Although, at a glance, 'Geogaddi's sounds are hewn from a similar electro cloth to Boards Of Canada's sublime debut, 'Music Has The Right To Children', this is a very different album in tone. Lurking within the pulsing rhythms and humming notes are uneasy sonic suggestions. Gone is the comforting pastoral simplicity and naive wonder of tracks like 'Open The Light', to be replaced with a dense, heavy sense of foreboding.
The album cover's repeated kaleidoscopic images of a figure amongst trees suggests, at first sight, a group with hands joined. Closer inspection reveals something like a skull occasionally emerging from the random natural patterns. It's a potent symbol, somehow echoing the way in which BOC take sound and repeat it, or interfere with its pitch and frequency, throw it into juxtaposition with other, inhospitable sounds finding the unsettling possibilities that lurk within. It's a trick that ranks 'Geogaddi' amongst popular music's most lysergically menacing releases.
The Scottish duo's fascination with childhood and innate ability to tap into our deepest inarticulate memories takes a step further here. Rummaging deeper into the sonic psyche to pull out long repressed memories with sounds that have a dumb primal resonance. On 'Dawn Chorus' the harmonic elements whir at a constantly uneven pitch - like a record player operating with a worn-out belt drive. Children's cries form the signature melody alternately evoking ecstatic wonder and fear.
BOC still source their musical vocabulary from documentary film, wildlife programming, found sound from radio and television and other products of their remote, earth-rooted way of life in northern Scotland and upbringing under the light of the Canadian Aurora. But, new to the palate is an increased attention to instrumentation. On 'The Beach At Redpoint' tabla rhythms underpin the track's whirlpool percussion. On 'Alpha and Omega', the sounds of the subcontinent again intermingle with BOC's traditional textures to both fuel the rhythm with an uncharacteristically brisk pace and soak the melody in the evocative sounds of Indian flutes.
Surely no-one familiar with BOC expected a giant leap into fresh musical pastures from this album - their sound is too uniquely their own to be turned on its head and kicked around the studio. Nonetheless, 'Geogaddi' represents a considerable stride in ambition, reaching into dark unchartered territories and repaying close listening with the kind of organic insights that great music excels in unearthing.
by James Poletti