Great Album Covers- Geogaddi

Boards Of Canada are one of those bands whose every release is a momentous occasion, if only because it happens less frequently than Presidential elections. As such you're given plenty of time to absorb their albums and dig into every corner. Boards Of Canada further inspire intrigue and obsession by playing on music nerd past times, putting backmasked messages in their songs, referencing numerology and other weird religious themes, and so on. I'm sure there are still people trying to figure out why they put a track of pure silence at the end of Geogaddi. It couldn't be just to round off the album to being 66:66 in runtime, could it?! There must be something there if you listen close enough, sort of like the missing 18 minutes on the infamous Nixon Tapes.

Right?

Anyway, I feel like Boards Of Canada are also one of those bands whose every album cover is perfectly chosen. There's a simultaneously psychedelic, dark, child-like, and entrancing quality to their music which is perfectly captured in their covers. True, the Geogaddi cover may be the most coherent kaleidoscope image ever seen--it's a dude, with arms outstretched, in front of some trees!--yet it still strikes me as, well, psychedelic, dark, child-like, and entrancing. I really wish I owned this album on vinyl, but then again, it would only inspire me to do a lot of drugs and stare at it (and the rest of the album art inside) for hours at a time.

Boards Of Canada- The Campfire Headphase

With this decade drawing to a close in a few months, I find myself returning to albums that never quite clicked with me, or ones that I perhaps never gave a fair shake to. Campfire Headphase is a bit of both. As Boards of Canada only release an album every few years, anticipation is always high for their next statement (exceptions being the scattered EPs, like Trans Canada Highway). Leading up to Campfire Headphase, there was talk of how now the band were using guitars more heavily than ever, causing me to expect something different than what the real result was.

It's possible the duo had been using guitars all along, but they were so heavily processed and sculpted that they were unrecognizable. Regardless, Boards of Canada keep their patented ambient techno/retro-sounding-but-modern electronic music on this album but add acoustic guitars and placid electric guitars. If you're like me, you were expecting something more akin to Loveless-style shoegazer guitar sounds, but Headphase is far more mellow and quiet. In fact, that's my biggest problem with the album: it's too mellow. Yes, past Boards of Canada releases often bordered on ambient music, but there were also invigorating melodies and experimental flourishes to keep one's attention. Even when I listen to Headphase album now with more patience and forgiveness, it still seems the sort of thing you put on to fall asleep to rather than actively listen to.

My other issue with the album is that it simply seems uninspired. Even the best songs here, such as 'Dayvan Cowboy' (which makes the best use of guitars on the album) and 'Sherbert Head' (which has a wonderfully scratchy sound, like something off a David Lynch soundtrack), can't make up for the fact that most of the album is samey, repetitive, and kind of boring. I would even go so far as to say that it comes off as oddly generic. For a group with such a distinctive sound, too much of Headphase sounds like leftovers from Geogaddi and Music Has The Right To Children, or even a band trying to sound like Boards of Canada. As those two albums are excellent, this does mean that Headphase is not out and out bad. Far be it for me to complain about "more of a good thing", but this assumes a "good thing" is still good. I think the quality slipped a bit on Headphase.

Anyway, I guess it's just that you would expect more new-ness and discovery out of Boards of Canada after they talked about focusing more on guitars, let alone taking three years to make the album. I will admit that I like Campfire Headphase more than I used to, but my lasting impression is unchanged: it sounds like more of the same, but a little different, and not as good.

Shuffling VI

OK people, you know the drill.

Shuffle!!

1) Maybe Maybe by Pavement- This is the version from the Brighten The Corners deluxe reissue, which I think is some kind of radio station/John Peel session piss take. Somehow it's even sloppier than the original lo-fi version you can hear on the Westing (By Sextant And Musket) compilation. Anyway, this kind of song wasn't made for a full band so it doesn't come off well here.

2) The Smallest Weird Number by Boards Of Canada- This short track reminds me of how fascinating this band is even on a small scale. Though a bit over one minute long, it is perfection in microcosm, packing in all kinds of interesting textures and sounds.

