Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Label: Warp

Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin: there are very few electronic acts who can be said to have unalterably changed the landscape of machine music. These artists, often great technical innovators in their field, are frequently regarded as near-sacred figures by the wider music community, and rightly so. Yet there are some artists who, while not technically revolutionary, still occupy an eminent position in the musical canon. Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada, aka brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin, are a perfect example. While there was little groundbreaking about their technical ability, the pair’s first two albums, instant classics Music Has The Right To Children and Geogaddi, defined an era of electronic music, coining a distinctive sound whose influence can be heard in a wide array of contemporary genres.

This sound, a mixture of heady trip-hop beats, richly textured ambience and glittering synth melodies, was a world unto itself; nostalgic and otherworldly, playful yet frightening. During their first active years, Boards of Canada produced a series of superb albums and EPs steeped in references to the occult, numerology and digital-age mysticism. Each release was both an immersive musical experience and a code, to be explored and unlocked given time and space. With such an uncompromising modus operandi, it was perhaps surprising (and certainly testament to the duo’s masterful sense of musicality) just how much of the world was listening. Seven years on Boards of Canada have achieved near-legendary status despite a long period of silence, and after one of the most sophisticated publicity campaigns in recent memory, their new album has landed.

 

Reach For The Dead

Expectations were unfathomably high, but the pair have risen to meet the challenge. Is Tomorrow’s Harvest the instant classic that the pair’s first albums were? Possibly not. But it’s a damn fine piece of work which demands a dedicated listener who will approach it slowly and patiently. Given this time, Tomorrow’s Harvest slowly unfurls to reveal a wealth of detail and depth that could so easily be missed by the casual listener.

The core Boards of Canada sound has not really changed, but Tomorrow’s Harvest takes on a darker hue; a paranoid, concentrated work where only an occasional ray of irradiated sunshine penetrates the darkness. While the core sonic elements may seem the same, the pair have never before sounded so lush; the unsettling melodies are painted with cinematic grandeur, while richly textured percussion signals the pair’s meticulous attention to detail and love of old hardware.

So Tomorrow’s Harvest is a sophisticated, immersive musical experience in classic BoC style. But it also remains curiously difficult to pick apart. Tracks bleed into one another or stop suddenly in disorientating fashion, and the lack of variation in the sonic palette means that it can prove difficult to distinguish one song from the next. Here is an album that demands to be listened to in its totality, but as a result there is something daunting about it, and it can be difficult to gain a comprehensive grasp over the piece as a whole. In some senses this all makes sense; the album’s structure is defiantly cryptic in its way, yet it is also probably makes for the duo's least accessible album to date.

New Seeds

That said, when tracks do stand out from the crowd, they tower impressively over the nebulous melodies and glassy ambience which make up the album’s bulk. Lead single Reach For The Dead is stunning; deep atmospherics, equal parts sci-fi and spiritual, slowly build to a magnificent plateau as a single synth arpeggio snakes around a twitching field of dusty drum hits. Later both Cold Earth and Sick Times stand out from the album’s middle section, each harking back to the duo’s early days with stirring melodics and updated drumkits.

While some of the album may prove imposing, even difficult, Boards of Canada still know how to end an album as well as anyone else in the industry. The five-song closing suite easily stands as the LP’s extended highlight, from the cloud-parting brightness of Nothing Is Real to the beautiful off-kilter journey of New Seeds, by way of some of the pair’s best ambient work on Sundown and bleak closer Semena Mertvykh.

There’s a lot to be loved in this album, but there are also a fair few aspects of the duo’s sound which feel somewhat missed. Gone are the playful touches that counterbalanced the pair’s forays into sonic darkness, as are the accessible, rewarding melodies which marked much of their early output. As a result the sounds of Tomorrow’s Harvest feel somehow less memorable, less easy to hold onto.

