Boards of Canada – Inferno – Album Review
by Killian Laher

After a mere 13 years, Boards of Canada are back with their fifth album.  By calling it Inferno, many are reading into this as a comment on the state of the world.  The album is very much a unit, one to play and wash over you. It’s about the feeling generated by the music.

After a brief intro, we are on solid ground with the first track proper, Prophecy at 1420 MHz, a stately piece of electronica with nice guitar lines but a foreboding undertone.  The album can be split into various types of tracks.  There are very chilled-out, stately drifts – Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan, Into The Magic Land, Arena Americanada.  Many tracks have strange vocals reciting various utterances – Age of Capricorn, Father and Son, The Word Becomes Flesh.  Then there are the beatless, borderline ambient tracks like Somewhere Right Now In The Future, Deep Time, You Retreat In Time and Space, and much of it is vaguely sinister.  Naraka stands out with its cool keyboards and Hare Krishna chanting, as do the moody Memory Death (complete with menacing-sounding flies) and the downbeat Blood In The Labyrinth.

At 70 minutes, there’s a lot to take in, and a lot is going on in each of those 70 minutes!  It’s not the album of the year, nor does it break new ground for the Scottish duo. It’s ‘merely’ a very good Boards of Canada album.

Introit / Prophecy At 1420 MHz