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Boards of Canada Geogaddi Warp Records February 19, 2002 Sometimes I wonder if IDM music is written with future BMW commercials or MTV programming segues in mind. Too often I purchase an electronic album, and while giving it its first listen all I can visualize is camera trickery focused on some sports car on a windy road or a SUV tanking in some nature scene. Sometimes, I can even here the advertisement voiceover offering me low apr rates and cash back. Well, Geogoddi does little to keep these visions at bay. In fact, Boards of Canada has made the sample selection even less difficult for the advertising firm, including eleven tracks that clock in at no more than a minute-thirty. These firms no longer have to spend their time arguing over what excerpt to sample. The fragments are offered as exactly that - fragments ready for sampling. To continue with the analogy, the record rarely goes beyond what can be used in a car commercial. If you were sitting on your couch and decided to surf through the first ten seconds of each track on the record, you would think that Geogoddi is remarkable. Unfortunately, the setups on each track never really deliver on their first ten-seconds worth of promise, only long enough to establish the enigmatic optimism characteristic of the IDM genre their debut helped define. Geogoddi is the Scottish, knob-fiddling ambient electronic duo, Boards of Canada's follow-up release to their debut "instant classic," Music has the Right to Children. This premiere release in many ways set the benchmark for IDM. While not a revolutionary genre resister, the album articulated an IDM sound that went beyond studio trickery and presented a sound deep and full. The success of their first album catapulted the group into the higher eschelon of IDM tweekers like Autechre and Aphex Twin. Their highly anticipated follow-up album, while not a disappointment in terms of capably reproducing a sound very similar to their first release, fails to satisfy a different set of expectations. Geo |
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Geogoddi consists of eleven pairs of tracks where a short one-minute prelude introduces a longer accompanying track and a final minute-thirty track of Cagean silence. This seemingly particular arrangement/formula made me think that some larger conceptual grand schema might be at work. I thought I should spend my time trying to figure out the relationship between these pairs and how they fit together in the record as a whole. But as I got into double-digit tracks, the close listens became increasingly dull and the project more evidently fruitless What struck me the most about this album was its lack of compositional evolution. Even when individual tracks were studied closely as independent pieces, isolated from the album as a whole, they did not go anywhere. Both the album and the individual tracks fail to develop beyond the initial premise outlined in the introductory stanzas. Nevertheless, these introductions (despite functioning mostly on a superficial sound production level) make for an interesting listen. Sometimes, particularly "1969" and "Dawn Chorus," even good enough to sustain my interest over the course of the four-five minute regular track lengths. The tone of the album is not much of a radical departure from the haunting nostalgia of their last album, mostly reminds me of the soundtracks to sped up films of budding flowers, cloud formations or some other nature-friendly mystery science. While good background music for driving widing roads or entering deep-city subway stations, I'm not so sure if it works as an album worthy of 65 minutes worth of your attention. Maxwell Yim 3.06.02 |
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well... i partially agree. |
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(but i'm sure lots of people will come here and answer "no way man!! geogaddi is a masterpiece!!!"... =)) |
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:) Geogaddi is good, I should listen to it more |
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(but i'm sure lots of people will come here and answer "no way man!! geogaddi is a masterpiece!!!"... =)) |
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i didnt write that by the way |
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ready lets go |
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you could ahve linked it |
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no you couldn't. |
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why not ? |
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I was just taking a piss |
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Geogaddi is soooooo not commercial music. sheesh. |
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Maxwell Yim is an idiot |
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Boards Of Canada made a soundtrack for a phone company commercial... (featuring leonardo di caprio too) it was on the board but i didn't find it with the search engine. |
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They used Kid for Today in a BMW commercial, as well. But I doubt they wrote that song with the explicit intention that it was to be used in car commercials... |
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I doubt they actually make the tracks with adverts in mind, but they could stop fucking licensing them. Whores. btw, i LOVE geogaddi. |
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but what's wrong with having music you like in commercials? it makes more money to the artist but is that a bad thing? ' _ ' (unless you associate the music with the product, if it's the case it can be annoying...) |
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boc are the least evolving band ever still, some tracks are good |
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some tracks suck most tracks roawk. |
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I disagree with you cheffe: Just because the you can tell it's the same band is dosen't mean they haven't evolved. I think geogaddi was a big step in what they were doing the whole album is very carefully orchestrated and it really shows how far they have come in writing and production term. I'm fed up with this must break ground bullshit. |
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I think in virtually all cases advertising cheapens the musical value of any song, especially if they're plugging blatantly unethical products... i'm glad BoC are making money for what they do (so well) but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Same with aphex. |
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i'm a human. |
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But don't forget we are all into the music, and the music does belong to them, it;s their right to do what they want with it. |
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there is no need for breaking new ground every time. but any boc release sounds the same to me. that is, to me. i'm not talking about making a giant leap but some evolution over the years i'd say is necessary to call someone creative. |
