 Boards of Canada Albums get high ratings from the Loud Bassoon not just because they're well-written or intelligent or what-have-you, but also because they're incredibly listenable. Odds are I've listened to Music Has the Right … more than any other album in the past few years. I'd like to eschew using ubiquitous adjectives like "mesmerizing" and "ethereal" for an electronic album, so I'll just use them in quotes instead (as you just read), and add ones that you generally don't see – such as "melodic." Boards of Canada are a Scottish duo who have been home-recording seemingly since they've been able to press 'record' on a tape deck, and they've got an apparent flirtation with filmmaking as well. After a few very limited self-released products, they began seriously turning heads with the release of Music. Realizing that the comparison of their music to older wildlife documentary soundtracks is used to death in reviews these days, admittedly it is a near-perfect description: warbly, fuzzy synthesizers rub up next to bright, shimmering synthesizers … a nowhere-near-commonplace sound, even with the current profileration of "electronica" acts staking out their various territories. But before you can literally hear Marty Stouffer relate a near-death experience with a black bear, add a handful of crisp drums and breakbeats and you start approaching the BoC sound. The single "roygbiv" is wonderfully indescribeable – simultaneously uplifting and detaching. Sure, that's banal music review bullshit speak, but the only other way I can praise the song any more is to say I've gone on binges of listening to it 50+ times in a row. Same goes for "Aquarius," with its hanggliding bassline, samples of people saying "orange," and its somehow remdeptive outro with a sample of a woman counting upwards. Off-kilter samples are littered throughout the disc: countless children talking and laughing, various announcers, running water, etc. It all definitely adds an undeniable stoner vibe to the album, yet that vibe unwittingly makes it perfect either for your chillout/pillow room, or your confining day job. I would even argue against those who have said the album's a bit too long, and tracks could be scrapped: it flows incredibly well. In a genre that often lives and dies by the technology's sword, and dates quicker than Larry King near a courthouse (?), it's cool to see certain albums and acts persevere (Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, etc). Music Has the Right to Children has such an anachronistic, outsider feel to it to begin with that longetivity shouldn't be a concern, unlike the assorted collection of Backstreet Boys pogs I just bought on eBay.
Review by AAA |