Boards of Canada’s first album in thirteen years sees Scottish electronica legends Marcus Eoain and Michael Sandison building on their distinctively ominous formula. Inferno is crisper and more in focus. It’s clearly from the same place as their previous projects, but blown up to a bigger, more dynamic take on their signature sound. It’s brilliantly structured, moving from high to low without ever losing focus throughout its 69-minute runtime.
Following the intro track’s sweetly oscillating synths comes ‘Prophecy At 1420 MHz’, the album’s lead single. It’s grand and anthemic, opening with these big guitar stabs that give way to these funky, slightly dissonant-sounding synths while a demonic, pitched-down voice asserts: “I am the truth, the descension, the question of reality”. Track seven, named ‘Nakara’ after the Sanskrit word for hell, has this same anthemic energy. It sounds wonderfully occult, and features beautiful, unintelligible voices singing in the background to an almost calming melody.
Inferno balances out the harder-hitting tracks with slower, stripped-back soundscapes like ‘Memory Death’, a hauntingly beautiful moment on the album featuring slow bass plucks and swelling synths over heart-monitor beeps. ‘Deep Time’ has a similar feeling, as a more ambient-leaning tune with a slowly plucked string melody. Strangely, the track was the subject of a recent promotional video released by The White House, which the duo have said was unauthorised. The video features what looks like an attempt to imitate the duo’s aesthetic, showing a chopper edited with a grainy overlay.
The album also makes use of Boards of Canada’s classic, strange, off-putting vocal samples. ‘Father and Son’ uses what sounds like samples from an evangelical Christian broadcast, cut up to form a rhythm that sounds poetic. The different voices pitch up and down over minimalist drums and subtle detuned synths to create a hypnotic, almost catchy track. Track ten, ‘The Word Becomes Flesh’, features an educational voiceover about the development of embryos over a punchy bassline and busy, layered drums, which at this point in the album, and in their career, feels pretty standard.
The latter half of the album seems to wind down a tad, with the exception of ‘Arena Americanada’. This song builds with a slightly offbeat bass riff before releasing into these bright, reverb-laden synths that would feel at home in a new wave song. At this point in the album, the brightness feels disconcerting. Synth stabs resolve into a climax that trails off tactfully into a sparser section once again, and the final moments on the album feel somewhat hopeful. ‘I Saw Through Platonia’, the album’s final track, has a confusing quality to it, sounding like what could be a happy melody trying to break through.
The album closes with ‘I Saw Platonia’, a slightly uneasy track built around a melody which swells into being almost hopeful, filtered through layers of sound to drag it down. The album is an impressive addition to Boards of Canada’s catalogue. They remain unwavering in their ability to capture their distinctive mood while still taking things in a new direction. Their ability to come through with an updated, fresh take on their sound cements them as two of the most talented artists in electronica.
