Boards of Canada are an electronic duo from Scotland, who helped define the shape of IDM and electronic music since their inception in the 90's. Here's my favourite record of theirs, The Campfire Headphase.
Barthes would tell you that myth is a powerful thing, that it perpetuates itself, that it doesn’t need to be created, just allowed room to develop, that it emerges everywhere within the scope of human culture. By avoiding face-to-face interviews, by revealing scant biographical information (and what they did reveal, it transpires, was sometimes false), by making music characterised by enormous semiotic and literal holes which practically beg the listener to inject their own interpretations and construct their own folklore in order to understand it, Boards Of Canada have inadvertently allowed an entire world of myths to build up around them over the last decade or so. And now, it seems, they’re trying to destroy it.
The Campfire Headphase comes wrapped in a sleeve none-more-Boards-Of-Canada, turquoise-tinted mildewed Polaroids of dozens and dozens of people who may no longer exist scattered across the digipak. Song titles (if they are songs—a dictionary will tell you that a song is something to be sung) such as “Chromakey Dreamcoat,” “’84 Pontiac Dream,” and “Tears From The Compound Eye” fit comfortably alongside the titles from their previous albums and EPs. The opening seconds of “Into The Rainbow Vein” confirm that the sound of The Campfire Headphase sits just as flush with their history. But this was bound to be the case—Boards Of Canada nailed their aesthetic long ago, and have no desire to change it.
Some myths debunked, and truths revealed. Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin are actually brothers (Eoin is Marcus’ middle name); they concealed this fact because they didn’t want to be compared to Orbital. Yes, they’ve used numerological theories to structure their music, but no, they’re not practicing members of any cult or occult group, despite a few oblique references placed within their songs. Yes, they are keen on keeping themselves separate from any perceived scenes or trends, but no, they don’t believe their geographical location is key to the creation of their music. The duo have also detailed how they artificially age their music, talked about how they compose, record, and then spend months, if not years, perfecting everything in post-production. It seems, in telling us this, that the Sandison brothers are deliberately seeking to erode the intricate tapestry of theories, rumours and speculations that has surrounded them for years in order to allow their music a degree of contextual freedom. Depending how you feel about the band, this is either necessary or foolhardy.
There are aesthetic changes—the interpolation of (heavily treated) guitars into the duo’s sonic soup has been discussed extensively. Yes, from a distance it makes The Campfire Headphase sound like My Bloody Valentine, but it’s a lazy comparison. Likewise there are less unsettling vocal sample interjections, no playground laughter, no oblique quotes about paganism or distant, childhood declarations of love. It’s a less unsettling album overall, lighter in tone, more directly tuneful and even, on a couple of occasions, positively uplifting without (much of) a sense of bittersweet melancholia underpinning it. But it’s still far from being Simon & Garfunkel; most people, faced with The Campfire Headphase, will find it an uneasy listening experience, even if, after Geogaddi, hardcore BoC fans may not.
Make no mistake though; this record contains some of the most astounding music that Boards Of Canada have ever composed. Four minutes into “Peacock Tail” a tiny, tremulous melody emerges and is as good, as evocative, as heart-tuggingly uncanny as the nearly intangible movement in “Kid For Today” (from the In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country EP), perhaps as anything they’ve produced before at all. There are the bizarre, upwards-spiralling melodic fills of “Ataronchronon,” the infinite fadeout decay of album closer “Farewell Fire,” the huge (by their standards), almost jubilant tunefulness of “Satellite Anthem Icarus.” “Dayvan Cowboy” is an ambient wash of distant, corroded, almost unheard hum for two minutes before open, reverberating guitar chords fall into place and strings lift this typically Boards Of Canada sound and make it soar like they never have done before. A rattle of drums three minutes in is like Dylan going electric or something. It’s their most tangible, solid moment of music since “Roygbiv,” and it might just be my favourite song on the album.
Oddly it strikes me with this album that Boards Of Canada and Sigur Ros are following similar career paths, which no doubt will be blasphemy to some readers, and that after acclaimed and beautiful breakthroughs (Music Has The Right To Children and Agaetis Byrjun) and moodier, aesthetic-deepening follow-ups (Geogaddi and ( ) - you can count Von and Twoism as counterparts too, if you like), their current records see them re-establishing lines of communication, focusing themselves and becoming unafraid of their music. The Campfire Headphase turns previously oblique approaches to building new worlds of sound in more concise directions, makes Boards Of Canada more accessible without making them any less special. They are still isolationist, peculiarly nostalgic, disconcerting and beautiful. They’re still unique. They always will be. (*)
The Field is the recording moniker of one Axel Wilner, an electronic producer from Sweden. His debut effort, From Here We Go Sublime, is easily one of my favourite electronic records of all time.
