Geogaddi

Geogaddi, the most anticipated sophomore full-length from an IDM act since Aphex Twin's SAW 2 in 1994, certainly looks and feels similar to the 1998 Boards of Canada debut, Music Has the Right to Children. The package design includes artful, bleached-out photos of children playing, while the lengthy track listing balances short vignettes with longer tracks. Fans will be delighted to hear that the music also reveals no great departure from one of the most immediately recognizable sounds in electronica; a pair of Scottish cottage producers apparently whiling away the hours creating music, Boards of Canada specialize in evocative, mournful, sample-laden downtempo music often sounding as though produced on malfunctioning equipment excavated from the ruins of an early-'70s computer lab. Geogaddi has a bit less in the way of melodics (the prime factor why Music Has the Right to Children was an immediate classic) and, as a result, sounds slightly less like trip-hop for fairy tales and more like the slightly experimental, but definitely produced, electronic music it is. Still, Boards of Canada surely haven't lost their touch for creating spectral machine music: "1969" is particularly lovely, with starburst synthesizer lines and disembodied vocoders trilling the chorus (the samples apparently originate from a David Koresh follower). For "Sunshine Recorder," a very fitting vocal sample -- lifted from a documentary concerning a species of dandelion found by sub-aquatic robots on the ocean floor (and yes, that is Leslie Nielsen narrating) -- prefaces the melancholy synth, vocal cut-ups, and glacier-speed basslines. It's clear Boards of Canada labored long to create Geogaddi, since only a tremendous amount of work can produce music that flows so naturally and unobtrusively that it never sounds produced. ~ John Bush

98年にひっそり世に出された前作『Music Has Right To Children』の波紋が静かに衝撃へと変化し、それが渇望にまで達した4年の歳月を経て登場する、掛け値なしに〈待望〉の言葉が似合うボーズ・オブ・カナダ（以下BOC）の新作。ジャケットの色が前作の薄いブルーから燃えるような赤に変わり、多少の無国籍エスニック・テイストが加わった。が、全体はすでにニュー・エレクトロニカの定番フォーマットと化した感のあるアタックの強いヒップホップ直系のビートに、美しい音色のシンセで奏でられる儚く夢見心地なメロディーをもつ上モノといった、いわゆるBOC節に寸分の変化はない。というか初めから完璧だったBOCに、変化する必要は全くないのだ。前作にも色濃く漂っていた〈対象のないノスタルジー〉の濃度とメロディーの甘美さ、緩慢な〈死〉を彷彿とさせる静謐さはさりげなく増加、さらに中毒性を増した静かなる猛毒のごとき佇まい。
bounce (C)一ノ木裕之