Boards Of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
[Warp]

There’s always been a certain air of mystery surrounding this Scottish duo, partly due to their reticence towards the press, partly due to the nature of the music they create. At times they are opaque, disjointed and eerie, almost always they are beautiful and melancholy. Often they weave a dreamlike quality into the fabric of the music with faint background ambience drifting in and out, hinting at a state of reverie, while achieving the seeming paradox of managing to capture the bleak beauty of nature with electronic instruments.

On 2002’s ‘Geogaddi’ the duo were at their most indecipherable, there is a fractured and dislocated air about the record, as if it has been refracted through a hallucinatory looking glass and despite moments of otherworldly beauty, there is often a feeling of claustrophobia and disorientation induced by it’s warped electronics. What immediately becomes clear on hearing the ‘The Campfire Headphase’ is that there is a prevalent air of clarity running through the songs that was lacking from its predecessor’s jumbled, psychedelic dream world.

The beats are crisper this time around, which adds momentum and gently propels the songs, rather than leaving them floating in the atmosphere, also, notably they have now elected to incorporate conventional rock music instruments to their array of electronic instrumentation. ‘Chromakey Dreamcoat’ is spiked with what sounds like de-tuned, echo treated guitar, while ‘Satellite Anthem Icarus’ sees acoustic guitar segued with sea noises, gentle electronic burbling and slow motion beats to create a pulsating soundscape, an indication that their enamour with nature remains undiminished.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that this album is by any means conventional simply because it features guitars and drums, by any other standards this is fairly outré, it’s only conventional when placed in context with Boards of Canada’s previous works. Few guitar bands operating today would be able to pull off the ambient space-rock of ‘Dayvan Cowboy’ or the trippy guitar and synth harmonics of ‘Hey Saturday Sun’ which is testament to Boards of Canada’s ability to realise their complex sonic visions.

By embracing traditional rock instrumentation they have created a record that challenges preconceptions of how these instruments should sound while at the same time challenging preconceptions of how their own music should sound.