Boards of Canada: Classic or Dud?

Campfire progressively became my favorite. I get the BoC turns MOR criticism but they really nailed on that one the psychedelic pastoralism that I love most about them. Harvest always left me cold but otoh I never spent much time with it

Geogaddi freaked me out as a teenager due to the vocal in "The Devil is in the Details". There's a creepy vocal that sounds like it's saying "ross", which is my name. This may sound cheesy but it made the record feel cursed to me

that might be my favorite track on Geogaddi now. didn't jump out at me for years, then maybe 5 years ago it just clicked. Really disturbing song, I love the tense/hesitant keyboard motif that runs throughout.

geogaddi best album

yeah geogaddi's the best

i like tomorrow's harvest a lot. not my favorite but still remarkable

Their first albums are the best for me. Geogaddi is objectively the best one but it's too dense for me I can't listen to it full.

Objectively? Bullshit.

Music Has the Right to Children and Geogaddi are the ones I'll return to whenever I'm in the mood for a Boards of Canada record - the others, not so much.

The worst thing I could say about Boards of Canada is that in IDM (or whatever) terms they're just not as exciting as peak Aphex or Autechre.

Geogaddi>MHTRTC>>TH>>>CH

The MHTRTC/twoism/hiscores/bocuma stuff is really really special, connecting with the universal consciousness type stuff.. The rest of the albums are fine idm

The worst thing I could say about Boards of Canada is that in IDM (or whatever) terms they're just not as exciting as peak Aphex or Autechre.

Aphex Twin is not inert or soulless some of his songs are more soulful than anything BOC has done. I agree with Autechre tho.

Saying Autechre is without soul is bonkers imo. I don't even know where to begin...

It treats melody like a repugnant fart

yesca not exactly otm but this rings true ... there is an acrid (?) quality to latter autechre and much aphex whereas BoC melodies, even at their darkest, are always classically harmonious and beautiful

imo comparing autechre / aphex / BoC is a three-way apples to oranges thing, they're each quite distinct

i meant classically melodious but there are beautiful harmonies in BoC too ... occurs to me that although autechre are not always melodious they are good w harmony too

Aphex has written some of the best melodies of all time wtf you crazy kids

yep

also some of the most grating ever

aphex and autechre both have a lot of formal and emotional range, something that is sometimes slightly lacking in BoC (the formal part more than the emotional part)

imo

someone like djp will probably show up and school me on my (mis)use of music terms

Yeah I should have been clear that I was referencing IDM all up rather than specifically Aphex Twin who mostly certainly has some memorable melodies and very exciting work. But he also has a ton of the kind of IDM-like compositions in his catalog (especially the releases since he's returned to public presence) that fit the bill of the stuff I don't enjoy at all.

imo comparing autechre / aphex / BoC is a three-way apples to oranges thing, they're each quite distinct

Agreed. I was just suggesting that BoC is what I put on way more than the other two. ;)

there is so much bad IDM!

i hate the word IDM by the way and have stopped using the term. now i call everything "electronica".

It's always been one of the worst genre names. I mean, just think about what it means: not only is it pretentious and judgmental, it also backfires because anyone who says "I want some INTELLIGENT dance music" is probably someone you would never, ever want to party with. :D

This said, everyone hates Electronica, Progressive House, Chillwave, and just about any other name you can think of so IDM isn't exactly unique but the class distinction built into the term elevates into the need fop a special level of derision.

i like electronica because 1) it's corny as hell and funny to use and 2) it is at least accurate in describing the common thread (electronic instruments) and 3) makes clear the connection to exotica and other hi fi music (inventive production, emphasis on mood, designed for listening and contemplation rather than dancing or singing along to)

i realize w/ #3 that i'm kind of out on a limb

and i use exotica v loosely (i would call, say, delia derbyshire and pierre henry a type of "exotica")

I also love "electronica" as a genre name. Agree with IDM, chillwave and almost every genre that has -core or -step suffix

Plone had great melodies but yeah they were more in tune with exotica/library music than IDM

I love Plone.