3) Puttin' On The Dog by Tom Waits- Ah, one of those gin joint, roadhouse blues stomps from Tom Waits. Someday there really oughta be a movie made of Charles Bukowski's work that has songs by Waits as a soundtrack. Listening to a song like this, you feel as though you're in the dark corner of a dive bar nursing a scotch and water that you bought with the last four bucks in your wallet, wondering what you're going to do now. Then a woman walks by and makes you feel something after you assumed you couldn't anymore, and hell, you figure you have nothing to lose...

4) Shooting Star by Elliott Smith- Man, if he had actually finished From A Basement On A Hill, it would've been one weird album. It already is a helter-skelter affair in its half-finished, post-humous state, but there truly is a paranoid late 60s pop/rock atmosphere that runs through it, recalling The White Album and the unfinished-until-2004 Smile project. This six minute song proves that Smith could've really made something out of a full touring band kind of sound rather than the lonely singer/songwriter stuff he's known for or the studio perfectionist, borderline orchestral pop of Figure 8 and XO. The guitar stuff around the 3:35 mark is especially good--hell, who knew he could play like that (assuming it isn't a sessionman)??

5) Back Of Your Head by Cat Power- It's too bad (for me) that Chan Marshall is caught up in 60s soul/R&B-isms and being all happy, because her earlier work is impossibly sad and beautiful. As much as I love Nico's The Marble Index, I think that Cat Power's Moon Pix is more enjoyably dower. 'Back Of Your Head' is a lonely willow of a song, its lyrics reminding me of so many bittersweet, and simply bitter, moments in my own life and romances. Also, "you hold the big picture so well/can't you see that we're going to hell?" is a chilling summation of a relationship that always gets to me. Sniff....

Boards of Canada- In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country EP

It's too bad that this EP is usually overpriced and generally unknown because it makes for a pretty good introduction to Boards Of Canada. It doesn't have the sense of discovery that their first EP Twoism did because that was their first 'official' release and was incredibly hard to find for almost 5 years. What it does have, though, is Boards of Canada at their most ambient and languid while still, somehow, making for a concise 24 minute Cliff's Notes version of one of their albums.

Released at a nice middle distance between 1998's stunning debut Music Has The Right To Children and 2002's darker but, arguably, better Geogaddi, the In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country EP can't really be called a stepping stone release between the two. And it's also not a case of the Scottish duo (recently revealed to be brothers) clearing out the vaults. No, this is one of those rare cases where an EP stands on its own as a musical statement. All of the group's trademarks are here: the 60s/70s keyboards/samplers, obsession with dark/creepy things (most of this EP is given over to allusions to the Branch Davidians), child-like whimsy, and a healthy bedrock of ambient techno a la The Orb.

In A Beautiful Place... is, as stated earlier, Boards of Canada at their most ambient and slow moving. These four tracks still have beats and rhythms, but they are mellow and melodic more than anything else. 'Kid For Today' has a skittering beat and droning keyboards, a narcotic drip of a song that feels like it goes on for 15 minutes but never overstays its welcome. 'Amo Bishop Roden' moves from formless, ethereal chords to a true drum beat before dropping this for an ambient ending. The title track, with the oddly disturbing vocal samples of children and a Branch Davidian slogan spoken by a computer altered voice, is rightfully considered one of the best songs Boards of Canada have ever done. I originally heard this track on the very first All Tomorrow's Parties compilation and it's exactly what made me get into this group. At any rate, its minimalist drum loop, ghostly vocal samples, and synthesizer chords that sound like fog rolling in and out or maybe clouds going overheard on a really windy day...sorry. What I was trying to say was, this is a quintessential BoC song. EP closer 'Zoetrope' has an off-kilter, disintegrating keyboard loop that sounds like a remix of a science film soundtrack from the 80s about astronomy. This is BoC at their most pretty and melodic, and there's something of a child-like beauty and wonder about it, almost heartbreaking in its simple-but-effective sound.

The only real barrier to your entry of this EP should be the price. I've never seen it for cheaper than $7-8 at any store, and it's often more. Though there's a lot to love here--four tracks at 24 minutes isn't a bad meal, musically speaking--I'm not sure it's worth quite that much. However, if you grab it from iTunes or another digital music store like Amazon, it shouldn't cost you anymore than $5. iTunes even has it in the DRM-free iTunes Plus format for $3.96 as I write this. If you're a hardcore fan and simply must have a physical copy, it's good enough to justify $8 or more. The rest of us should be content with the digital copy. And content we will be: In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country is a fantastic EP and a good way to introduce others to this band's unique sound and addictive quality.

