Album review: Boards of Canada: Tomorrow’s Harvest

Getting lost in the sonic complexities of the Scottish duo’s fourth album is far too easy, as it ebbs and flows on a hypnotic electro tide.

Boards of Canada

Tomorrow’s Harvest

Warp, £14.99

*****

Edinburgh brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin sound like they’re luxuriating in their own glorious cacophony.

Warp might be one of the coolest record labels in the world, but the quiet hype whipped up around this release is beyond the grasp of the major corporations still engaging in what now passes for a music business.

The rough beauty and ready charm of tunes such as the single Reach For The Dead or the hypnotic electro-riffing of New Seeds, with its distant echo of Hank Mizell’s Jungle Rock, both demonstrate an easy familiarity with the concept of a pop tune.

As if it were heard on an extraterrestrial FM radio service, bleeding from the walls of an uninhabited house, this music can possess you. It also adopts the John Carpenter soundtrack style of hitting one chord per bar and leaving the notes hanging there.

The Boards distil and channel the spirit of the purest krautrock, blessing it both with a distinctive kick and a lasting afterburn. It’s immensely satisfying, even for the unconverted.

Download this: New Seeds, Palace Posy, Split Your Infinities