (I guess I'm forced to call it "hauntological" now) aspect to the first two albums (and In a Beautiful Place Out In the Country) - hidden messages, clues, easter eggs - a feeling of trepidation that by listening to BoC you were somehow being given a glimpse of something you ought not be. It felt (from the album and interviews at the time) that not only were BoC abandoning this, but were also working to denounce it. It's a bit like the Residents suddenly going 'you know, all that anonymity and theatre was daft, we're just going to play Oasis covers in the pubs now'.

See I was happy to just absorb that as a sense of atmosphere on MHTRTC, rather than something deep to buy in to, and then by Geogaddi it seemed to have become far more prominent, and to my mind the tunes suffered from it. I've never liked Geogaddi all that much. So when they deliberately swerved left of that with CH I was pleased, because it had the raw tunes but still within that aesthetic. And I'm always pro demystification!

I think it's disingenuous to denounce CH too hard as "music for stockbrokers" or whatever, though; yes, it's more accessible than Geogaddi, but it's hardly like they went out and made a bland trip hop record, it's still a strange, unsettling experience.

can we stop talking about Boards of Canada like they're Merzbow

a sports car in a tropical fishtank

I thought we were talking about them as if they were George Michael?

I've got a couple of Tomorrow's Harvest tracks on a compilation and always enjoy them but it's definitely the album I feel least compulsion to play (and there's no obvious reason for that).

The fact that we're all different people to who we were 8/11/15 years ago?

"nothing is real" might be the most boc-like boc track.

x-post. Yes, that.

Just as counterpoint, Campfire Headphase was the first BoC album I heard and is still my favorite of theres. I never had any earlier listening history with them, I guess I'm one of those "stockbrokers" that digs the sound, but it was the first forward-thinking electronics+guitar album that got my attention since those Global Communication/Chapterhouse remixes.

Still listening to Tomorrow's Harvest a lot - mostly when programming fwiw.

I've heard all four full-lengths in the order they were released. I'd say Music Has the Right and Campfire Headphase are my favorites; I'd take both over Geogaddi, which felt a little too woozy and choppy for me. In the years since Campfire came out, that's the one I've probably reached for most.

New one hasn't really clicked for me, but I honestly haven't spent much time with it. It did sound nice while I was falling asleep last night.

Re-issue lp's in the mail to me now!

Tomorrow's Harvest is my new favorite record to listen to while driving through America's southwestern deserts.

Where's the best (cheapest) place to order the reissues? Anybody doing special items (stickers, post cards etc)?