Less a reissued mini-album, more a sacred cult artefact, 'Twoism' is, to most Boards Of Canada devotees, something of a Holy Grail. Originally released in 1995 on the Boards' own label, Music70, it was initially available in such minuscule quantities plenty of people have seen fit to question its very existence.
Which, of course, suited Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison just fine. Boards Of Canada revel in that kind of obfuscation; in the creation of myths, games and mystical blarney to hide the truth. Gigs are almost unheard of. Interviews are rarer still. Released music is pretty scarce, too, and comes loaded with esoteric devices to confuse, puzzle and occasionally frighten listeners. Hence last spring's second full-scale album, 'Geogaddi', a phantasmagoria of nagging melodies, distant children's voices and satanic intimations which lasted 66 minutes and six seconds.
No other electronica release in 2002 has matched the devious charms of 'Geogaddi'. It's no surprise, though, that 'Twoism' comes closest. Here, rescued for a wider public from the clutches of their most zealous and luckiest fans, is the first manifestation of BOC's trademark sound. Beats appear to have been constructed by a sleepwalking hip-hop fan. Melodies are at once placid and untrustworthy, zigzagging in and out of time whilst always retaining a beauty that's oddly discomforting. Production is skeletal, lo-fi, often a little creaky. Reference points are elusive, though the idea of early Autechre crafting an alternative score to 'The Wicker Man' isn't a bad place to start.
Like all of Boards Of Canada's wonderful records, the whole seems to add up to far more than the sum of its parts. From their rural Hexagon Sun studio near the Scottish borders, Sandison and Eoin have consistently eluded easy critical analysis by virtue of investing simple electronica with an emotional undertow that, because it's so hard to quantify, is usually seen as supernatural. A primitive version of 'Seeya Later' seems straightforward enough, loping along amiably with some squelchy little breakbeats. But it's the way the melody is almost gaseous, unstable, drifting around the mix, constantly detuning and retuning itself, that's most striking.
Nothing here is exactly avant-garde, but that's why Boards Of Canada harbour such an extraordinary and bewildering power: they make the familiar unreliable, and the beautiful discomforting. Uncommonly good.
