Thursday, November 10, 2005

The Campfire Headphase I had listened to this new Boards of Canada record a time or two on the stereo, and wasn't sure I was getting it.  It's obviously a slightly different approach than the previous records - there are guitars on it, fercrissake, and discernible drums, but it still has that amazingly organic sound of disintegrating 1/4" tape.    Boards of Canada do ambient music.  That's my word - I think normally it applies to "invisible" music like Music for Airports.  BoC's music is near invisible, but it's surprisingly moving.  I love working to their music, because it both fades into the background and makes me smile.   Anyway, I wasn't sure I was getting the real experience of the record, since I was listening to it at hushed tones while the boy was either playing or asleep.  Then I put on the iPod and hit "shuffle."  The song "Dayvan Cowboy" came on and ... and ... Ohhh wow.   The song starts out with choppy, fragmented keyboards playing a lovely melody, with some atmospheric weirdness in the background.  Fine enough, and typical enough for BoC.  But then, little kiddies, something magical happens.  The song switches itself halfway through, and does a Moebius strip thing where it turns itself inside-out to the cue of guitar chords.  The second half of the song is breathtakingly beautiful, with Moogy whooshing sounds in the background, and digitally altered drums and cymbals.  I nearly cried.   Then I reset the iPod to play it again. And again.   This is what Boards of Canada do to you.  You don't quite realize whether you like it or even register that it's playing, and suddenly something happens and you dissolve into it.  They remind me, oddly, of Sigur Rós - the way their melodies don't seem structured so much as fully formed, fully structured as a whole.  The chord changes seem so obvious that you can't imagine that musicians wrote and perform this - it must be some natural song that comes from the heart of the world itself, like David's secret chord in "Hallelujah."  It's some of the most seductive music I know - not sexy seductive, but literally music that seduces you.  10:56:29 AM     Speak up!  []