Customer Rating: 
Summary: Feel the Ambience
Comment: This is the only Boards of Canada album I actually bought when it was released. Although I already owned Geogaddi and Music Has The Right To Children, they were purchased after finding out about the duo (based from the northern coast of Scotland) on Amazon. Their music has an experimental, unique sound to it, beyond what most people would expect from electronic music. Electronic music has always been about experimenting with different sounds, and BOC has once again filled track after track of soundscapes that are eerie and beautiful.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Through the Red Eye
Comment: I first picked up on BOC in 2/2002. Geogaddi is the album that did it for me. Perhaps I've had a different experience than many long-time BOC fans, but I thought Campfire was pretty decent. I picked up MHTRTC about 5 years after the fact and have loved it ever since.
For me, 'Dayvan Cowboy' was actually one of my least favorite tracks on the disc. I think many people might be looking for more beat-populated songs and faster paces, as many didn't like this album.
Boards always come along with drastic changes in my life. I'm not sure how BOC fans can label 'Oscar See Through Red Eye' as a poor effort. Likewise with "'84 Pontiac Dream" and 'Peacock Tail.' Well, I guess I was living in a yurt in northeast Kansas when this came out, and it reminds me of that. Some of the tracks are a little too sparse for me, but overall, I think it is very endearing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: brilliant!
Comment: a fresh direction for a sublime outfit that is BOC.
More nostalgic and dreamy as ever, you can't possibly
rate this album under 5 stars. All who do are fools!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not a child, or a teenager, but brilliant nonetheless...
Comment: I've been listening to the new Boards of Canada album, and while I love it, my feelings and thoughts are somewhat mixed.
While on many levels, it's their strongest work to date - breaking out of the more artificial background of groundbreaking electronica that was their first and previous albums, the guitar/acoustic-based approach to IDM is truly the absolute best possible direction they could have contemplated going-
at a time when many, like myself, grow to resent the somewhat hollow artifice of many electronic artists (bola, for example- while wonderful, I do crave a bit of organic material mixed in with the beats and loops), BOC are taking their art to the next level-
and in doing so have connected themselves and the listener back with some strong roots in 'music' rather than 'IDM music', per se.
It's not all flowers and roses - in fact, this may be what is lacking on their new release - the subtle, yet always present, inability/conscious choice to wrestle (literally, or metaphorically) with the same devils that brought such multi-variabled depth and transitory meaning to the previous works- as a result the new work appears beautiful yet somehow lacking a distinctive core upon first listening - it's like the situation in the world is so bad today that to acknowledge it would bring a darkness/foreboding to the music which they have consciously chosen to avoid, this time around.
Similar trends are noted in other electronic-crossover artists such as Nitin Sawney, Massive Attack and even Autechre to a limited extent - the post-september 11 refusal to even look at the global state-of-the-world, or reflect on it in any way - in other words, at a time when the world itself seems to be unravelling to it's edges- the corresponding tendency in music, in these cases, are not to comment, but to bring positivity back to the world in a digestible format-
unfortunately, that blunt refusal to plumb the heady depths leaves The Campfire Headphase feeling a little like it's got a hollow center - in the sense that while their previous releases seemed filled to the core with heady and wildly variable emotions, this release appears reluctant to go to that level-
I love it, but at times am left wondering, where's the refusal to give themselves away completely, the mysterious/quixotic element that made the previous albums so elusive/attractive?
It's an absolutely beautiful album- but not a headstrong, capricious runaway ala Geogaddi, nor a stoned-adolescent reminiscing on times past ala Music has the Right. All in all, worth buying - but it won't propel them into the 'mainstream' music market in the way they seem to hope it will, and nor will it touch base at the levels their previous work touched at- unfortunately.
m@
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Campfire Headphase & the polar extremes.
Comment: Boards of Canada's new album. Though out in 2005, I'm writing the review now, when it's nearly 2008.
As I scanned through the reviews of this album I saw two things: "THIS ALBUM IS HORRIBLE AND BORING" and "NUH-UH THIS ALBUM IS GREAT THEY'RE DOING ROCK EXPERIMENTS."
Wow, what a contrast. The first thing I would like to point out is that the only new ground BoC is covering on this album is the addition of a guitar. Other than that... I notice no real difference in style, aside from perhaps a more polished quality to the overall sound of the music. There's definitely nothing here that I would call "rock experiments." Futhermore, while the guitar seems somewhat unnecessary at times, it never really makes the music sound bad. In fact, I rather like this album, so three stars it gets.
No, the real complaint I have with this album is it sounds too much like their old style. GASP. "But what are you saying man? They sound totally different!" ... Do they? I don't know about that... The tracks on this album still have that BoC four-chord-hazy-synth backbone, with the small weird filler tracks in between. It's a track model that BoC has followed since the beginning, except now they seem to have it down to a formula. Which is precisely the problem. It's getting a little bit stale from overuse, and honestly I'd have probably been happier if they HAD changed their style a bit.
I can even give you some track comparisons. These are purely opinion, so don't hold me to my words here, but:
Slow This Bird Down > An Eagle In Your Mind
Oscar See Through Red Eye > Pete Standing Alone
'84 Pontiac Dream > Julie And Candy
...My favourite tracks are definitely Peacock Tail, Hey Saturday Sun and Oscar See Through Red Eye. I just love that warm fuzzy synth thing they do, and the guitar and bass in Hey Saturday Sun top it off like nothing else.
So my final verdict is: this album is a lot like a modernized version of MHTRTC with guitars in it. Seeing as how my favourite album is Geogaddi, it's unsurprising that I gave this album three stars instead of four This shouldn't suggest that I hate it though, as many seem to, but at the same time, I also don't love it to death. It's a good album, nothing more. Buy it if you like BoC. If you don't like guitars or don't like BoC, don't buy. Simple as that.
Cheers!
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