BOARDS OF CANADA
Inferno (Warp)
Boards Of Canada have long been the sort of act whose fans sift through the finer details of their releases for secret messages and other aural Easter eggs. What with Inferno being their first new release since 2013, it’ll assuredly get the treatment too. Helpfully, the Scottish electronic duo offer something more overt on Prophecy At 1420 MHz, second of a hefty 18 tracks, with a booming, freak-out-the-stoners voice proclaiming, “I am God… the ultimate resonance” over the sort of slo-mo cinematic electro that Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison perfected nearly 30 years ago.
All of which is to say that Inferno sounds like almost nothing but a Boards Of Canada album, even with a notable uptick in sampled dialogue and cute additions like the Celtic-sounding folk vocals on Naraka, and this speaks much more to the unassailable position they have made for themselves in pop culture than a suggestion of a creative impasse.
words NOEL GARDNER
