Albums that sound similar to Boards of Canada

In 1998, everybody who flipped over Moon Safari was asking what else has that innocent 70s warm nostalgic electronica now sound. MHTRTC was the standard reply. They must have been hipsters.

http://www.konkurrent.nl/nieuwsbrief/img/bibio.jpg

search: kelpe - sea inside body

http://stat.discogs.com/R/362320-1104181848.jpg

Music Has The Rights to Children is a good album that has found a deserving larger audience because it is well put together front to back. Unlike some of their contemporaries, they didn't throw some harsh drill and bass track or an out of place dance mix in the middle to throw it off kilter. It has a flow like a mix album, but suited to their sound.

Now, if you'd compare BoC to Aphex or Autechre, or maybe even Black Dog, I'd accept this. But BoC doesn't really sound that different from, say, Two Lone Swordsmen (in 1998) or Mouse on Mars, and they, just as well has 310, Pole, NUF, etc, have just as much emotion (often the same kinds of emotions too) in their music. The only thing that might differientiate BoC from these is that BoC is more lo-fi, and that might be the exact answer to my question: hipsters often tend to think that lo-tech in electronic music is cool (because it's more like indie rock), and hi-tech not so cool (because it reeks of commercialism and isn't as "personal"). The funny thing is that the only truly great BoC track I've ever heard is probably their most hi-tech, the one on Music Has the Right to Children with all the sampled human voices.

i think the divide you're looking for is analog/digital, but even then, you're still spectacularly wrong about a lot of stuff.

i never thought to group bola with the BoC sound but I guess if you like one, you'd like the other.

I tend to think BoC's popularity is precisely due to the fact that " their music didn't have any particular qualities that other people wouldn't have done better" - it's not a case of analog/digital so much as particular/general. So much late 90s IDM defined itself by relation to other IDM in the sense of establishing a particular minimal difference between itself and other examples of the genre, such that its value was more commonly articulated (by listeners, the media etc.) in a manner that was internal to IDM discourse (check the crazy beat programming etc!) Whereas BoC, precisely because they didn't pursue this line of plausible innovation, are usually talked about in much more general, non-IDM terms; with the paradoxical effect that they are able to "stand in" as the representative/replacement of IDM as a genre quite efficiently for everyone who only wants one CD of it for the moment - perhaps more so than anything since Aphex Twin's glory days.

i'm saying KID A.

haha and sorry dude but your lo-fi/hi-fi postulating doesn't make any sense either. hipsters only love 'lo-tech' electronic? boards are lo-tech? i guess that explains why no hipster party is complete without the lo-tech scribblings of daft punk and basement jaxx! wtf are you talking about?

Maybe it's different in England, but I know several indie guys/girls who, when it comes to electronic music, only dig acts like BoC or Mouse on Mars, but definitely not "dance music" like Basement Jaxx.

I agree that the high-tech/lo-tech division was badly worded, I meant it more as a metaphor. What I meant was the sort of a division between simplicity and complexity of sound; by complexity of sound I don't mean that sound has to have many layers or anything, rather than that you put a bit of effort to it to make it your own. Let's put it this way: both BoC and Mouse on Mars (or MoM of the late nineties, to be exact) aim for the sort of childlike quality in their music, but MoM have a more interesting, personal approach to that, whereas BoC seem to take the straightest, easiest route ot it. And if you like that sort of thing, of course there's nothing wrong with it; what I merely wanted to say is that I've never understood why BoC are thought be particularly original, when there's nothing in them that other folks wouldn't have explored in a more unique way.

What I meant was the sort of a division between simplicity and complexity of sound; by complexity of sound I don't mean that sound has to have many layers or anything, rather than that you put a bit of effort to it to make it your own.

so, expanding from that, hipsters tend to prefer electronic music that demonstrates more craft? if that's what you're saying, there's tons of problems there too.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005Y0Q4.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

www.70sgymnastics.com

sorry tuomas but the fact that you're recommending pole and kit clayton as sounding similar to MHTRTC makes me dubious of your ability to make distinctions in electronic music period. it's basically tantamount to recommending metal box to someone who likes is this it (although as methods of practice go, you could do much worse).

i don't understand that metal box/ this is it analogy at all. or why you then go on to talk about the fact that hipsters listen to daft punk and basement jaxxx at parties!!!! they do!?

then you quote Tuomas

"What I meant was the sort of a division between simplicity and complexity of sound; by complexity of sound I don't mean that sound has to have many layers or anything, rather than that you put a bit of effort to it to make it your own."

and say:

so, expanding from that, hipsters tend to prefer electronic music that demonstrates more craft? if that's what you're saying, there's tons of problems there too.

i've no idea how that statement expands IN ANY WAY from what Tomas said.

dude you can't assign value to "emotion"! that's totally ridiculous!

when he was just using the word to respond to another poster's claim that BOC was more emotional IDM. you can certainly assign value to emotion for yourself or re. your own tastes which was all he was trying to do. what's ridiculous about that?

there's not much to understand with the metal box/is this it analogy. both records are considered 'rock' in the broadest sense of the term but live at polar opposite ends of the spectrum within it. same with boc and pole w/r/t electronic.

i've been to tons of (so-called) hipster parties where daft punk and basement jaxx were electronic music's main representatives.

and tuomas's statement does follow pretty readily if you read what he said!

hipsters often tend to think that lo-tech in electronic music is cool (because it's more like indie rock), and hi-tech not so cool (because it reeks of commercialism and isn't as "personal")

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What I meant [by high-tech/lo-tech] was the sort of a division between simplicity and complexity of sound; by complexity of sound I don't mean that sound has to have many layers or anything, rather than that you put a bit of effort to it to make it your own.

