i feel like honestly the appeal of this album lies purely in the performances. its such a passionately performed album. how lound and heavy the guitar strums, how jeff mangum sings. the horns. idk i feel like this album would be hard to cover. i think from a purely musical and compositional point of view i think it might be kind of basic but the level of passion and performance really makes this album.

What I take away most from this album are just these unrelenting, dissonant, mathy songs where the band just go full throttle for like 7+ minutes at a time. most of these songs are quite linear and dont have any sense of chorus or verse, which is not necessarily a bad thing at all. Like this album is so long and somehow just so densely packed. The interlude moments on this album (new intro for example) where the band ease up basically just sound like normal songs and not 10 minute long bricks ... read more

Boards of Canada takes quite an analog and organic approach to electronic music, taking the usual pallet of sharp, glitchy percussion, heavily kick drums, then pairing it with detuned synthesizers, heavily manipulated, robotized, other worldly/creepy vocal samples (listen to the track 1969 for the clearest example of this), as well as sounds and samples of nature and everyday life (water, birds, children laughing, train sounds, old television programs), all of these elements come together to ... read more

yea i mean its brilliant

a really intersting mashup of atmospheric, serene sounds and jagged, cold, electronic sounds that just ram up right against eachother in an artistic way

this album sounds like it was recorded in a microwave, like many of their albums sound (in the best way possible), and like they were doing this in the 60s?

Ive heard this album so many times. Another just really well executed album with great production, performances, atmosphere, grooves, lyrics, chord progressions, melodies, song structures etc. only lull for me is present tense, for me it feels a little to saccarine.

I guess a 'critique' you could levy at this album as a whole is that it is a little understated and straightforward, I wouldn't say there are many like mind blowing moments on here, however I dont think its trying to be. its just ... read more

I must have heard this album at least 100 times and I can say that the only legit lull for me on this album is All I Need; I find the drum groove as well as Thom’s cadence and lyrics to be a little basic. I just find the 4/4 drum beat w basically no instrumentation aside from the not super heavy bass line to be yes not that interesting. Yes, all the other tracks are amazing like how water is wet. I will most likely edit this review with more elaboration on why i enjoy each song but i feel ... read more

I always forget how amazing this album is. its one of the most beautiful, challenging, and emotionally potent experiences I've had with music, full stop

Thom manages to take an otherwise cut and dry musical palette of synths and drums and mixes it with his own feelings of anxiety/panic about his surroundings, which culminate pretty well on tracks "Last I Heard (...He was circling the Drain)" and "Runwayway", but fall flat on tracks like "Twist" or "Not the News".

there are some beautiful and dreamy sounds on here, which I like, but every song runs within a very narrow sonic vein, which begins to feel redundant after about 2 songs.

While I enjoyed the new production ideas as well as the majority of the features on this project, the sheer number of tracks as well as the redundancy and unoriginality of them bring the overall enjoy-ability and replay-ability down.