Boards of Canada — Tomorrow’s Harvest
Named in part after The National Film Board of Canada, Boards of Canada is made up of brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, who have used their unique blend of techno, downtempo and field recordings to evoke both the nostalgia of VHS tape hiss and the calming atmosphere of the natural world.
Each of their albums seems to occupy a particular space: 1998’s album Music Has the Right to Children reminds of mossy forests and windy beaches, whereas 2002’s Geogaddi is earthy and eerily mechanical.
Tomorrow’s Harvest, the duo’s first full-length since 2005’s disappointing The Campfire Headphase, is their darkest yet; the album calls to mind barren wastelands, endless deserts and post-apocalyptic nightmares that would give Godspeed You! Black Emperor chills.
Sandison and Eoin use obscured vocal samples and state-of-the-art recording equipment to create some of their most lush, sprawling ambient pieces. The 17 vignettes on Tomorrow’s Harvest — which average at about four minutes in length — conjure images of Cold War fever dreams and interstellar transmissions bathed in static electricity.
Based loosely on Deadly Harvest, a 1977 B-movie about a dystopian future caused by crop failures, the album’s best tracks seem to gel with this overarching theme of hopelessness and decay.
The wispy beats and whining keyboards on “Cold Earth” seem to project a futuristic vision akin to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The percussive racket of “Split Your Infinities” seems to exist on the verge of total societal collapse, while the reluctant drum machine and pessimistic keyboard riff of early single “Rich for the Dead,” could soundtrack the depletion of the ozone layer.
Other Boards of Canada albums might offer more enjoyable listening experiences, but the bleak, colourless aural vista of Tomorrow’s Harvest might stand as the duo’s most rewarding. Like most of the band’s best work, the album urges repeat listens, and only time will tell whether this album will reveal deeper layers.
Deafhaven — Sunbather
Sunbather is a record fueled by intensity. At no point during this album’s seven-track span is any emotion expressed lightly. Even during slower, lighter fare like “Irresistible,” there’s a palpable sense of urgency that runs throughout the LP, like a racing heartbeat.
Though this isn’t uncommon in the world of black metal — a genre characterized by its melodrama and extremity — San Francisco foursome Deafheaven’s sophomore release sidesteps the overwrought brutality of their contemporaries in favour of a more complex, densely layered aesthetic.
The album is made up of four lengthy, sprawling mood pieces, each separated by a shorter, softer track. Although this track sequencing isn’t the most original, it gives listeners breathing space while also highlighting the potency of pummeling tracks like “Dream House” and “Vertigo.”
Guitarist Kerry McCoy’s melodic, post-rock inspired style grounds the album’s busiest, most muscular songs, without subtracting from the break-neck energy of Daniel Tracy’s schizophrenic drum beat or vocalist George Clarke’s impassioned wails.
In fact, Sunbather’s unorthodox combination of genres — part black metal, part post-rock, part shoegaze, part emo, part ambient — might be its biggest strength. The broken beauty of McCoy’s guitar riffs seem to argue with Clarke’s emaciated shriek, until you learn that the two are the album’s principal songwriters.
Tracks like the off-kilter genre experiment “Please Remember” or the ambient “Windows” seem to further highlight the contradictions in the band’s approach, but the quartet’s impeccable musicianship and conviction serve as the glue that combines Sunbather’s most disparate qualities.
As much as I like to think of myself as musically open-minded, I tend to be picky when it comes to metal: so many of the genre’s biggest names always strike me as artificial or simply exhausting. But by avoiding the pitfalls of so many of their peers, Deafheaven have made one of the most original and rewarding LPs in the genre’s recent history.
My Bloody Valentine — Loveless
Everything that can be written about Loveless probably already has been: how the album’s recording almost bankrupted Creation Records, how countless engineers were hired and fired during the album’s genesis, how Kevin Shields and company took 22 years to record a follow-up. The LP, which stands as one of the best and most unique of the 90s, has been poked and prodded like a frog in a high school chemistry classroom.
But even the most verbose and well-researched article can’t fully communicate what makes Loveless so fundamental and absorbing, even now, two decades after its release. The album can’t be judged on terms of its song structures or melodies — neither of which are particularly groundbreaking — but rather the tactile experience of its sound, which has been often imitated but never matched. You don’t just listen to Loveless, you feel it, and that’s a tough sensation to describe.
From the album’s more accessible tracks like the dance-beat of “Soon,” and the bubblegum-pop refrain of “When You Sleep,” to its more atmospheric sound experiments, Loveless exists in its own sonic sphere, giving the album a timeless and almost ethereal quality. It isn’t a 90s record, and it seems separate from the shoegaze genre it supposedly defines: Loveless just is.
Since the album is better off listened to than written about, allow me to make a recommendation: settle into a comfortable spot, pour yourself a cup of herbal tea, turn off the lights in your room, and slip on your headphones. Keep the volume high — Loveless is best heard loud — and close your eyes.
No words I could write here can match the soaring highs of this Ireland foursome’s magnum opus. Just listen.
