About

Long in the making, Boards of Canada's fourth full-length is their darkest and moodiest record. Clearly inspired by film soundtracks, Tomorrow's Harvest is heavy on atmosphere and richly textured drone.

While BoC have always seemed comfortable inside their core sound, their records are still easy to distinguish. On Music Has the Right to Children, they mixed creepy pre-erased drones with childhood nostalgia and drums that drew from hip-hop; on 2002’s Geogaddi, the beats got harder and the unease grew more intense, resulting in an album that was still playful but far darker. Campfire Headphase, from 2005, brought acoustic guitars to the table and aimed for a more pastoral feel, but it lacked the tension of what came before. And Tomorrow’s Harvest is in some ways the flipside to Campfire, the bucolic tint swapped out for moody drones and encroaching dread. It is the most internally focused of Boards of Canada’s records. Rather than working around the edges of their sound in search of new territory, Tomorrow’s Harvest finds them drawing back toward the center.

Given its hermetic feel, it makes sense BoC have indicated that soundtracks were an especially big influence. They specifically invoke the work of John Carpenter, Mark Isham, and Wendy Carlos, all of whom constructed some of their most enduring scores in the late 1970s and early 80s. That was a period where analog synthesis was reaching full maturity but digital synthesis was in its earlier stages, when the tape-driven Mellotron competed for studio space with the digital Fairlight and new timbres were being explored. If the earliest Boards of Canada music still seemed inspired by Warp’s post-techno Artificial Intelligence movement, beats on Tomorrow's Harvest are secondary. The tempos are generally slow, and there’s not much trickiness to the percussion. The tracks tend to create a groove and stick with it for the duration. — (via Pitchfork)

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There's always a moment in every good album that grabs you and thrusts you into its world without warning and without concern for your soul. Tomorrow's Harvest accomplishes this feeling with its opening notes, a feat rarely achieved by any group. The album opens with a fuzzy horn fanfare before rapidly devolving into a nightmarish dreamscape of blaring noise samples and warm analog keyboards. Before I was even finished with one track I knew that Boards of Canada had done it again. Their music still speaks to my soul at one moment and makes me nervously gaze over my shoulder the next. Their signature brand of IDM is still beautifully lo-fi and atmospheric, and teleports me back to the better times of life, or times I don't even want to remember. What I'm trying to convey is that their music still carries weight, and is a powerful force to be reckoned with. Tomorrow's Harvest is the band's best output in over 10 years and is of such great quality that any other artist regardless of genre would kill to create something like it.

Perhaps what impresses me the most is how Boards of Canada (hereby referred to as BoC) have managed to grow so much as musicians but somehow stay so true to their musical identity as well as themselves as people. The trademark PBS samples and cryptic use of numbers is still present, but an entirely new aura has emerged in the musical backdrop. The nostalgia of Music, the sinister undertones of Geogaddi, and the spaciness of Campfire; BoC somehow meld them all together immaculately. The interlude "Telepath" and concluding track "Semena Mertvykh" could have easily fit anywhere on Geogaddi, with the latter standing up against "You Could Feel The Sky" as the most frightening track under the band's name. On the contrary, there are also cuts like the marvelous "Split Your Infinities" which kicks the album's quality into turbo near its conclusion. "Split Your infinities" is a beautiful, synth-driven piece of music that rivals some of the most sublime moments on Music and Campfire. One thing that is extremely immediate about the album is the fullness of the sound. All of the band's previous work had this sense of restraint to it, even on louder tracks like "Roygbiv". On Harvest, restraint is out the window (for the most part). The album is more grandiose than anything the group have ever produced, proven by just one listen through the steady trek of "Jacquard Causeway" or the thunderous opening chords of "Sick Times". The group also occasionally harkens back to their earlier days, offering two moments of tranquil splendor on "White Cyclosa" and "Sundown".

This is a new beginning in the Boards Of Canada canon, a last hurrah to the group we knew last decade. Tomorrow's Harvest may not be Boards Of Canada's best record, but up to this point it is their most important. It's been fifteen years since the release of Music Has The Right To Children, and this record is two men showing how they have changed in this period of time. Not only as musicians, but as people. This record is two men living in sick times, feeling that nothing matters, and that the earth is cold and has come to dust. It represents a struggle, a portrait of their lives and all that has happened to them which nobody knows anything about because of their peculiar, reclusive behavior. The album cover shows the sun rising, and a distant city over the horizon. It summarizes the record perfectly, as the group and all their listeners look forward to tomorrow. Boards Of Canada are asking us to plant new seeds with them. I happily oblige. — (via Sputnik Music)

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- 2LP on black vinyl
- Housed in gatefold sleeve
- Issued with a digital download code

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Label: Warp Records / Music70
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 2013
Genre: Electronic
Style: Downtempo, Ambient, IDM

File under: Leftfield
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