Boards of Canada, the Scottish electronic duo consisting of brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, have released their first album in 13 years, titled Inferno. From the opening notes—an analogue synth rising and falling like a sound effect in a forgotten 1960s radio play—listeners are thrust back into one of the most instantly recognisable worlds in electronic music.
A Recognisable Sound, but Stuck in the Past
Since their 1995 debut EP Twoism, Boards of Canada have used the heavy gait of classic hip-hop beats to trudge through spectral ambient vistas, like spacemen sent through a time portal while still tethered to the present. By grabbing samples from old public television and other vintage sources, they looked back at the utopian promise of the mid-20th century, teasing out latent kitsch and creepiness. Their music became hugely influential on everything from the US cloud-rap scene to the hauntological music of the UK's Ghost Box label. However, on Inferno, Boards of Canada themselves feel stuck in the past, overtaken by much more nimble electronic contemporaries.
Dubious Religious Themes
The album's title suggests Dante's hell, and the duo seem to consider spiritual deliverance and damnation, though often in a rather callow way. On Father and Son, voices of people having crises of faith are jokily cut up into a light funky rhythm, recalling the Avalanches' Frontier Psychiatrist. The Word Becomes Flesh uses a sample of an old educational video about the development of the human embryo, again cut up into body-popping electro. The appearance of sampled Hare Krishna chanting on the ghastly Naraka makes it seem as if they are laughing at eastern religion, or deploying lazy orientalism, which later reappears with the sitar twang of Deep Time. A better critique of religion comes on All Reason Departs, with a Christian nationalist treatise pitched into a demonic whisper.
Dull Music and Weak Beats
The deeper problem with Inferno is how dull much of the actual music is. The brothers have expanded their range, particularly with the addition of guitars: lead single Prophecy at 1420 MHz recalls their countrymen Mogwai. Somewhere Right Now in the Future is drumless dream pop, while Into the Magic Land sounds like Tortoise, albeit without that band's sense of swing. There are updates to core Boards of Canada sounds, such as the satisfyingly fat synthwave lines on Arena Americanada and Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan. But the beats on those tracks, along with many others, are wretchedly pedestrian, plodding along in dreary, funkless steps. The nadir is You Retreat in Time and Space, which sounds like hold music for a broadband provider.
Bright Spots Amid the Gloom
Boards of Canada were always at their best with light-touch trip-hop beats, as on Kid for Today, or a different rhythmic mode entirely, as on the proto-dubstep track Amo Bishop Roden. The best tracks on Inferno are beatless. Age of Capricorn sets a priestly sermon in front of a stained glass window of almost Coldplay-scale chiming ambient sound and hymnal melody. The Process has enjoyably bewildering babble from an AI-like female voice set against watery instrumentation and bustling crowds. The 78-second interlude Acts of Magic is a scary throb of noise from the lip of hell's pit, complete with buzzing fly. Dotted across 70 minutes, these highs are fleeting.
Conclusion
Inferno is another epic Boards of Canada album statement. Diehard true believers will bow down to the duo's ability to conjure their signature corrupted nostalgia anew. The rest of us might regard them as we would a cult leader: impressive, even charismatic figures with a dubious amount of substance. Inferno is released on Friday 29 May.