Boards of Canada ask a lot of their listeners with their first album in seven years. Dedicated fans will be rewarded with a cryptic and fulfilling experience, but the album is also likely to alienate or merely puzzle the more casual listener. The brothers’ early work finely balanced its mystical depths with a concrete, satisfying musicality which at times feels absent here. Yet ultimately it’s hard not to feel that in a musical landscape increasingly populated by disposable me-too efforts, an album that not only asks a lot of its listener, but bountifully rewards those who are willing to take up the task, is a rare, powerful thing indeed.

8/10

Pablo Nouvelle – You Do Me Wrong

Label: Outpost

An inevitable aspect of being a music critic is the impossible amount of music you’re sent every week by artists: revered legends, PR-crazed labels and budding young unknowns constantly fill your inbox with downloads and Soundcloud links. It’s impossible to get through and listen to everything, so as a writer you have to become accustomed to rooting out the things that look like they sound good, scanning for familiar names or keywords to let you know you’re on to something. But every so often you just listen to a release by chance and it really appeals, as was the case for me with the second single courtesy of Swiss producer Pablo Nouvelle, aka Fabio Friedli.

Having given a brief listen to his first single, Is It Okay, on release a few months ago, I encountered what appeared to be a fairly run-of-the-mill mixture of Hip Hop instrumentals glazed with poppy vocals and structures, but here the Swiss producer has really stepped up his game. It appears that this coincided with his discovery of soul music; “It was like looking behind the curtain of hip hop and understanding where it all came from. That changed my life.” By trading a pop veneer for relaxed instrumentals and soul samples, Friedli has created a quiet, relaxed single that wows on repeated listens just as much due to its simplicity as the production chops behind it.

 

First cut You Do Me Wrong is catchy and smooth, with a slow-mo hip hop groove underlying a warm guitar loop and a perfectly chosen vocal line (clipped from Marvin Gaye’s Ain’t That Peculiar) that emotes through its simplicity and repetition, lengthening occasionally to give the listener an alluring glimpse of the full phrase. It’s a short track and the minimal structure seems a well-considered decision rather than a lack of know-how, as the clipped vocal additions and beatless loop at the close perfectly add to the rich, chilled out sound.

B-side Be True To Me is admittedly a very similar track, employing another Gaye sample (this time it’s I’ll Be Doggone) with super-slow hip hop beats, hazy synth-work and a nagging one-line vocal that will squirrel inside your head and refuse to leave you alone. These tracks might not sound all that different, and this release is admittedly no great innovation, but allow these tracks time and you’ll find them increasingly enticing, with an impressive yet simple approach to mood and organic instrumentation that will create a deep, soulful atmosphere for those lazy summer nights.

7/10

Gonjasufi – A Sufi And A Killer

Kobwebz

Duet

I've Given

Sumach Ecks has been called 'spiritual' by more reviews and magazines than I'd care to count, and although the yoga instructor-cum-songwriter has a definite edge of the spiritual to his music, I found the hype around the release of the album focused more on his neo-psychadelic spirituality than on the actual quality of the music. And the reason that this is such a shame is that this LP, produced by the illustrious likes of Flying Lotus and The Gaslamp Killer, is a thrillingly versatile and accomplished debut by an artist who is genuinely unlike anything else out there at the moment.

Although the album has a normal runtime of an hour there are 20 tracks here and it feels like a lot of material, indeed it is a testament to the quality of the songwriting that many of the shorter one and two-minute tracks feel like fully rounded songs rather than the irritating interludes we see so frequently in 21^st century releases. However as a result of this the listener may be at first overwhelmed by the volume of different sounds and ideas coming across in the record, yet thankfully Ecks has circumvented this in two ways. The first is the hazy and trippy ambience instilled across the record, with dropped beats and psych-guitar reverbing all over the shop, lending the shorter tracks a needed coherence in the context of the whole. The second, and perhaps more notable achievement is his distinctive and distorted vocals which croak, howl and croon while veering wildly between clear and completely incomprehensible. Even with these assets, this album is not a particularly easy listen. Occasionally the transitions between tracks feels deliberately jarring, such as that between the melodic piano closing She Gone and the guttural roar which opens SuzieQ, and while the impression that there is a case of split personality to this records as it jolts around reinforces Ecks' central theme (showcased in the title) of the personal conflict between a peaceful yoga teacher and his violent past, the listener can feel more than a little alienated by the cacophony.

