The Campfire Headphase sees the Boards of Canada returning to the long, spacious melodies and funky but not too-heavy rhythm work of Music Has the Right to Children, but with enough of an update to make the album not only welcome, but essential.
There are a few genre-defining artists who make such a strong first impression that they make it hard for themselves to ever release anything new. A handful of acts have helped to shape the course of my listening life over the years, and they all face the problem of figuring out where to take a sound that has been so perfected that any more would be overkill and any change would be blasphemy. Meat Beat Manifesto, Low, Scorn, and Autechre make that short list of acts with such a distinct and influential voice that change comes hard, and is not always welcome. For me, Boards of Canada make the list too, based solely on the strength of their style-defining album Music Has The Right To Children which spawned not just a gaggle of imitators but an entire cottage industry of pastoral melancholy electronica. Their Hi Scores EP flew largely under the radar, but when Matador got a hold of the US release for Music and acts like Radiohead pimped the Boards in interviews, the floodgates were opened and the duo suddenly outgrew their home at Skam and their smallish cult status.
Geogaddi offered more of the Boards trademarked warbly synths and pitched down drum beats, but put a psychedelic, math-fueled spin on the whole thing that was at times just a little too twisted to be fun. This record will easily make my top ten for the year because it is so effective that it makes the rest of the Boards’ discography better just by playing a part. While the artwork is so reminiscent of their most well-known work that it would appear to be an offshoot single from Music Has The Right, The Campfire Headphase takes things perfectly in the only the direction that would have made sense. With a familiar and working sound already established, the album simply plays with some new timbres like guitar that elevate the record without mucking with what has always worked. It’s almost impossible to imagine anyone who enjoyed the Boards’ previous work not loving this record, but there’s enough new and interesting going on that the album may open itself up to an entirely new audience.
The melodies here are sublime and the atmosphere is warm and rustic without being at all natural. The samples of children are thankfully gone, but the tape-reel-slipping backgrounds and institutional filmstrip sound sill abounds, playing off of guitar passages that give this record a depth beyond anything the Boards have managed before. It’s fair to say that I have impossibly high expectations for artists like Boards of Canada, but The Campfire Headphase is as satisfying a trip through acid-washed memory lane as I am probably apt to find this year. - Matthew Jeanes
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