I like Canada. I like Canadian culture, I like Canadians I like what Canadians do. I look for Canadian artists because music from my country means more to me then big names from outside. The sound is different. The feel is different. There's just something unique about things from Canada.
Broken Social Scene are Canadian. Feist is Canadian. Godspeed You! Black Emperor are Canadian. Boards of Canada, however, are not Canadian. They're Scottish. Nothing against the Scots or anything, but I don't live in Scotland so I usually don't care about Scottish music. But, as previously mentioned, I like Canada and even name-dropping the country is usually enough to spark my interest. Boards of Canada, despite their country of origin, manage to capture something that most people who grew up in Canada the 70s & 80s can relate to: Canadian independent film.
Take yourself back to the 80s if you were lucky enough to be a child/teenager during that time. Once you're there check out some of these videos: http://www.hww.ca/media.asp?mcid=1 . Feeling all nostalgic? Good. Now pop on Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children. If you're like me then you'll feel a warm sense of familiarity. I suppose it helps if you've got a healthy respect for Brian Eno as well as a lot of these songs feel like extensions of some of Eno's work in the 70s. The creepily haunting melodies that BoC conjure up are hypnotizing to say the least; ambient is the more mundane label put on them though it's hard to label a group ambient when you're apt to pay so much attention to the sound. BoC, unfortunately, like to keep a low profile; they've only released four major albums since 1994. Their particular style of putting a modern spin on vintage sounds is something I haven't head since but is echoed in the more peaceful works of Aphex Twin, Stereolab and Four Tet.
Music Has The Right To Children is a masterwork of electronic music on par with Kraftwerk and Eno and Aphex Twin. BoC's recent albums are a well received extension of the beautiful sound but for any dedicated fan of the band it's a long dry wait for more.
