Boards Of Canada ‎– Geogaddi

I think there is something about this record that captures the spirit of the countryside in northern Britain. People who grew up in the north will know what I mean. The closest thing I can compare it to is sitting on a bale of hay in the twilight on an early autumn evening with friends. There's the feeling of warmth and friendliness, but at the same time an enveloping darkness and menace, just out of the corner of your eye. Beautiful.

This is probably the only record that makes me sweat. Music that makes me sweat, yes, i mean it. It's not warm, it's close to boiling temperature. It's suffocant and oppressive. It's not countryside music, it's a nightmare. The artwork is genious in the way that portraits sound. The cover prepares one for the heat that awaits the listener, and the kaleidoscopic like images, as they close themselves by repetition and mirroring effect, reflect the strong imprisoning power of the music. One thing the artwork doesn't show, and thank god that it doesn't, as we would not need the music, is how it is unreal. Just pay attention to Alpha and Omega: how on earth could someone think about having campfire congas and flutes, playing next to such menacing chords and still sound so balanced? In fact, that's one of the aspects i love about Geogaddi, it's how there are always subtle details that give you a bit of light while going through such a dark experience. And right in the end, the music suddenly changes to something different. It gets fresher. Almost like you had been suffocating for a long time and managed to find air again. If you just came from MHTRTC, don't expect nostalgia and sweet memories, be careful. And don't listen to it in the winter or cold time. It's a warm sound, but needs the highest temperature possible to be enjoyed physically.

Potentially their best release, but I find it the hardest to describe to people who haven't heard it. The best word I can come up with is 'hypnagogic'.

I have come accross several copies of this record that were misspresses. They all shared the following attribute: record 2 (side 3/4) was present and record 3 (side 5/6) was present but twice over. Record 1 (side 1/2) is missing. Has anyone else also seen this? Should there be a separate entry for these?

In 2002, the Scottish electronic music duo, Boards of Canada released their second commercial full length album on Warp Records, titled Geogaddi. I say, "commercial", because prior to being signed to Warp, brothers [yes, they _are_ brothers] Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin Sandison have released several obscure EPs and albums on their own, Music70 imprint. These were mostly self-made cassette tapes, recorded for their friends and family, and are very rare and pretty much unavailable, with the exception of a few, which were later re-released. In 1995, Twoism attracted the attention of Sean Booth (Autechre) through a demo released on [that famous] IDM mailing list, and soon thereafter Hi Scores EP was released on Skam Records. In 1998, Warp picked the duo up with Music Has The Right To Children, and the rest, as we say, is history. On Geogaddi, BoC continues to play around with warped effects of stretched magnetic tape, light sprinkled beats, ghostly melodies and echoes of distant voices. The mood of Geogaddi is dark, melancholic, and at times nostalgic for the childhood, perhaps as a continuation of BoC's previous themes on Music Has the Right to Children. The sound of this electronic recording is very organic and warm, no doubt benefiting from BoC's use of analog equipment, acoustic instruments, and samples sourced from nature documentary films produced by the Canadian government agency, NFB - National Film Board of Canada. Sandison was quoted to say that Gogaddi is "a record for some sort of trial-by-fire, a claustrophobic, twisting journey that takes you into some pretty dark experiences before you reach the open air again." The 22 tracks on the album are a result of 400 different song fragments and 64 complete other songs, which were all trimmed, re-sampled and selected to be featured on a beautiful triple 12". The last record's side F (considered to be the 23rd track of pure silence), contains an etching in the vinyl of an image of a man, woman and two children. The artwork on the album consists of kaleidoscopic images of photographs of children created by the brothers themselves. We last heard from Board of Canada through their 6 track Trans Canada Highway EP, released on Warp in 2006. Today, the brothers continue to stay out of the spotlight, working away on more tunes featuring their original staple sound. Or at least we can hope that they are ;)

Two years ago, I compiled the albums Music Has The Right To Children and Geogaddi from a pile of random BoC files on my pc, which were being mostly ignored up till that point.

Since then, I've played Geogaddi to bits. It became my favourite BoC record and one of my favourite records of all time.

