Track Listing

1. Wildlife Analysis
2. An Eagle In Your Mind
3. The Color of The Fire
4. Telephasic Workshop
5. Triangles & Rhombuses
6. Sixtyten
7. Turquoise Hexagon Sun
8. Kaini Industries
9. Bocuma
10. Roygbiv
11. Rue The Whirl
12. Aquarius
13. Olson
14. Pete Standing Alone
15. Smokes Quantity
16. Open The Light
17. One Very Important Thought
18. Happy Cycling (Bonus Track)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6198 in Music
• Released on: 2004-04-05
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .15 pounds

CD Description
The first American release by this Scottish duo has drawn rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. The music ranges from goofball, Perry-Kingsley style retro-techno to ambient (in fact, sometimes eerily reminiscent of Eno's "Ambient Music I") to just about anything else you can dream up for a couple of synthesizers and a drum machine. Boards Of Canada's music has drawn frequent comparisons to wildlife documentaries from the '70s, but you've got to wonder what kind of nature documentary would have distorted drum machines and weird voices darting in and out of the mix. Weird? How about downright goofy? Like the nitrous-oxide flashback of "The Colour Of Fire" where a distorted girl's voice keeps repeating "I...love...you" through the dizzy haze. Much of the disc has delightful vignettes interspersed between the longer tracks, and the longer tracks will reveal something different with each listen. Unabashedly lo-fi, this is the soundtrack to a drug experience for which no drug exists.

Customer Reviews

I love BoC!
Labelled as being as important an album for the Intelligent Digital Music scene as label mate Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85 - 92 landmark, Music Has The Right To Children still sounds as fresh today as it did on its original release back in 1995. Loved by the critics, this album was was one of those 'growers' that never did explode onto the scene. Instead it found favour over time, appearing more and more in peoples CD collections as word of it spread from person to person, eventually settling in its rightful place at the top of the electronica tree.

I've heard Boards Of Canada described as the sound of electronica that Radiohead's dabble in electronica with Kid A should have been. True to form, guitar loving indie kids have found favour with the likes of Telephasic Workshop, getting lost in the hypnotic rhythms that seem to pulse from a near death BBC Radiophonic Workshop synthesiser. The 'less is more' ideal is at work here, with grinding mechanical hip hop beats and bass set against simple, gentle melodies and splintered samples. The best examples of this being the moody Sixtyten with its relentless, humming bass drum or Turquoise Hexagon Sun's gentle floating keys set against crispy beats and coffee house chatter.

Even though the general mood of the album can be described as melancholic, an icy chill out experience, its not a downbeat affair. The album has soothing short interludes scattered throughout it, the best being the triumphant Roygbiv. One of the shorter tracks off the album, the two minutes that it appears for are blissful and leaves you with a smile on your face. Those searching for a standout 'single' from this could do no worse than to head for the lazy funk of the Hair sampling Aquarius, which will have you chanting 'Orange!' to all your friends.

All in all, its a gorgeous album, read up about it and you'll find that everyone tends to agree on this. Music from the future that somehow manages to stir childhood memories from the past with familiar noises and moods. Its a more comfy affair to curl up inside than more recent efforts from the likes of other Warp artists Aphex Twin, Autechre and Plaid. Give it a blast, just try not to be hooked when the opener, An Eagle In Your Mind, starts to make the hair on your neck stand on end... it did for me and within a few weeks I made sure I owned the rest of the Boards back catalogue.

Masterpiece
BOC will never better this album in my opinion. It is a perfect album, in form and function. The bands recent work hasn't equalled this album for me, as a whole this album is close to perfection. In terms of describing the sound, think moody and emotional electronica. I love the hip-hop influenced beats on this album, the first time I listened to An Eagle In Your Mind and Telephasic Workshop I was mesmerised, I kept replaying the 2 tracks endlessly. Their recent albums have never quite recaptured the same beat and percussive influence of this album...but bear in mind their entire body of work to date, which is huge, is all of an incredibly high standard when compared to all but a handful of producers in the whole electronic genre. If you buy one BOC album, buy this one.

Classical Music for Machine Intelligences
Having owned this disc for almost a decade now, it remains one of a group of about a dozen electronica albums I return to consistently. I used to describe it as the kind of music that synthesizers listen to (at least the ones with good taste) and predicted that it would eventually be considered as 'classical' music by the machine intelligences of the future. Now that I'm no longer on drugs, I just describe it as a great listen. Enjoy.