Boards of Canada

The name has nothing to do with snowboarding, although it does have something to do with Canada. Inspired from The National Film Board of Canada, Boards of Canada (BoC) is made up of two blokes—brothers actually—named Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin Sandison. BoC being the critically acclaimed, more infamous than famous, electronica duo who—whether you have heard of them are not—have made themselves known throughout all reaches of the world. Their second-to-last release (Geogaddi) premiered in the number two spot in the charts in no less than London, New York, Tokyo, Edinburgh, Paris and Berlin. This fact alone attests that this group’s sound has struck a chord with the world’s collective unconscious.

To try and track the musical roots of the Sandison brothers is like someone with really bad vision searching for their lost pair of glasses—partly because the group is not prone to doing interviews (the two only publicly acknowledged the fact they were indeed brothers last year) but also because Marcus and Mike started making music together when they were about six or seven years old. They first began to record their own music when they were only ten years old. To put it simply, tracing these guys’ musical roots goes back to toilet training, building-blocks, and bedtime stories.

To make things easy on us in the public, it is officially said that BoC came about in 1995 with the release of their first album on their Music70 label, Twoism. Twoism hit the shelves as a limited release (a mere 100 pressings) and quickly demonstrated its effect on and popularity among the masses when solitary copies were sold for more than £800—that’s more than $1,500 dollars). At the time and understandably so, this caught Warp’s attention (BoC’s current label), they re-released the record in 2002 and it’s now hailed as a cult classic. Twoism is also viewed as the launch-off point into BoC’s ensuing more professional releases (Music Has the Right to Children, Geogaddi, The Campfire Headphase).

On a basic level, BoC is a broken-beat driven, melodic and meticulously engineered electronic music. But BoC’s true trademark is the amount of production, attention to detail, samples and a seemingly endless array of sounds that are the metallic bones of each song; to put it succinctly and in the words of one of their track titles: The Devil is in the Details. Although categorized as electronic music, one shouldn't let that genre pigeonhole the artists. Within seconds of your first listening, you'll notice immediately that Hi-fi sounds are not used sparingly; the two Scottish brothers include everything from pianos, flutes, guitars, field sounds, beeps in shops, sounds of vehicles, to drums and percussion in their songs. In the end, not only does all this crafting of sounds distinguish BoC as a band, it is also ultimately distinguishes who their listening audience is.

Although the feeling of each song does somewhat range in mood and emotion, due to the fact that nearly every tune in these guys’ repertoire contains a heavy and flowing melodic over-layering to it that blankets the edgier rhythms, each album is definitely not dance music, nor is it uplifting in the sense of one pressing the play button and being hit with a dose of energy. This is not only due to the basic “sound” of each song, but because samples of children speaking, sounds reminiscent of waves rolling on a beach, humming, praying and the addition of even subliminal messages of all kinds are prevalent, the soupy content of each song can get pretty deep. Indeed, some songs have so much depth to them that "some critics refuse to listen to their music on account that they are positive the band is trying to brainwash their listeners for unknown motivations citing references to David Koresh and occult symbols as proof" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boards_of_Canada).

And so, with all this depth and attention to details, BoC can dip perhaps a bit too far down into the void of morose contemplation. BoC have expressed some concern regarding how critics and fans alike were taking this aspect of their music. "People were understanding things from our music that we didn't put in there and were saying there was an evil undercurrent to everything. And we are not like that at all. It was a theme that we wanted to pursue on that record [Geogaddi] but people have understood from that that we always put secret, dark, sinister, and satanic things in our music”. And it’s true, with the addition of guitar rifts on their The Campfire Headphase album, BoC have tried to lighten the mood of their sound. And it seems this step away from the dreamy BoC-esque sound has been received with mixed reactions. Even so, and whether it is an unwanted undercurrent or not, it is undeniable at times that BoC run the danger of creating too much of a murky vibe which can suffocate the listener.

Yet, luckily, this is where the beats often come to the listener’s rescue. For, before the listener's mind lapses into complete inward reflection, the broken beats laid as the foundation of most songs keep you from completely succumbing to the often over-contemplative vibes. The beat of their songs-if present at all-are well-crafted, metallic, heavy and crisp; more often than not it's the beats that keep BoC's music accessable. And so, it's here-in this beat-propelled nostalgia-where the fans of BoC are made or broken.

In the end, like threads woven into an your grandmother's hand-made quilt, what is created is a soundscape that taps into the human collective subconscious and recalls a time that would otherwise seem personal to the listener—no matter what part of the world he or she is from. Boards of Canada is a band everyone should at least give one proper listening to. I bet it’ll find a place somewhere in your collection of childhood memories tucked deep down inside.

For an in-depth review of each album, peep out allmusic.com—a wicked online database of information on almost any single artist you can think of.

Discography

Twoism (Music70 1995)
Music Has The Right To Children (Warp/Skam 1998)
Geogaddi (Warp 2002)
The Campfire Headphase (Warp 2005)


What the critics are saying:

"This is pure machine soul, reminiscent of some forgotten Japanese animation soundtrack or a rusting Commodore 64 just about to give up the ghost” (allmusic.com)

“The Campfire Headphase is one of the best-produced records of the year. One surprise is that, finally, a BoC track evokes another artist rather than standing alone: "Satellite Anthem Icarus," the third track, sounds like it could've emerged from the mixing desk of Nigel Godrich as he worked on Beck's Sea Change.” (allmusic.com).

“At times BOC invite you to stand with them as they gaze out over the majestic, Scottish highlands surveying an early sunset as it explodes across the horizon. At others they leave you stranded in your flat at 3am wondering whether that strange noise is your speakers on the blink or the mayonnaise growling at you from inside the fridge. Either way, its unlikely you will have heard anything quite like this. Essential.” (BBC).

“[The Campfure Headphase] moves like a daydreamed walk through your old junior school, and while it fails to surprise it doesn’t disappoint” (BBC)