Anyway ... there have been times in my life where I'd have said Autechre were my "favourite band" and I have lots of time for Aphex, too. If I was told I could only listen to one of Boards/Aphex/Autechre ever again, it would be Boards, though.

I'm a sentimental guy and BoC is definitely a sentimental band so they'll always be my favorites. But apples and pears really

Objectively? Bullshit.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), domingo 20 de agosto de 2017 8:06 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah I know music is subjective not objective yadda yadda I was tired and I fucked up I meant to say that GEOGADDI seems to be the consensus pick. I personally think In a beautiful place is their best one but it's an EP so I guess it doesn't count. MHTRTC is my favorite LP of them.

EPs should count as best albums iMO

Rhythm in Autechre's music plays the same role that melody does for most other artists. That's why they are special to me. BOC are unique because they create emotion with texture, maybe.

Not being 'funny', but it's kind of amusing that we're still discussing IDM vs house/techno and also moaning about the term 'IDM' in a 2017 thread. 'IDM' is like the Godwin's Law of electronic music discussion. Once invoked, it's a rabbithole you can't back out of.

But whatever, I'll bite:

The case for 'IDM':
- Yes, it's a gross term and comes with way too many trappings
- That said, yes, all genre terms are shit. 'EDM' might not be so haughty but 'Electronic Dance Music' to describe a very specific brand of US-centric turn-of-the-decade brostep/bro-house crossover is also ridiculous
- For better or worse, there is often a need to distinguish between the kind of music made by Autechre/Aphex/BoC and co, and say the Prodigy, Todd Terje, Royksopp, Air, Rusko, Deadmaus or whoever, all of whom could be described as 'electronica' or 'electronic music'
- Therefore, for better or worse, I use the term 'IDM'. It is bollocks, but it's the commonly recognised (if not the commonly agreed) term

As for IDM vs house - I came to the latter from the former. I didn't understand 'regular' dance music because I came from a rock background and didn't enjoy clubs or dancing very much. But as 'home listening' music, the Warp Records stuff was what opened my eyes to the possibilities of electronic music beyond the dancefloor. The melodic element was a big part of that, but mostly it was the ideas. Each track had some sort of central 'hook', or more often a gimmick (a rhythm that sounds like a bouncing ball for example), and that's what I liked. I also liked how, especially in the case of Autechre, it often sounded like aliens or machines trying to communicate emotions that only they could feel, that human beings would have difficulty understanding, and therefore you'd have to meet them halfway. In essence, you had to 'work' a bit to get the most out of it.

Later in my life I started going to decent clubs and parties and discovered dance music, largely through techno, electro and minimal house, finding out that this music could be just as sophisticated and emotional as anything by Autechre or Aphex, but in quite a different way. It was more indulgent in that this music wasn't designed to make you do mental gymnastics. It was still 'intelligent' in its design; still brimming with cool ideas, but this was more in the way it tapped into the psychology of the dancefloor, in the way it worked for DJs and dancers. I don't want to use the word 'spoon-feeding' here, but ultimately club-style dance music comes to the listener and the listener meets it back through her emotional and physical response. IDM rewards deep listening - it usually doesn't work that well as a backdrop. As I say, you have to channel a certain amount of your concentration in order to get the most from it.

So perhaps 'Intelligent Dance Music' isn't such a misnomer, in that it relates to the active mental response required by IDM listener as opposed to a passive physical response typically desired by a house dancer.

Great post

Generally OTM but - Each track had some sort of central 'hook', or more often a gimmick (a rhythm that sounds like a bouncing ball for example) I not sure this is true at all. What are some other examples?

*I'm not sure

Maybe not EACH track, but very often there's a clear central device or concept to the best IDM tracks.
For me, peak IDM was when composers worked a bit like writers of short stories, asking themselves 'What if...?' and executing the results in just a short space of time.