=

hipsters tend to prefer electronic music that demonstrates more craft

you can certainly assign value to emotion for yourself, but you can't reasonably use that schematic to carve out subcategories for other people's reference. not just cuz we respond to things differently but because implicit in tagging a subset of electronic music as 'emotional' is the idea that the rest of it is not. and from that arguing point it's a hop, skip and a jump to the "computer music is cold and lifeless" bugaboo that we all know and love.

well apologies from me too if that's what it seems like i was doing. i suppose i got a bit too personal in my attempts to back Tuomas up who, just from reading ILM, i think knows a fair bit about this type of music. also i missed the first bit of that equation so i can see how you made that "expansion" so, more apologies.

xp

yes i agree with you re. that last post and i would guess that Tuomas does too. of course we al respond to things differently and that's why for Tuomas a Pole ref. might make total sence when talking about BOC.

See, I don't know a lot of the records people are recommending as better than the Boards, though I know some, and lots of them are probably great, but I think BoC still seem pretty distinctive to me, and the two albums are still very special for me. Some things that seem special about them include: the microtonal textural warp effect all over Geogaddi, obviously the use of NFB film samples (which might resonate more to someone who grew up with that stuff), and, related to that, as I suggested, the sort of mainstream 70s keyboard sounds, the way that buried voice samples are used, and the way that these are all incorporated with simple, memorable hooks and song structures, as well as the overall sequencing of the albums. The overall emotional characters seem unique to me too. I love Pole's first as much as anyone but it has more of an urban, "dark alley in the rain" feel to it. The Boards, and maybe I'm just influenced by the cover art here, are more like primary colours out of focus, weird blurred half-memories, softer and more meditative than any MoM or Plaid I know (and there's a lot I don't) as well.

To answer the actual question, I don't think it's better per se but Building Castles Out of Matchsticks have some similar qualities with a more 80s (synthpop) as opposed to 70s feel - the contrasts between murk and clarity, the simple pop hooks, the buried voices, some of the emotional qualities. "This Could Be the One That Makes It" was possibly my favourite track of the year it came out. There's another page here.

xposts

dude you can't assign value to "emotion"! that's totally ridiculous! it's an empty signifier.

You can't? People who criticize IDM are constantly saying that it is to abstract and has too little emotion. But if you want to use a proper art critique word, replace "emotional" with "expressionist". ;) I don't, however, think I was actually assiging value to "emotion"; what I was saying is that BoC try to convey a certain set of emtotions, and in my opinion there are other artists within the same genre who convey similar emotions with a more original style.

If we take your criticism of assigining value to emotion a bit further, you can't really assign value to anything in instrumental music, can you? You can try to think what sort of a thing an artist wants to convey through his music, and whether he manages to do that within the stylistic tools he has decided to use, but that's it. You can say that he didn't quite manage to get through what he was trying to say, or that he didn't pick the right tools to so, but you can't judge neither his intentions nor his chosen style per se. Which would make discussions like this meaningless. However, people still want to talk about music, and that's perfectly okay - we don't have to apply to philosophical rules, as long as the discussion stays interesting.

See also: Mark Bell's work on the Dancer In The Dark Soundtrack.

good choice Disco Nihilist, The title song on Geometry gets me hard. Their new lp is excellent 2, first track is nuts, like to see prefuse crap that out.

I am totally loving New World Observer by Deadbeat. It is totally OT tho...

Lone, the Californian BOC?
Lemurian LP sounds pretty good
http://www.bleep.com/current_item.php?selection=DMLONECD010_DM

oh he's from the UK

Bocuma natch

http://bocuma.bandcamp.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jgy2uxUXr4

Justin Walter's Unseen Forces

Well... a little bit. It's the electronic valve instrument sound that reminds me of it. Either way this is a great LP.

'Tidal Patterns' by Kinbrae.

https://kinbrae.bandcamp.com/album/tidal-patterns

*nerd voice* Most BoC worship sounds garish and point-missing, imo... not monochrome enough! the ambient interludes machinedrum had on his early glitch-hop stuff really succeeded in taking off from that one of a kind BoC eerie/warm smeared sound/vibe...

tyrants by dawn richards sounds a lot like Boards

this shares some dna but from a different section in the booklet

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

boulderdash - we never went to koxut island

https://boulderdash.bandcamp.com/album/we-never-went-to-koxut-island

i was really into this one back in the day, it's from 2000 and very BoC-alike. has finally showed up on bandcamp, i couldn't find it anywhere for ages.

I've often thought that about that Dawn track.

good stuff. Id say this was probably BoC influenced or at least mines some similarly hazy atmospherics.

LNRDCROY - Much Less Normal

https://1080pcollection.bandcamp.com/album/much-less-normal

You could argue that this walks over the line between 'sounds like' and 'somewhat beholden to...' but I really like it just the same.

https://citiesofearth.bandcamp.com/

this is nice: https://www.discogs.com/Boreal-Network-Itasca-Road-Trip/release/8207976

this is nice: https://www.discogs.com/Boreal-Network-Itasca-Road-Trip/release/8207976🕸