Halloween: Spooky Songs On Otherwise Normal Albums

Well, we're in the home stetch of Whiskey Pie's month-long Halloween celebration. All this week I'll have Halloween themed posts, including a special Album of the Week entry that is fairly ambitious (in that, it'll be ambitious for me not to ramble on for 10,000 words).

But today we're going to talk about scary music. I've already done scary movies and scary games (one more post each on those forthcoming, in fact) so it's time I gave music its due beyond the videos I've been posting. Rather than talk about 'scary albums', because I don't own any I think are scary all the way through, I'm going to explore some songs that are surprisingly creepy considering the majority of the rest of the music from the albums they come from is straightforward in comparison.

Aphex Twin- 'Grey Stripe' (a.k.a. track four of the second disc of SAWII)
Actually, Aphex Twin probably deserves some kind of lifetime achievement award for tucking away scary songs on his albums. In the case of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, the order of the day is mostly free floating texture and mood pieces. But 'Grey Stripe' is a terrifying song that sounds like indescribable echoes through deep space and the howls and shrieks of alien lifeforms as they bound through the corridors and ventilation shafts of some haunted space station. It's unsettling and unforgettable.

The Beatles- 'Revolution 9'
I may have told this story on here before, but the first time I listened to The White Album it was on a Fall afternoon. I just happened to put it on to coincide so that, when I got to the side four of the vinyl version, the sun had gone down and it was dark and cold outside. 'Revolution 9' is an infamous piece of musique concrete that most people hate and skip when they listen to the album. I never skip it, but it's still creepy as hell. Even while listening to The White Album with a friend, it leaves you with an eerie feeling that the final song, 'Goodnight', with its Disney-esque majesty, only partially dispels.

Boards of Canada- 'The Devil Is In The Details'
While much of the music and album artwork of Boards of Canada trades on psychedelia and the darker aspects of the 60s, this song takes things a bit further, with a horrifying female voice talking to you over the sounds of a disembodied child crying in reverse (??) and bizarre tape loops. Eeek.

Brian Wilson- 'Mrs. O'Leary's Cow'
So much history has been built up about the Smile album that it's hard to get past it and put this album in the context of 1967 even though it wasn't finished until 2004. Reportedly, while originally recording this album (and going crazy on drugs, naturally) Brian Wilson thought that this song had caused a fire in his area. True or not, 'Mrs. O'Leary's Cow' forms part of the 'Elements Suite' of Smile representing fire--another tale says that Brian Wilson made the band and gathered orchestra put on plastic fire helmets while recording the song. Its title references the cow that--true story--started the great Chicago fire all those years back. It's intense though short, mostly notable because of its supposed historical fire causing and for helping 1967-era Brian Wilson seem even crazier than he already did.

Can- 'Aumgn'
You could probably play this song in a haunted house and get away with it. 'Aumgn' is the most extreme and experimental song that Can ever produced, a 17 minute monolith that is indescribable. Spooky sounds, tape loops, screeching violin, keyboards, free jazz, free noise, scatter shot percussion...and at the heart of it all, Damo Suzuki saying/singing "AAAUUUUUMMMMMMMMGGGGGNNNNNN" over and over, slowed down, stretched out, treated with effects, or brought back and forth in the mix. The whole thing crescendos with a rising synth chord, frenetic tribal drumming, and a whole lot of studio trickery. Mind blowing.

Low- 'Don't Understand'
This is Low at their most gothic and deliberate, slowly building the tension of the spiralling keyboard atmospherics until the primitive death march led by drums kicks in. Then Alan Sparhawk holds a gun to our heads and relates how he doesn't understand while leading us through the woods to the spot where he'll leave our bodies after offing us. At least, that's what I picture in my head when I listen to this song.

The Microphones- '(Something) Cont.'
The Glow Pt. 2 has an otherworldly vibe that I can't explain. You really have to listen to it on headphones to get the full effect, but it traffics in sonic extremes. There are many quiet moments that linger, with barely audible sounds spread throughout, taunting you. Reportedly there are foghorns from boats at various parts of the album though I've only noticed a few. But on the other end of the sonic extreme, there's noisy storms like this that move in and then off like thunder, scaring the shit out of you before another unexpectedly catchy moment of lo-fi indie rock restores you to your senses.

