Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children

Some huge major label just released a "tribute to John Peel" double disc compilation. As dumb a concept as packing that mans fourty years worth of played music in to two discs, the people in charge managed to exceed my expectations for the disc's suckiness by packing the whole thing with really obvious, well known bands that give little display of the eccentric and beautiful music taste that the man had. Yeah "Teenage Kicks" was his favorite track of all time and I guess The Fall, Captain Beefheart and The Jesus & Mary Chain deserved places in there too. But where are most of his proclaimed favorite bands? Where's the reggae, death metal and folk that he was such an avid supporter of? The only real variation from the slew of big name rock acts is the electronic act Orbital and that's hardly essential.

So I figured I'd give you some tracks by a band Peel championed very strongly and give some variation from, well, rock music. That band is an ambient electronic act that recorded a number of sessions with the man himself. I do have a copy of their Peel sessions but I don't have it to hand and this record is fucking tight so what does it matter? Go out and buy the sessions if you want. Amazon has them pretty cheap.

Boards Of Canada, despite their name are from Scotland and have been making music since the mid 80s. However it wasn't until this, their break through album that they got any kind of serious recognition. They do very few interviews and little advertising so their success is strongly attributed to DJs such as Peel and word of mouth. They've released two more full lengths (one was released yesterday) since this record and they've shown that "MHTRTC" was no fluke.

Their ambiance draws strongly from the warm fuzzy feeling of 80s TV and the band confesses that their music was strongly inspired by such sound. Weird place to draw influence? Yeah, but it worked so who are you to question that. The sound is always somewhat haunting and shares a bit in common with Richard.D.James' ambient work in tune structure and the haunting voices that can be heard on many tracks. The music on offer is a fantastic soundtrack to a very bleak relaxation period. Give it a try kids and then buy the record. Get their others too.

Eagle In Your Mind
Turquoise Hexagon Sun
Rue The Whirl

Expired