Weekly Review: Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children
this week for the weekly review, i’m checking out what i didn’t realize was the debut album of Boards of Canada, Music Has the Right to Children
Wildlife Analysis is our introduction here, a short, quiet synth track. it’s nice. An Eagle In Your Mind uses like, this scratch effect with a really cool beat over some synths that sound more like what Wildlife Analysis had – the beat is grounding while the vibes in the background are spacey and ethereal, generating this extremely neat effect. the vocal samples, distorted and variable in both intensity and position in the mix, add to displacement. the deeper tones later in the track are :chefskiss:. this track’s very neat. The Color of The Fire is an eerie little transitional track. very offputting. Telephasic Workshop’s a lil funky huh. what an extremely strange little track. this one’s exploring some really neat effects. i don’t have too much to say about Triangles & Rhombuses. oh DAMn i’m really loving the deeper bass and a lot of the editing effects on Sixtyten. had a real good time with this track. Turquoise Hexagon Sun didn’t catch me nearly as much. Kaini Industries is a weird little track leading out of it. gotta say though, a lot happens for the shortest track on the record. Bocuma’s got those strange, spiraling tones, what a weird track. Roygbiv is like, the most middling of the track lengths on this record at 2:31, and what a wild way to kick the track off leading out of Bocuma. was fully expecting this one to round out the sort of quiet expanse vibe but oooh boy i really like this one. Rue the Whirl rebuilds that kind of strange, ethereal sense of wrongness back up. i will say this track has a neat little showcase of this record’s tendency to throw a strange mixup deep in a track. oh shit i spoke too soon Aquarius is that track really bringing the funk with that groove bassline. also go figure the track with the audible sound effects referencing color aren’t on Roygbiv. nice sense of humor guys. yeah when this one kicks into gear around the 3 minute mark it wins me over. what type of person is this record turning me into, i wonder. Olson is surprisingly… bright? i think bright is what i’d use to describe it. i kinda wanna listen to the album that this is an intro track to. Pete Standing Alone is pleasantly contemplative for a large chunk of its runtime. i’m not… huge on the highly distorted vocal sample here, i feel like it’s disruptive in a way that’s not constructive. Smokes Quantity is… strange. bad vibes but i can tell it’s on purpose. Open the Light has such an empty vibe to it. i like One Very Important Thought a lot. very unlike anything else on the record but in a way that feels very appropriate. Happy Cycling feels like the correct way to end a record like this. a little rambling, a little all over the place, but still very mellow for a large part of it’s runtime. i’m not majorly a fan but it’s good times.
faves – Sixtyten, Roygbiv, Aquarius
dislikes –
yknow i actually kinda dig the variance in track length here. only three of the eighteen tracks are above 2 minute and below 5 minutes, leaving everything else in this strange, short, liminal exploration or a longer, deeper development of it’s own vibe. at first i was expecting a back-and-forth with it, and they kinda do that, but there’s a lot of places where those shorter tracks generate a LOT of space between the longer tracks and others where they sit back to back. not even discussing the content of the tracks, it’s a very interesting decision and one i always like to ponder on the ramifications of.
that being said, i had kind of a weird experience with this record. a majority of the time i put it on i was on the bus this week, or in transitional parts of my day, and that added a strange layer to the mood generated by the tracks. their usage of synth tones is otherworldly and eerie across the whole record, but they don’t shy away from some really interesting and driving beats underneath it. the sampled dialogue, which is mostly illegible, very much feels like looking out a train window in a dining car – there’s a deep, underlying energy propelling you, and a human cloud you’re not connected to, and an intemporality to it. extremely weird experience.
i’m not sure i’d always be in the mood for this record, but mmm is it tasty.
Music Has the Right to Children – 7/10
the selection for this week’s suggestion pool is the self-titled debut record from Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath. i’ll be back next Friday, July 22nd for a review, and in the meantime, let me know what album you’d like me to review! (i pool all suggestions in one place, and draw a person, then a pick from that person, so feel free to drop as many as you’d like! if you leave an email or username i’ll contact you when i’ve gotten through all your suggestions.)
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