Miles Davis- 'Rated X'
If you didn't know this song was by Miles Davis before listening to it, you would have no idea. It features no trumpet at all and comes from his late-electric era circa 1973/1974, when he would occasionally play atonal organ blasts during live performances to shake up and/or signal transitions to his band. This track, released on a compilation, is spellbindingly crazy, with a pounding drum/bass beat that predicts all manner of beat driven experimental electronic music to come. Over that we are assaulted with churning wah-wah guitar and ear splitting, Phantom Of The Opera-pissed-off-and-high-on-cocaine organ "chords." There's a remix of this track on an album by Bill Laswell that is actually listenable but therefore not scary. If you need a song to clear guests out of your house/apartment at the end of a Halloween party, here you go.

Pere Ubu- 'Thriller!'
No, not that 'Thriller.' This is a spooky instrumental with incomprehensible vocal samples, a slow, stumbling drum beat and guitars lazily detuning and tuning themselves. Eventually, odd scratching/chewing sounds show up and bury the rest of the mix. A very spooky song and one that, if memory serves, ends side one of Dub Housing in an oddly appropriate fashion.

Sonic Youth- 'Providence'
In all fairness, once you read that this song is simply a combination of an overheating amplifier, an answering machine message from Mike Watt, and Thurston Moore plunking away on a piano, it loses some of its power. But like all great double albums, 'Providence' is an anomalous, creepy track that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the album but sort of does. Anyway, yeah. Spooky.

Sufjan Stevens- 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr.'
The song itself is actually quite pretty, if a bit sad. When you realize he's singing about infamous clown/child murderer John Wayne Gacy, it instantly becomes creepier than anything you've heard that week. Certain lines from this song give me chills and that's because this stuff really happened and is not just some lame ghost story.

Talking Heads- 'The Overload'
Primarily known for being a funky and vibrant album, Remain In Light leaves us with the intense conclusion of 'The Overload', all oppressive atmospherics, David Byrne's monotone delivery, and zombified drums. Phish took this a step further when performing the album live on Halloween '96 by adding an electric drill (!!) and stage antics (including a random crew member saying "where's my coffee?!") that confused the audience.

The Velvet Underground- 'Sister Ray'
Actually, the entirety of the Velvet Underground's second album is crazy and off-the-rails. But 'Sister Ray' brings the built-up tense atmosphere to its inevitable conclusion, rolling up into one 17 minute ball of evil all the drugs, sex, violence, and terror that marked the songs of the Velvets up to that point. The first time I listened to this song I was genuinely frightened of it because I didn't know what to expect. Now, I find it oddly exhilarating. Sometimes it's nice to just let go and become one with your inner nihilist psychotic drug addict.

Album of the Week: Boards of Canada- Geogaddi

Before I had ever listened to it, I read somewhere that audiophiles used Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to test and calibrate their stereo systems. I've always liked the idea of people having a certain 'item' they run through new purchases for testing purposes, whether it be comparing a certain movie on Blu-ray vs. DVD or using one of those test CDs to make sure your car's new set-up can handle super loud bone-shaking bass. Me, though, I like to try out different visualizers, and while everyone else is focusing on how the new iTunes has a music recommendation feature called Genius, I've been putting the new visualizer through its paces.

My chosen album for putting said visualizers through said paces?? Geogaddi, of course. I find most instrumental music intensely visual, in a synesthesia kind of way--especially if it's electronic in origin--so it's nice to be lazy from time and time and let a computer handle the visuals while I relax my eyes and let drool slowly waterfall down the sides of my mouth. Some of my favorite times during school were watching science films with glazed-over adolescent eyes, and even if they were made in the same decade I was viewing them (the 90s, for those keeping score at home), they usually had this eerie soundtrack made up of late 70s/early 80s sounding keyboards, synthesizers, and sometimes even primitive drum machines. It sounded artificial and clunky, but it was otherworldly and oddly fascinating to me, and for the longest time I longed for music that sounded like it. Ambient music and ambient techno came really close, but my dream only can true when I discovered Boards of Canada, who--believe it or not--took inspiration for their name from 'The National Film Board of Canada', who produced many such science films.

