The Campfire Headphase

(Warp)

4.5/5

It may seem ironic that pioneers in electronic music still tote around their tape recorders, but Boards of Canada’s Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin are hardly exemplars of the high-tech urban culture.

While many of Warp Records’ other IDM (so-called “intelligent dance music,” although it is seldom danceable) groups use the trendiest technology to produce cold, hyper-digitized beats, BoC has rejected “laptop music” and, instead, embraced the wavering grittiness of analog equipment and out-dated sound samplers.

The reclusive duo produce their mind-altering music—sprinkled with hi-fi distortions of tape-recorded voices, instruments, and film clips—without leaving the confines of Hexagon Sun, their commune/recording studio/abandoned nuclear bunker in rural Scotland.

The group’s new release, “The Campfire Headphase,” is upbeat, light, and at times blissful; a striking departure from their eerie sophomore album, “Geogaddi.” Throbbing electronic melodies, airy guitar chords, fragments of conversation, and frosty hip-hop beats layer effortlessly over and under the hazy ambient textures for which BoC is famous.

Tracks like “’84 Pontiac Dream” and “Oscar See Through Red Eye” brim over with cascading jazzy riffs, while “Slow This Bird Down” and “Ataronchronon” give fans the traditional moody BoC fare. But of course for the diehard fans, the real question is: “Where are the subliminal messages?”

Past BoC staples include Satanic symbolism, esoteric mathematical facts (what is “The Smallest Weird Number?”), creepy track and album lengths (“Geogaddi” was 66:06), repeated references to Waco cult leader David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and muffled children giggling and counting out of order.

Combine this with the seductive mystique of Hexagon Sun and the group’s appropriately secretive “Redmoon nights” of experimental music and bonfires in the lonely Scottish wilderness, and you get a glimmer of the band’s near-cultish appeal.

Yet “Campfire” is remarkably clean-cut; devoid of devil worshipping and all the stronger because of it. BoC openly admits that some of their past records used forms of subliminal manipulation, (fitting for a band that takes their name from the National Film Board of Canada) but they assert that their latest album is focused solely on the music.

This seemingly infinite ambient expanse doesn’t disappoint, as it absorbs each twanging, trembling tone seamlessly. “Campfire” is an hour of electronic bliss—proving without a doubt that BoC’s allure is not dependent on their enigmatic aura. “Dayvan Cowboy,” the lead single, features deep, reverberating guitar chords reminiscent of an instrumental Coldplay B-side.

Closer “Farewell Fire” is an epic of atonal layering, sustaining its tension even as the music fades into the gentlest of murmurings, and finally, two minutes of pure silence.

In “Campfire,” BoC has yet again succeeded in adding warmth to the traditionally sterile genre of electronica. Recordings of the brothers playing ‘real instruments,’ electronicized beyond recognition, form the foundation of the tracks. Friends’ voices, birds chirping, and retro audio clips are mixed into the electronic medley.

The result? An organic-electronic fusion of past and future, rural and urban, earthy and space-age. Tape-decks in hand, the Sandison brothers are forging the next era of electronica.