It's a really emotional record, with beatifull melodies and beats. The thing what sets the BoC style apart is an extremely organic atmosphere. It's one of those records that, when played on you headphones or on a good stereo and with you lying on your bed or sofa, will really take you places. A bit like Dante's Inferno, where the reader (as Dante) travels safely by the side of his guide to the depths of hell. There's both horrible and marvelous things on this record, sometimes it's a bit confronting to listen to it still.

You do have to take the time to appreciate it, but the end result won't come as a dissappointment. People can dismiss this album as elitist and I can really understand why they'd do that, but for me it changed the way I view music and life itself. I'm sorry for how corny that sounds, but my English vocabulairy doesn't allow me to put it any other way.

Alpah & Omega is a bit of a masterpiece. Forget all the hidden subliminal / sub-religious baggage that often accompanies BOC tracks. The groove in this is unreal. I've played it about 15 times this week . . . . .

This is one of the most powerful albums one could stumble upon. I'm always telling my friends (over the 'net) about tracks on this album as I listen to it, and am dismayed at my inability to describe what I'm feeling. The feelings I get from Geogaddi are often nostalgic, yearning, and some other emotions that have yet to be named.

Have you ever been camping completely in the wilderness, and been woken up early in the morning by voices outside your tent? Have you noticed how the voices sound when you're in that half-awake state? That's the sort of state that is best to be in when listening to Geogaddi. Half-asleep with enhanced dream perception, that is.

By the way, Geogaddi is definitely incomplete without the last track. I can't imagine listening to it without From One Source All Things Depend. Perhaps I was spoiled, but it just seems perfectly-placed. The other Geogaddi releases seem naked without it.

Let's Face it, BoC with each release leave that style behind for an updated one, and in this case with 'Geogaddi' they have gotten a little more abstract and experimental. Sure they still have there glitched out beats with there non-organic samples of little childeren and nature documentaries, but they are are a different BoC and the fact that they have challenged themselves to step outside There Own Box, i think with a little time this one will grow on us...like Chemical Brothers and Underworld albums we always seem to nitpick them and state that there previous album was better, well what makes good artists is there constant change and evolution. Geogaddi has plenty of there 'Beaty' and tracks with lots of disturbed and meloncholy melodies such as 'Music is Math' and '1969', but now they have a lot more of this strange ambient sound mixed with an anxious yet different IDM sound 'Gyroscope'--'The Beach At Redpoint'--'You Could Feel The Sky' and 'Alpha and Omega', which was unexpected.

I truly enjoy this album and I give props out to BoC for not letting the fans get to their heads and redoing a second version of MHtRtC.

P.S. GYROSCOPE is one of my favorite BoC tracks =P

Geogaddi is an entirely different monster than Music Has the Right to Children. If you were to listen to both of these albums only once you might not notice how different they are from each other. Some people have commented that the production on Geogaddi is flat. I disagree. I have been listening to this album for the last three years now and still I am hearing new sounds. The production is so incredibly dense that the music can at first seem deceptively simple. Sometimes I'll play Geogaddi on a different set of speakers and hear a new melody or sample that has previously been buried.

Aside from these technical sonic qualities, the music itself is so evocative and haunting that sometimes I am overwhelmed to the point of incapacity. I have had nightmares from this music and I have been emotionally comforted by it. The wealth of apparently hidden meaning mirrors my own subconscious memories -- the music is so personal and emotional but is unsettlingly suggestive of how much of my life has been only half remembered.

This album is like an old friend who you continually learn new things about. It is very gorgeous but possesses a darkness that is undefined and just barely out of conscious grasp.

A lot of what I've said is also true of Music Has the Right to Children but that album feels a little younger and clearer-minded. Perhaps the Boards themselves describe this best: (Mike): "I would say 'Music Has The Right...' is a record for outdoors on a cold, blue-skied day, while 'Geogaddi' is a record for some sort of trial-by-fire, a claustrophobic, twisting journey that takes you into some pretty dark experiences before you reach the open air again. It has a kind of narrative. That's why we ended it with 'Corsair', it's like the light at the end of the tunnel."

This music means a lot to me and has never become anything less than 4-dimensional. Geogaddi scares me but I can't stop listening to it. Some people might disagree about all the meaning some of us fans place in BoC. All I can say to them is this: everybody is touched differently by different music and if Geogaddi doesn't affect you like it does me, fine. But understand that this album is not flat and one listen to it is not unlike a single date with a potential best friend.