Back in the Nineties, people tended to class the Scottish electronic production duo Boards of Canada alongside their weirdo peers on Warp Records. At the time, few would have dared to dub them “trip-hop,” and maybe they shouldn’t have. But BoC’s lazy breakbeats, pitch-bent synthesizers and samples, and woozy air did and does point straight in that direction. Even now, though, that phrase might strike the ear as too time-bound — too Nineties, especially for a duo whose best work has proven veritably timeless.
But look around: Like skyrocketing gas prices and threats of nuclear war, trip-hop is back, bigly. And not only have many of BoC’s peak moments — from “Happy Cycling,” on their 1999 Peel Sessions EP (later added to Music Has the Right to Children, their debut from 1998), to “1969,” a highlight of 2002’s Geogaddi — sonically incarnated this style at its faded-Technicolor best, the term itself has gained new currency of late, with hipster DJs from Toronto to London dedicating recent sets to it. And the Italian techno duo Voices from the Lake’s spectacular March set for the BBC’s Essential Mix peaks three-quarters of the way in, when they drop “Happy Cycling” like the prize from a piñata.
Anyway, period charm has always been Boards of Canada’s greatest strength. They issue music when they feel like it, reveal very little of their own personal lives in the process, and let the press come to them (ahem). Though their basic approach chimes nicely with a recent trend, and despite the noisy anti-campaign the duo and their label, Warp Records, did in advance of it, Inferno required about as much/little astroturfing as anyone this side of Sade. It also delivers in much the same way Sade does: It ain’t broke so nothing needs fixing. So yes, this album — the group’s first studio LP in 13 years sounds very Nineties (complimentary).
The most surprising aspects of Inferno are the parts that sound less like hazy glossolalia and more straightforwardly anthemic. The nervy pulse of “Prophecy at 1420 MHz” recalls — what’s this? — latter-day Massive Attack: needling midrange riff, flat snare, treated dystopic male voice, weirdly soothing.
But with the gauzy escapism that Boards of Canada offer has become a veritable electronic-music cottage industry, it’s nice to be reminded that nobody is better at their kind of limpid lullabies. “Introit” leads it off perfectly, with a half-minute of vintage synths from a semi-recalled BBC science special. As for “You Retreat in Time and Space” — hell, even the title is trip-hop, never mind the slow drum shuffle, the quietly surging bass line, the big fuzzy keyboard line, the curling string pads.
“Father and Son” cuts up straightlaced clips of vocal speech into charming taffy — mocking the company man may be an old production trick, but these two make Coldcut-style jokiness into a virtue yet again. But a lot of it is also straightforwardly programmatic, as with “Into the Magic Land,” which rides a tremolo-soaked guitar into a greyscale forest. The environs of Inferno are lush, rich, and cinematic — they go past genres as well as embodying them.
