Track Listing

1. Wildlife Analysis
2. Eagle in Your Mind
3. Color of the Fire
4. Telephasic Workshop
5. Triangles & Rhombuses
6. Sixtyten
7. Turquoise Hexagon Sun
8. Kaini Industries
9. Bocuma
10. Roygbiv
11. Rue the Whirl
12. Aquarius
13. Olson
14. Pete Standing Alone
15. Smokes Quantity
16. Open the Light
17. One Very Important Thought
18. Happy Cycling

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100910 in Music
• Released on: 1998-09-22
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Music Has The Right To Children is their most successful Warp/Matador release. An electronic album that appeals to rock kids. 18 tracks.

Amazon.com
Like dust motes dancing in hazy afternoon sunlight, the compositions of Scottish duo Boards of Canada seduce listeners by illuminating almost imperceptible elements flitting through the cluttered cosmos. Though their saturated hip-hop beats and deployment of timbres as tactile textures recalls Autechre, Boards of Canada are distinguished by sweet melodies and a fondness for using vaguely familiar sounds outside of Western harmonic tradition--snippets of party conversations, bouncing Ping-Pong balls--to function as emotional triggers. Despite its sonic watercolor washes and childlike exclamations of "I love you" ("The Color of the Fire"), Music Has the Right to Children is not some yellowing document scribbled by glassy-eyed, loved-up rave casualties. This exemplary, evocative recording almost hovers above any fixed point on the time line of pop-music history. --Kurt B. Reighley

Customer Reviews

Original
The first full-length album of BoC is a masterpiece of sorts. The material is accurately chosen and sorted in a way to resemble a "mini suite". The music shows influences from various musicians, but always manages to be original. "Telephasic Workshps" is a bit of "My life in the bust of ghosts" (especially "Mea Culpa"); "Turquoise Exagon Sun" has trip-hop overtones (of the Portishead variety). Electric piano and Moog (with additional sound treatment) are ubiquitous, providing a pleasant progressive (say, Tangerine Dream) and/or electric jazz touch to the songs. And are the numbers in "Aquarius" a little quotation from "Einstein on the Beach" by Glass? Overall, I would play the influence of Autechre (and AFX) down: it is present in the rythm programming, but not overwhelming. BOC is not rythm-driven as Autechre or AFX, but rather melody-driven. In fact, what I most liked in this CD is the beauty of the progression of the chords. The melodies are original and never trivial. Sandison and Eoin seem musicians-turned-musicians and not DJs-turned-musicians. This is what makes a BOC piece so easy to recognize and fresh.

A recommended CD for any fan of high-quality electronica who wants to listen to something different than the usual suspects.

Yes JR...
... and writing a great novel is easy, you only need a pen and paper and you just have to put one word after another.

a hazy and dreamy place
I've always been a big fan of electronic music, but this album, while retaining all the required bleeps, clicks and beats of the genre, transcends its counterparts by being so subtly beautiful. That's an important thing to remember, however: this album is subtle--no instant gratification or adrenaline rushes that would leave you dancing to a raging beat. It's a gradual kind of listening experience, and concentrates on quiet, persistent melodies that weave in and out of the foreground, and the beats are gradual and soft for the most part--like some of the more gentle songs from aphex twin. The technical excellence is there, like the afore mentioned idm god aphex twin or the likes of autuchre or even orbital. But there is something very candid and childlike in some of these songs-- like roygbiv or aquarius--that remind one of the innocence of childhood, and hazy memories of eating cheerios while watching saturday morning cartoons, catching grasshoppers, and playing in the park immediately come to mind. But other songs like telephasic workshop sound much more grown up (my favorite) begins crackly and muffled like an old favorite record, but gradually works itself up to a beat-intensified frenzy, with really cool voices lapping over one another as they compete with a beat that gradually overtakes them. One of the best electronic albums I have. On a side note, if you like Boards of Canada, and want something similiar but more mellow, try Biosphere or Selected Ambient Works II by Aphex Twin. But if you like something a tad more beat-oriented and deconstructive and desolate, try Autechre. A little more ambient, like the shorter tracks on this album, try Pete Namlook--sure to please!