Lorna Irvine reviews Boards of Canada's latest.
The fourth studio album by the Edinburgh duo, the follow-up to 2005's The Campfire Headphase, remains as hard to place and unique as ever and is distinctly BOC—not much of a progression from their back catalogue but meandering along nicely (if 'nice' is an adjective that can ever be applied to them).
Their signature sound is rooted in the Radiophonic Workshop's nascent experimentation, with traces of Krautrock and modern-day electronic tech production jostling for supremacy, evoking the corrupted innocence of Run Wrake cartoons. This means they are constantly in a strange position of being strangers to conventional daytime radio playlists yet have also featured in sleek car adverts.
Only ‘New Seeds’ is truly noteworthy here, featuring as it does a pulsing backdrop into which a somnolent choirgirl vocal is woven. Elsewhere, as with ‘Cold Earth’, all throbbing 70s sci-fi synth and juddery alien voices, it is business as usual, but somehow the individual sounds get under your skin like subliminal messages.
Simply, they do what they always do and do it well, still as woozy as a sleep-deprived day and as ephemeral as mist.
Tomorrow's Harvest is out now on Warp Recordings
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