Boards of Canada, a band who's proven themselves to be masters of electronica, truly stunned me with my first venture into their catalog: Music has the Right to Children. I have difficulty deciding which is better: that or Geodaddi. It's one of those few instances where I really have trouble with it, like online communities of the early days had difficulty deciding the best Beatles album before the consensus turned to Abbey Road (long live Sgt. Pepper's). Now am I a huge fan of them? Believe it or not, no. My praise for the band is mostly limited to acknowledgment, awareness and agreement of why they're so beloved rather than being featured in any list of songs or albums I play on a regular basis. So if they hadn't released an album that everyone absolutely adored, I may not have checked out this album at all. And if I did, it might've been a while before I got around to it.

Now since I've been trying to balance my good ratings with my bad ones, I got around to this after exploring some Harry Styles and Drake for the first time. I was largely expecting more of an exercise in atmosphere than anything, but it ended up being extremely groove oriented. Tracks will typically be perfectly balanced between catchy and intriguing. While there are atmospheric tendencies, and a little reverb for the instrumentation, the album certainly never floods you with it. The lead focus seems to be the glory of electronic, probably even of the 80's variety. The style of synths they use sometimes feels like it belongs in the same catalog as the Blade Runner soundtrack, and other times they use percussions I think I might find in Aboriginal ceremonies. Some tracks take a more atmospheric edge, like Age of Capricorn, but instead of drowning things out with ambience, the volume of the ambience takes a back step, largely centering around one layer backing up the instrumentation. Sometimes, percussion is a third of the game, if not half. I admit, I wouldn't have predicted this clearer, more concise style from them after thing long, not with such RYM tags like Ambient, Hauntology, Neo-Psychedelia, Progressive Electronic, Synthwave, which was copy/pasted directly from the album's RYM page.

One of these many layers is the heavy usage of vocal samples. It's one thing to use them as an "instrument" of sorts, but they cleverly use the variety of samples in the manner of Buckethead's guitar, displaying trick after trick to get the mind kicking while the head is bobbing. The exact nature of each message, thanks to the large number of samples, can often be difficult to truly determine, so is there a deep symbolism to most of not all of these songs, or do they simply add visuals in the mind? Either way, the mystique totally checks out. But the real testament to the art here is the necessity to switch its focus without breaking the essence. Intrigue, catchiness and atmosphere take turns with leading focus on a regular basis. Sometimes, they're tribal and melodic, but other times, they can be overlapping and intriguing, and other times they can be creepy as hell.

And throughout the whole of the album, I feel like I'm being taken on a journey not just through time and space, but through the complexities and inner workings of the human mind as well as through a couple of mythologies on the side. This album is one of the most focused I've ever heard, and at the same time it's everywhere. And because it makes a point of balancing clarity and density, a lot can happen while allowing the music to flow perfectly rather than quickly, allowing you to spend as much time as you need and no more in any one spot before moving to the next. With only a couple weaker moments like the second act of All Reasons Depart, it's difficult to hold that against the album because the album succeeds with so much. Besides, it could be seen as a quiet before the storm continues when you think about it. I guess this stands as further evidence that IDM is a leading force in electronica and may stay that way for a very long time, and the same is very true for Boards of Canada.

I think I just found a serious contender for AOTY.

100/100

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