What makes Boards of Canada tick?

[sqigls]

for somebody who has avoided this act, what can people recommend to me as their best tracks?

[links in here]

thanks mate, i'll check it out.
go stare at my shoes for a while
cheers

[martiu]

tape, over the top compression, wow and flutter from 2 different sources so it can feel random, vintage echo emulator with a lot of feedback, sine waves for the keys, squares for the bass with filtering and some resonance, lfo on the filter to make some slow movement, you can add some ring mod with small wet percentage, reverb emulating early digital units

[RunBeerRun]

They got ticks from rolling around in the dirt.

[vurt]

tape, over the top compression, wow and flutter from 2 different sources so it can feel random, vintage echo emulator with a lot of feedback, sine waves for the keys, squares for the bass with filtering and some resonance, lfo on the filter to make some slow movement, you can add some ring mod with small wet percentage, reverb emulating early digital units

add sesame street samples. robert is now ones aunts significant other.

[zerocrossing]

Don't forget the ability to blur the line between nostalgia and alienation. I was just thinking the other day- there's almost as much time between now and BoC's first releases, as there was time between those first releases, and the era that music was evoking...

BoC is clearly a great representation of gen X and the hands off “let the TV raise the kids” mentality.

[bermudagold]

nostalgic for me too...funny story...i would play mixes of instrumental music that had enough of a beat to propel me through work but not engaging enough to make me really listen to it so I could be productive...that's how I learned of BoC and told my girlfriend at the time about them...then one day she came in the room and was like "you listening to them bored canadians again?"..."I coulda told em why they always bored,...cause they listening to this shit"...she thought they were literally called "The Boreds of Canada"...I still crack up to this day whenever I think about it

[Dirtgrain]

I only like a couple of songs by them, which I really do dig. But are they overhyped?

[martiu]

I only like a couple of songs by them, which I really do dig. But are they overhyped?

not overhyped at all, their music can send you places in your mind like nothing else, i was like you before, just a couple of tracks i liked, then i started to pay attention to every little detail and now i like a lot more, the smaller ambient tracks i skipped before but now i love them

[kritikon]

TBH I always considered BoC as noodling that most people do when they can't be bothered making structured tracks and their get-up-and-go has got-up-and-gone. My laptop's upstairs being used by the missus for TV, so I have to make some funny sounds on keyboards that I don't need to sequence in a DAW, I've drunk too much rum and it's too much effort to get off my arse and go back upstairs and shut the studio down, so I'll sit here and noodle until I get bored even of that or the spiders are gathering in the gloom and chase me out. Et voila! BoC...it would never occur to me that it's releasable. Kinda Orb Little Fluffy Clouds vibe but without the tune, or the samples, or any beat, or structure. But I guess each to their own. I understand why people like it, but it's unlikely I ever will.

[Bunny_boy]

Kinda Orb Little Fluffy Clouds vibe but without the tune, or the samples, or any beat, or structure.

[VariKusBrainZ]

The same thing that makes an analog grainy, hue inbalanced, unstaged photograph more engaging than a sharp digital photo

[zerocrossing]

Do people know that it’s named after the Canadian National Film Boards that gave grants to a lot of experimental and artistic film projects? Our school used to play them on rainy days when we couldn’t go outside for recess. I imagine a lot of schools did, and we all sat watching grainy, warbling 16 mm films in gymnasiums on gloomy days. BoC perfectly captures this vibe.

[vurt]

Do people know that it’s named after the Canadian National Film Boards that gave grants to a lot of experimental and artistic film projects? Our school used to play them on rainy days when we couldn’t go outside for recess. I imagine a lot of schools did, and we all sat watching grainy, warbling 16 mm films in gymnasiums on gloomy days. BoC perfectly captures this vibe.

if they dont by the end of music has the right, they need their ears testing

[mjolnir]

fair use of VIBRATO

[JO512]

The same thing that makes an analog grainy, hue inbalanced, unstaged photograph more engaging than a sharp digital photo

I agree!

I'd say they are both engaging, but for different reasons. A super sharp photo with accurate color is more transparent in some sense. You are seeing "through" to the objects in the photo as clearly as possible. It's less about the medium of photography than it is about showing you the thing in question with the maximum possible information density, accuracy, and clarity. The medium gets out of the way, so to speak. But with something grainier, with less accurate color, with light bleed, and so on, it is more about the medium, the interpretation, and the mood. It is partly about the gauzy veil that is in the way, which makes it feel like a distant memory or a dream. It is more colored.

I love Boards of Canada. The wistful feelings I experience with their music are almost too thick at times. I can't listen to them all the time.

I am also old enough that I remember TV programs like that, and tape wow and flutter, and so on, so it taps into my childhood memories.

I love synths and effects and all this technology and possibilities they offer, but I don't love a lot of the electronic music out there. I can't take the monotonous four-on-the-floor boof, boof, boof boof of so much of it. Feels like a pounding headache! And so overdone! And I am not a big fan of 1980s synth pop and that sort of thing. I am always searching for electronic music that I actually like. Boards of Canada are a rarity in that they really click with me. I wish there was more music like this, not the same style exactly, but more moody, dreamy, psychedelic, and so on, and less about dancing, and not so focused on the kick drum. I like rhythms too, but I like them more varied, interesting, and organic, and perhaps more subtle.