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Boards Of Canada, "Geogaddi"
Finally, the album that's had the electronic music community on the edge of its ergonomically designed chair for over three years is out - and it sounds like...Boards of Canada. The reaction to this record can go one of two routes: you can be annoyed that Boards of Canada are stuck in their public television-esque world and that their music sounds the same as it did four years ago, or you can accept Boards of Canada as being very specific in the kind of music they make, and enjoy it for what it is. The second option makes for a more pleasurable listen.
It's true that there are no real surprises here, though the Boards of Canada sound has been tweaked - if only slightly. The most noticeable difference between Geogaddi and Music Has The Right To Children is that Geogaddi is more organic and a little more abrasive in sound, things aren't quite as produced and sleek as Music Has The Right.... This is a good thing, almost a harkening back to their early self-released records Twoism and Boc Maxima, arguably their best work. One thing I particularly like about Boards of Canada is their ability to find the beauty in sounds that are not quite in tune, like a slightly warped record, and this is evident on tracks like "Gyroscope" and "Dawn Chorus." There's an even greater use of words and voice samples than before, especially on "1969," which contains the clearest bit of "lyrics" on the album ("1969 in the sunshine"). One thing I was worried about was that they were going to recycle some of the old tracks from their early days on the assumption that the majority of people had never heard them (Music Has The Right... was nearly half previously released songs), but luckily the album appears to almost completely new material. Again, there's a good ratio of minute-long abstract tracks in between the longer beats, and like Music Has The Right... it makes for a more varied, interesting album. It's no lie that Boards of Canada are largely responsible for the ridiculous number of awful "IDM" tracks floating around the world on CD and/or mp3 that contain one or more of the following elements: the sound of children laughing/playing, random voices spouting words or numbers, happy melodies over jagged electronic drumbeats, etc. Which makes it all the more impressive that Boards of Canada didn't retreat from these elements on Geogaddi; instead, they've embraced their nostalgic childhood aesthetic shamelessly: samples of a 4-H public service announcement about energy, song titles like "The Beach at Redpoint," kaleidoscopic images of smiling kids. But you also get the sense that they are poking fun at their image a little bit - there are so many instances on the record of people counting up from zero that it has to be joke, not to mention the female voice that says "yellow" in the middle of "Alpha and Omega" - both references to "Aquarius," arguably their most popular (and influential) track. The bottom line is, if you like Boards of Canada then you're probably going to like Geogaddi, and if you've been waiting for them to fuck up so you can say "Ha!" then you'll probably find something to pick on, but what's the point of that? Warp should be glad they have at least one artist left who still has a little bit of taste and restraint.
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