In the age of the single download, Jeff Harford rediscovers the album.
The form can totally disengage with imperfect human rhythms, locking into precise meter and creating its own synthetic language out of squillions of zeros and ones. It brings to mind oceans of deep space, gleaming silver dials and the surrendering of control to infallible machines.
Scottish electronica duo Boards of Canada understand the sense of detachment that arises when circuit boards and computer chips are handed the task of making music. They deliberately work in the grey area between man and machine, pumping blood back through the cables and wires and warming the cool heart of the technology they employ.
Music Has The Right To Children (1998) is the band's debut full-length album.
Unremarkable in the sense that it makes no attempt to impress with grand statements or memorable hooks, it instead relies on subtle evolution of melody, and the interpolation of field recordings and samples to create evocative moments.
The band's name was inspired by memories of watching promotional films made by the National Film Board of Canada.
The grainy images and wobbly soundtracks instilled a strong sense of nostalgia in brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eion, who have ever since endeavoured to capture something of that rough quality in their music.
Shades of Brian Eno and Aphex Twin can be found in the downbeat feel of the album, with short ambient pieces acting as connective tissue between mesmeric, beat-heavy trip-hop tracks. The voices of children feature sporadically, sometimes laughing and playful (Roygbiv, Aquarius) and other times disembodied and macabre (The Colour of the Fire), amplifying the sense of viewing life retrospectively through dreams.
The album's lasting appeal lies in the onion-skin layering of its component sounds, many of which only reveal themselves on repeat visits. In that sense, and in the subtle injection of earthly, everyday references, it is very much connected to the natural world.