So its a good thing that this album is absolutely brimming with great tracks. Ecks certainly knows how to evoke trip-notic atmosphere in the likes of FlyLo produced third track Ancestors in which reverbed beats make it sound like a dusty offcut from the producer's stellar album Los Angeles, or in the exotic and snaking guitars of Kobwebz. He continues along the theme later in the album with highlights Change and Duet, the first a scratchy low-key soul number and the latter a bass-heavy piece with memorable vocal hooks and a game-changing sliding guitar soaring across the soundscape. As nice as these cuts are, the tracks that are a little different often prove to be even more spectacular. Sheep is a soothing ballad and Ecks' quietest moment, cut into gorgeously by a bollywood-esque female vocal sample that reaches a fever pitch before developing into a belting bluesy burst of lyrical schizophrenia, showcasing almost all of his best traits in a single track. Candylane is unashamed porn-soundtrack fare, and revels in this fact with Ecks' filthy vocals, while following track Holidays is a stripped beat with a building, clipped synth melody that is a breath of fresh electronic air after the crowded material in the rest of the release. Closer Made is a moody piece that seems crafted out of dust and melancholy horns, followed by a brilliant secret track that is all distortion and rock guitar. Meanwhile possibly my favourite track is penultimate cut I've Given which begins a gentle and faded guitar ballad before a minute in where the sound drops away, blending and building itself into a ferocious eastern-style synth melody that swirls blearingly around the listener with infectious energy before being superceded at the close by an electro-Hendrix solo. The transition is one of the not infrequent moments on the record where Ecks' true skill as a songwriter shines through as the songs seem to construct and deconstruct themselves beautifully without any outside influence.

It's not an easy listen both because of the distorted noise and the schizophrenic transitions, but there's an enormous amount of quality material across the record that outweighs the hype and backstory of its creator, making this a record that may at first be hard to like but after a few spins will certainly be easy to love.

8.5/10

Playlist #1 – Stoner Mix

Too often in music you come across artists who've made one excellent track and a bunch of less impressive stuff, or other tracks that are just more of the same, but worse.

So the other thing I'm gonna do this weekend besides remixes is give you a little playlist, of which I have quite a few planned – and this time I'm going for a chilled out groove; so there'll be Trip-Hop aplenty, with some electro, dub and reggae thrown in.

Not all of these artists only have one good song, some of them have great albums as well. But I figured people reading this probably already know most of the albums I review, so here's a little taster of some other stuff you may or may not wanna get your teeth into. 

So here you go:

Tracklist:

Tricky – Overcome

Classic trip hop, breathy track with a pulse.

Death In Vegas – Dirge

Some fine trip hop, a haunting female vocal overlaid with strong beats and a great build to the end.

Cut Chemist – The Garden

More of an electro track, still very chilled out from a skilled producer.

Fugees – How Many Mics

Laid back hip-hop from the 90s.

Gonjasufi – Change

Lush and trippy track with an echoey beat and Gonjasufi's distinctive vocals.

Wax Tailor – Que Sera

Great trip-hop with a fantastic sample (which you should recognise) from cool French producer.

///▲▲▲\\\ - Spit Shine

Lo-fi trippy witch house (it's pronounced 'Horse Macgyver', apparently)

King Midas Sound – Cool Out

Great track, quiet, chilled and dangerous from The Bug producer.

Alpha and Omega – Who Is the Ruler

Great dub, was included and remastered by Diplo in a recent mix.

Massive Attack – Karmacoma

You might recognise bits of this, Tricky (the first artist in the list) sings and writes the vocals, lyrics which he used again in his track Overcome. Either way, two very different and very good takes on the same lyrics.

Deadboy – Brock Lee Riddim

(Unfortunately I can't find this track on youtube, but here is a link to it on Spotify)

Really nice dubby track, a little less laid back but a great reggae sample.