There is very little else out there that parallels the mood set by this one. It's not trance in the literal sense - microsamples, cut up vocals, icy, polished soundscapes, a sense of complete isolation and longing for times gone hardly make for dancefloors for the regular ravers. But what this is probably what 'trance' has been trying to achieve in its aesthetic, that unabashed bliss/aural ecstasy hybrid. This is minimal at its finest, this is hypnosis at its finest. As someone once said - "The sound of God's walkman skipping"
Sun & Ice
The Knife is an electronic duo from Stockholm, Sweden formed in 1999. The band consists of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson (formerly of Honey is Cool, now Fever Ray) and Olof Dreijer - who also run their own record company, Rabid Records.
One of the group’s distinguishing characteristics is their unwillingness to cooperate with the media or the mainstream music scene - they rarely give interviews and wear animal masks in public; they continue to challenge song conventions and make some extremely fine/incredibly fucked up pop music. Which for me, is really the best kind of pop music there is. In 2006, they released Silent Shout, which is easily one of the best albums of the decade. Electronic pop was no longer a light headed bouncy affair for the Anderssons, it now existed to inhabit the recesses of your mind, in a world of its own.
An insight on this masterpiece from a fellow rymer:
Forget electroclash. Forget dance-punk. Forget all the other 80s electronic and dance revivalist bands of the 2000s; Silent Shout is the definitive back-to-basics electronic album of the decade. A decisively determined album, it focuses on its goals without making any concessions, and thus Silent Shout produces no pop gems in the vein of "Heartbeats," but what replaces the style that the band previously explored is no less engrossing. It's got everything necessary to make it a classic: The haunting, unique vocals, icy electronics, danceable neck-breakers ("We Share Our Mothers Health" is a rare track that might actually be physically dangerous), melodic burns and dark mystique. Silent Shout both sounds like something completely new and futuristic and yet also somehow antiquated; "The Captain" is a perfect example, sleek and yet frozen, smooth and yet rough as if coated in brine. It only further emphasizes the fact that the album doesn't quite fit in with anything else of its age, even consciously nostalgic dance music that dominated much of the decades independent scene. If it recalls anything, it's an alternate reality of the 80s when Antarctica had a thriving electronic scene, but it also sounds cutting edge and advanced. Perhaps this is what makes Silent Shout so timeless; ultimately, it is an album that seems to resound from nowhere, and thus answers to no one, nothing.
a cracked smile and a silent shout..
Seefeel formed during 1992 in London, England, when guitarist Mark Clifford and drummer Justin Fletcher met vocalist Sarah Peacock and bassist Darren Seymour. They released their first EPs on the Too Pure label in 1993. Stylistically situated at the intersection of dream pop/shoegaze and ambient electronic/IDM, their music has a distinctive sound. This might have contributed to the band getting a contract with the seminal electronic label Warp Records in 1994.
Pretty much a textbook definition of hypnotic repetition, Polyfusia is the compilation of their Seefeel's three EPs (More Like Space, Time to Find Me, and Plainsong). There are probably reference points to this (from the advent of Warp as a premier electronic label as well as the shoegazer scene of years before), but nothing quite like it. You're exactly halfway between now and the distant future, organic and electronic. Stare into space.
more like space
On the 15th, I was greeted with some horrific news - Trish Keenan of Broadcast passed away at the age of 42 from pneumonia. I'd seen her live in 2009, it was an amazing, intimate show; and Broadcast's brand of outer space pop was as thrilling as ever. It almost seems like we'd taken Broadcast's music for granted, being an outsider band with a penchant for breaking genre boundaries and experimenting with sound. I can't believe we won't hear anything from them again. Here's their best album; HaHa Sound.
HAHA Sound isn't funny. The rolling monster drums - combined with the BRRRREEEEPing primitive electronics and Trish Keenan's deadpan delivery - are reminiscent of 1920s horror movies. "Colour me in", "Man is not a bird", "Valerie", "Ominous Cloud" and "Lunch Hour Pops" are sweet, abused child-like songs (with monster drums, ok), while "Pendulum" and "Hawk" try to be a hypnogogic My Bloody Valentine on Mars. Recommended, and strangely accessible. Buy it.