Though Music Has The Right To Children, the band's first album, is widely considered to be a landmark in the electronic music genre, I personally think Geogaddi is the better album. This is for the entirely selfish reason that it comes the closest to meeting my longing for music that was like a science film soundtrack only better. Well, OK, I also think it's got better songs and does that magical music critic sentence fragment of "rewarding repeat listens." Speaking of magic, the duo behind Boards of Canada have talked about how they're obsessed and influenced by things like math, science, the paranormal world, cults, nature, childhood innocence, and outdated technology. At the same time, they have an aesthetic that reminds me a bit of the kind of...dark underbelly of late 60s music, with backmasked messages, mysteries about the making of their music and their identities (it was only recently revealed that the duo are actually brothers), hard-to-find albums or bootlegs of material not generally known to the public, a sense of general unease that hangs over some of their music, and a habit of putting hidden meanings or messages into their music (or at least, people reading it into their music).

I was recently relistening to Aphex Twin's first Selected Ambient Works album, and I realized why I don't like it as much as I do his second. It's entirely due to the instruments he used to make it, because the album has a very cheap, artificial sound to it rather than the organic, natural sound I associate with ambient music. Rather than being timeless music, it sounds very obviously early 90s, just like early Autechre does. Boards of Canada are so incredible to me because, by using outdated technology like analog synthesizers, their music becomes timeless. It's exactly why Brian Eno's groundbreaking ambient releases still sound captivating today. Don't mistake this for thinking that the only good ambient music has warmth or is human sounding, though. Great ambient music, and ambient techno in particular, often sounds cold, spacey, otherworldly, inhuman, and sometimes machine-like.

In fact, Geogaddi neatly juxtaposes human/otherworldly and natural/machine-like sounds. The shorter "interlude" tracks are usually free floating ambient pieces, sometimes with samples from science films or children talking, while the longer tracks have persistent beats that never fall prey to dancefloor bump-and-grind obvious-ness. Geogaddi is my ideal for how 'ambient techno' genre (or is that subgenre??) should sound, combining highly melodic and memorable keyboard melodies, synthesizer washes, surreal soundscapes, and plaintive minimalism with hypnotic-but-never-tedious percussive rhythms. More specifically, the album is full of contenders for the band's best work, including 'Dawn Chorus' (which reminds me of the beginning of 'The Gash' by the Flaming Lips for some reason) and 'Sunshine Recorder', a song I liked enough to have its title inscribed on the back of my iPod three years ago.

For what it's worth, the new iTunes visualizer passed the Geogaddi test. But more importantly, Geogaddi still holds up as one of the best ambient techno albums ever made, and one that I never seem to get tired of. Those interested in the genre (or subgenre...?? Whatever...) could scarcely find a better introduction, while those of you left a little underwhelmed by The Campfire Headphase are urged to travel back to this release and refresh your memory as to why you loved this band so much.

Video: Can- Bring Me Coffee Or Tea

Can are one of those bands you're extremely unlikely to have heard of until you REALLY get into music. If they're mentioned at all, it's in being namechecked by bands you like or listed as influences on Wikipedia entries. Nevertheless, they're one of the most forward thinking and revered bands in music history, and their story and background are just as fascinating as their indescribable music.

This video apparently comes from the Can DVD which I've always been tempted to buy but never have. Interestingly enough, this is a different version of the song than the one featured on the Tago Mago album. Here, it's more dreamlike and ambient, with footage mostly of Damo Suzuki cooing the song and slinking along to it.

I highly recommend picking up Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, and Future Days if you're intrigued. They are very different and nearly flawless slabs of kraut-rock goodness.

Video: Boards of Canada- Dayvan Cowboy

While I'm not the biggest fan of The Campfire Headphase album (it skirts too closely to easy listening/new age for my taste), I do love 'Dayvan Cowboy.' I've always felt that Boards of Canada's sound was hugely reminiscent of old science films--indeed, the band took their name from the Film Board of Canada, who produced and scored those kind of films--and combined with the imagery here, it's like a dream come true.

The video's first half features the surreal footage of Joe Kittinger making his record shattering jumps from high altitude. As he descends on a parachute, we switch to footage of surfer Laird Hamilton. Maybe it's just me, but I could easily imagine some droning voiceover talking about the science behind these things while the stoner kids in class wipe the drool from their chins and poke each other while saying "dude, the music...woah."