Boards of Canada
For how recognisable Boards of Canada have been, they can be surprisingly hard to define. Their prolific output with Warp Records during the peak of the label launched Scottish brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eion into the upper stratosphere of experimental electronic music, and you might be tempted to just file them under the Intelligent Dance Music umbrella. But that would be like calling a seal a fish just because they both swim. Lo-fi vocal samples from 70’s TV broadcasts, documentaries and educational videos laid on top of hip-hop drum patterns and analogue synth melodies - all things that make their music sound eerily organic, and nothing like what their peers were doing at the time. If you’re cool, you’ll say that their sound is “hauntological”, that they were conjuring the past up to find the future.
On Inferno, their first album in 13 years since 2013’s Tomorrow’s Harvest, the BoC-isms are present, but there has been a shift in their sound. Maybe it’s a result of being a post-stasis release, or maybe it’s a response to a world that has changed so rapidly during their absence. Maybe, the future they’re trying so hard to catch a glimpse of is finally gazing back at them.
The album opens with the appropriately named Introit, a short 37-second arpeggio that sounds like the intro bumper of a TV program, then straight into the menace of Prophecy at 1420 Mhz and Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan. The former is driven by sparse, sustained electric guitars that then give way to bitcrushed staccato bass and a robotic voice speaking of a supernatural, godlike being. The latter moves in a more “classical” BoC manner with floaty, dissonant synths and tinny melodic jabs on top of a downtempo beat. The titles of these tracks are some of Boards of Canada’s most direct and evocative yet, gesturing toward a metaphysical reckoning, priming you for a bleak journey ahead.
Just as soon as you get an idea of what the album’s tonal palette is like, it expands. On Age of Capricorn, the duo seemed to have successfully synthesised the hopefulness they were toying with on much of 2005’s The Campfire Headphase with the darkness of the rest of their catalogue. The modulated vocal sample is present again, spelling out more religious esotericism (“M-A-B-U-S, Mabus” - the third antichrist, linked to an alternative spelling of Osama, “U-S-A-M-A”, make of that what you will) while another hazy, choir-like sample fades into intensity. The uncanniness is still there, but the two samples come together like a melody and counter-melody, full of resolve, yet, when a spoken-word refrain appears halfway through, the track transforms into something mournfully melancholic. In astrology, the “Age of Capricorn” is what comes after the “Age of Aquarius”, an age of abundant technological advancement. At this point, what the album is trying to broadcast should be clear: is hell where we are right now, or is it where we end up after this?
If you thought they were letting sentimentality get in the way of their trademark eccentricities, Father and Son will immediately wipe those fears away. The track is strange, unnerving and campy, wherein a frankly heart-wrenching episode of the BBC’s “Man Alive” is made to sound like two robots having a jumbled argument about faith and devotion. Meanwhile, the next track Naraka sounds like the perfect microcosm of the entire album, boorish in the first half, then completely uncocoons with a sample of the “Hare Krishna” chant.
Throughout its 1 hour and 10-minute runtime, there are places where the tedium of the album’s length really becomes apparent. The deeper you get into the tracklist, the more everything starts to blend together in a fog of repetitive despair. Occasionally, you’re jolted out of it by something uncharacteristically energetic like The Word Becomes Flesh or disarmingly uplifting like You Retreat in Time and Space. But no matter how compelling those highlights can be on their own, they become much more rewarding when in the context of the album. There are so many instances where the juxtaposition between the tracks complements them so well that they feel incomplete without each other. Where Acts of Magic left you in suspended dread, Memory Death washes you away with its wavy ethereal synths; where the trip-hop trudging of Blood in the Labyrinth wears you down, the lingering chords of Deep Time become a calm respite, preparing you ahead for All Reason Departs and beyond. It’s no wonder they released Introit and Prophecy at 1420 Mhz together as one single, the entire album is one big statement: this is Boards of Canada at their most apparent and indulgent, for better and worse.
Maybe the actual “Inferno” is a lot like Inferno the album, equal parts terrifying, boring and cathartic. Sounds cheesy to boil it down like that, but to hell with subtext. Because when Boards of Canada trade in a few of their enigmatic quirks to make something this in-your-face, you pay attention.