Autechre and Aphex were especially good at this. Here are just a handful off the top of my head:

Autechre - Vose In: Squelchy harmonic pads fading in and out like someone turning the volume knob up and down really fast
Autechre - Fold4, Wrap5: Time is like water in a bucket
Aphex - Nannou: An impossible musical box
Aphex - Milkman: A 'proper song', and a rude one at that
Squarepusher - Cooper's World: A funky, chase-scene pastiche
Autechre - Arch Carrier: what if Knightrider, but with a an epic string quartet?
Aphex - Alberto Balsalm: 'Bet this wooden chair makes a cool noise. Oh wait, it does!'
Boards of Canada - Aquarius: 'Now I want you to count for me while I drill into your frontal lobe'
Aphex - 4: 'Richard?' 'Yeah'
Mu-Ziq - The Hwicci Song: Ravel goes big beat
Aphex - Ventolin: 'Now you know how much asthma sucks'
Aphex - Logon Rock Witch: Trapped in the toy cupboard

There's quite a wide remit here. In some cases it's just a sample or a strange noise that disrupts the track and makes it unique ('ROYGBIV', '4') It could be the pastiching of a genre ('Red Hot Car, 'Windowlicker') for the length of one track, to signify (ir)reverence to that genre or play about with its parameters. Or speaking of parameters, in the case of Autechre it's an interesting algorithm that shows a through line from the idea to the execution (a lot of stuff around the LP5 / EP7 era does this).

I dunno seems like you're taking vibes or images the tracks give you and reading those as 'gimmicks', which is not a way I've ever interpreted this music! The playfulness is cool, but with the best 'IDM' artists it's always subservient to a greater (often quite serious) vision and not the raison d'etre of the tunes.

"IDM" is like "prog", you could write a book about why the term is dumb and pretentious but if you describe something as "IDM" I have a good idea of what it'll sound like already which is all a genre label needs to do

i dunno if Aphex had a big, serious vision. felt more like his tracks were self-contained ideas, or at least until more recently where he seems to have collated his 'style' into something more cohesive (which is where I started losing interest). Seems to have happened to a lot of these acts - BoC being a case in point where the last two albums seem to go for a more sustained mood with few great shifts in style between tracks. Maybe that's a subjective perception, but I never thought of IDM as a set 'sound' (like electro or trance) and more an electronic genre in its own right, quite apart from (but still clearly influenced by) dance-music. I couldn't tell you what IDM sounds like, it's more the functionality behind it, in that one would treat it more as a form of art-rock or art-pop than a dance subgenre

The label 'home listening electronica' was proposed as an alternative to 'IDM' but that's just a cumbersome, and I've listened to IDM stuff outside of a domestic setting. I've seen it performed live and in clubs etc (and likewise I've listened to dance music at home, while walking around etc), so that's not quite right, although 'home listening electronica' gets closer to the essential difference between IDM and dance music

Oh, there's a very definite set of 'sounds' I associate with IDM. It has wider parameters than most other electronic genres, by its very nature, but its producers have more in common stylistically than just a spirit of experimentation or whatever.

disagree!

yeah, i have to say i disagree too. Boards of Canada don't sound like Kid606 doesn't sound like Plaid don't sound like Two Lone Swordsmen, all of whom I associate with IDM to one extent or another. I Think one of the reasons the genre started to flag a bit c2003 was that a glut of producers had started to do precisely this by mimicking their heroes and forebears and making music that sounded generically 'IDM'; kind of in the same way Nickelback and Puddle of Mudd took all the hallmarks of grunge and mashed them together into something 'grunge-sounding' but beige and not half as interesting as Nirvana or Pearl Jam or Alice In Chains, all of whom sounded pretty distinct from each other.

i disagree w some of what you said too but yr posts were essay length and i don't have time for detailed response rn

soon though i promise

;-)

i'm not gonna post a rebuttal because obviously a lot of it is personal but i approach it in a different way