Colour me in
Before her tragic, untimely passing, Ms. Keenan sent a friend an intriguing mixtape filled with wonderful music whose level of obscurity and beauty accurately reflects the wondrous vision which one could always find in Broadcast. This list is an attempt to find the pieces to the puzzle.
1) Emerald Web – “Flight of the Raven”
2) Harumi – “What a Day For Me”
3) Truck -- "Earth Song"
4) Mandy More – “If Not By Fire”
5) Tages – “You’re Too Incomprehensible”
6) Twice as Much – “The Spinning Wheel”
7) Tangerine Peel – “Trapped”
8) Twice as Much – “Playing with Fire”
9) Catharsis – “Masq”
10) Victor Jara – “El Aparecido”
11) Natty Bumpo – “Theme from the Valley of Dolls”
12) Koji Ueno – “Professor Parsec”
13) Fuat Saka – “Atladm Girdim Baa”
14) Unknown
15) The Vampires of Dartmoore – “Tanz der Vampire”
16) Rock Revival – “Venus 2038″
17) Mark Charron – “The Girls and the Boys”
Trish's Mind Bending Motorway Mix
Rest in Peace Trish. You will be sorely missed.
The KLF were a British band, pioneers of electronic and ambient music in the early 90's. Though they were predominantly working in the field of electronica, the control they maintained over their own art and their distaste for the corporate music business is probably unparalleled in music history. In 1990, they released Chill Out, one of the most influential and kickass ambient albums put to record. Check this out:
Their first record sampled ABBA who promptly sued the band for unauthorised use. After confronting ABBA in their recording studio, the band burnt all the copies of the record in a field. They then went back to the drawing board and made an ambient album ‘Chill Out’ and then the house classic ‘The White Room’ before finally appearing at The Brit Awards violently firing blanks from an automatic rifle into the audience, causing mayhem in the area. Later in the evening the band dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe—bon appetit" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. Then they dropped out of the music business almost immediately, burning all of their back catalog (which remains unavailable and out of print to this day). Their statuette for "best british group" of 1992 was found buried in a field near Stonehenge.
"We have been following a wild and wounded, glum and glorious, shit but shining path these past five years. The last two of which has [sic] led us up onto the commercial high ground—we are at a point where the path is about to take a sharp turn from these sunny uplands down into a netherworld of we know not what. For the foreseeable future there will be no further record releases from The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords, The KLF and any other past, present and future name attached to our activities. As of now all our past releases are deleted.... If we meet further along be prepared...our disguise may be complete"
With The KLF's profits, Drummond and Cauty established the K Foundation and sought to subvert the art world, staging an alternative art award for the worst artist of the year and burning one million pounds sterling..
An insight from a fellow rymer:
Taking cues from Brian Eno’s early ambient records, ‘Chill Out’ seems to simulate a night time road trip across southern USA highways while you have the radio on low because everyone else in the car is fast asleep; it’s enveloping bliss. Some of the tracks don’t even have any melody in them, but they all add to the dreamy ambiance of it all. You can hear train-crossings, birds, engines, even sheep; why some of them are in there is anyone’s guess, but like The Orb’s classic debut, ‘Chill Out’ has a great sense of humour bundled with it which means that there’s always something to take you by surprise. ‘Chill Out’ is also heavily indebted to sampling; the strains of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross’ and Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger On The Shore’ aren’t disguised in any way, but they don’t really steal their melodies; ‘Chill Out’ isn’t about melodies. It’s all about atmosphere and that’s exactly what the samples provide. As the ‘Albatross’ snippet fades in slowly, you can see yourself sipping coffee parked in a petrol station watching the traffic spin round in the pouring rain.
I strongly doubt there has ever been (or will ever be) a record like this. Though The Orb’s ‘U.F.Orb’ came close, ‘Chill Out’ still exceeds it in nearly every aspect. A transcendant, transporting highway wilderness. In a bizarre change of plan, the year after ‘Chill Out’ was released, The KLF had more UK hit singles than anyone else that year, then the year after that they withdrew one million pounds from their bank account, nailed it to a board of wood, then burnt it. That weird stunt may have shown their madness, but ‘Chill Out’ shows their genius.
Madrugada Eterna