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I agree. I think that a lot of the sounds used ARE very similar in MHTRTC and geogaddi, it's the undercurrents of feeling that make them worlds apart. Geogaddi is a much darker, more sinister album, and i think it needs a lot more listens to take every bit in... i always think there's new stuff there to discover, and i doubt i'll ever find it all (not a bad thing.) |
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Glad someone agrees with me. |
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i liked geogaddi for quite some time and i agreed with what you say now. but one day it got boring and most boc got boring the same day and no undercurrent helped i think they are overrated, apart from some decent tracks like aquarius |
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most people here would agree with you i think |
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Sometimes I wonder if IDM music is written with future BMW commercials or MTV programming segues in mind. damn right. i don't think it's intentional at all (at least in BoC's case) but i really do think this music lends itself very easily to some flashy car ads and movie trailers. the mainstream media co-opted this music years ago, and logically so, what with all those convenient quick cuts built into the music and that "modern technology sound" and/or "beautiful/relaxing ambience". To continue with the analogy, the record rarely goes beyond what can be used in a car commercial. If you were sitting on your couch and decided to surf through the first ten seconds of each track on the record, you would think that Geogoddi is remarkable. Unfortunately, the setups on each track never really deliver on their first ten-seconds worth of promise, only long enough to establish the enigmatic optimism characteristic of the IDM genre their debut helped define. i generally agree with this. BoC have made some of the most amazing bits of music but i never listen to their albums because the tracks as whole entities are so stagnant and plain. yes, it's weird to think of something so different, brilliant, and pleasant sounding as "plain" but the way they underdevelop these motifs can be described so succinctly. they should take a lesson from their scottish brethren mogwai's latest album and come up with something that really lives up to their ability next time. |
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Well i guess it's a matter of taste, but how much their stuff have you heard because there is if you look alot of variety in their early work. |
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true, twoism somehat is an exception to what i said above. |
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they used the track 5-9-78 from A Few Old Tunes for a Nissan commercial. |
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you need to listen deeper. they are not stagnant and plain at all; just subtle |
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chris cunningham made that commercial |
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i've listened deeply for 5 years. |
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yeah, that's prolly the one |
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Repetition truly is sort of a weakness of Boards of Canada that they have a damn hard time getting around. Take Twoism, for example.. good grief, great tracks but do you think they could beat those melodies into the ground any longer? I still disagree with most of the Geogaddi review.. I think it's a good album, despite some of its potentially new age, car commercial tendencies. These aren't intentional though.. it's a misreading of the sound that just happens to overlap in this arena. It almost made me sick to my stomach one day when I went to Borders and saw Geogaddi as a featured item in a listening station, the very places that house Yanni and Jason Mraz and Madonna. Ugh!! Almost made me as sick as the time I saw EP7 shelved right next to the Backstreet Boys. But that's another matter.. |
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I went to Borders and saw Geogaddi as a featured item in a listening station, the very places that house Yanni and Jason Mraz and Madonna. that would make me very happy. i'm ecstatic when i see or hear about someone who would seem "unlikely" getting into some of the music i love the most. i think the "beautiful pastorals" of BoC would be great additions to the record collection of any middle aged working woman who wants something to unwind to after work or something to listen to while doing the dishes. |
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Really... that's quite intriguing actually that we have honest, but completely opposite reactions concerning the music we both love.. I guess my fear is partially personal/selfish and partially not.. First, it sorta is less special when everyone knows about it. You don't feel as cool or underground. This is a very superficial complaint.. but it goes deeper. The flip side is that I hate to see music getting popular for the wrong reasons. It's one thing for Madonna to get popular because she has music that is pandering to the masses and is made, in part, essentially to sell copies. With Boards of Canada, I hate to be so condescending, but I suspect people are overlooking the time, energy, message, and feeling inherent in the music and latching onto the knee-deep 'sound' of it, just as if they were flipping on John Tesh. One time a couple years ago when my class was on our class trip, one of my friends was like 'Hey Jonathan! look at this!'. He handed me an in-flight magazine and pointed to the 'Easy Listening' or 'Relaxed Grooves' playlist for the flight, and 'In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country' was listed there along with a host of other typical easy listening bands. I don't know.. it just gets to me when artists are misinterpreted like that. |
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i applaud you for admitting selfish feelings.. we all feel that way sometimes, i think, wanting to be the cool kids in the know. but ultimately i'd much rather other people be let in on something i think is really good. also i have to say i don't think any of the really popular "IDM" acts (ie: most of the top warp artists) set out to make patently inaccessible music for an elite.. i think they're really happy when people of all types embrace their music and aren't too concerned that not every person is getting all the finer details as long as SOME people are. i think BoC can be easy listening if you want it to be (and most people in the world would; we're a minority). |
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i'm at the point now where the only thing that matters to me is whether i like the music or not. i could care less if boc was played at the supermarket or during halftime at a high school basketball game. boc is one of my favorite bands regardless. the whole focus that music is only good if it's "underground" seems rather silly to me. |
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Geogaddi I don't like. Music Has The Right To Children really I don't like. Twoism I REALLY don't like. |
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"Aquarius" was booming over the bar at the Bamboo Club in Tempe, AZ when we arrived to eat there last weekend. I think "Notorious" by Duran Duran played next. I kind of wished they had played all of MHTRTC. |
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