Can music sound dark and childlike at the same time? Sure. Welcome to Boards of Canada’s “In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country”. Coming at us with just four tracks is this concentrated EP of bucolic textures dripping with blue wavelengths, silver train horns and green treelines. In a genre known for its “Intelligent” Dance Music, this IDM piece is all emotion and no thought.
“Kid For Today” opens the show with its pervasive synth melody that feels wide and spread out like jam over whatever landscape this track transports you to. Nuances like the ‘blowing wind’ flanger effect that sounds about 5 layers deep below the surface synth attach vision to feeling. Put yourself in America’s heartland giving witness to a rusted playground decorated with shimmering indigo filters. That might begin to sum up “Kid For Today”.
More shimmers on this next track. The second track “Amo Bishop Roden” plays a teetering act of cold chrome synths played over a ticking clock drumkit that never seems to actually tick forward. A track stuck in time but never growing stale. Something to note here is the track’s title. Amo Bishop Roden was the widow of a rival of David Koresh. This is the same Koresh who lead his Branch Davidian cult to a deadly firefight with authorities in Waco, TX back in ‘93. This theme is explored more thoroughly in the next track.
Third and title track “In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country” is a banger. Not a head banger but really a gorgeous track. The ultimate in mysterio technology. Vocals on this one are beyond robotic and straight brain drilling. Synths sounding like a distant train signaling departure after autumn’s first frost. Boards of Canada combine their peak nostalgic sound with godlike drum progressions to birth this EP’s highlight. Come out and live in a religious community in a beautiful place out in the country.
Finally “Zoetrope” draws the curtains with cascading cheerful icicles. Wherever the previous tracks took you, it is now time to leave. You can’t help but feel satisfied as the building reverberation amplifies your fondest memories of the last 20 or so minutes. This one feels ahead of its time, like an upbeat minimal techno track you would find in Berlin a decade after this EP’s release.
In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country bridges the gap betwixt Boards of Canada’s foundational classics Music Has The Right To Children (1998) and Geogaddi (2002) as a focused 24 minute EP acting almost as an intermission of the two albums. Sounds from both LP’s can be heard merged into their own signature wavelengths that still enscorcell me after a dozen listens.
Electronique Critique 