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Boards of Canada The Campfire Headphase Released in 2005 7.2/10 Styles Ambient Trip-hop Experimental Electronica Song Highlights Dayvan Cowboy Constants are Changing Tears From the Compound Eye |
Boards of Canada are probably my favourite electronica group, so I've been looking forward to the release of their fourth full-length album, The Campfire Headphase, all year. With a three year wait between albums (their shortest gap between releases thus far), the Scottish duo are clearly interested in quality over quantity, but the long waiting time also serves to raise expectations - 1998's Music Has the Right to Children and 2002's Geogaddi are both widely regarded as landmark electronica albums, and they've had plenty of time to add to this legacy. Well, the good news is that The Campfire Headphase is a great album. It's got the Boards of Canada trademarks - thumping, hip-hop beats, dreamy synth melodies and interesting sampling - working to their usual great effect. The bad news is that The Campfire Headphase is only a great album. There's little revelation to be found here, and while a few parts of the album are on par with their previous two masterworks, there's just not enough parts here that really makes you go "wow!" the way those past albums did. So The Campfire Headphase becomes a very tough album to judge. By any other artist, this would probably be hailed as genius, but these guys have done better, not once but twice, in the past. In the end there's one big factor that saves the album from being an outright comparative disappointment - guitars. Boards of Canada have never used conventional instrumentation on their albums (past the percussion), which is why their songs managed to take on that alien quality which is so appealing to so many listeners. However, on The Campfire Headphase they've started using guitars, not so much as a basic instrument, but as yet another type of sound for them to bend, stretch, warp and tinker with in all kinds of different ways. This new element keeps the album sounding fresh, which is extremely important, as it gives you a genuine reason to listen to it, rather than just throwing on one of its superior older siblings. Since Boards of Canada choose to really play around with the guitar sound before laying it down over the beats, the album maintains that all-important organic, otherworldly feeling, which is really a crucial aspect of the recording. There's also some great variation between the type of guitar sound used. On "Chromakey Dreamcoat" there's a slightly off-key electric guitar sample running throughout, which sounds awesome, while "Hey Saturday Sun" features a gentle acoustic melody layered over something which sounds like warped woodwind instrument. The biggest highlight, though, is "Dayvan Cowboy", which opens with a majestic, static-obscured introduction, before leading into the song's incredible second half, in which the melody truly soars, accompanied by measured, reverby acoustic strums and spine-tingling cymbal crashes. It's easily one of the best tracks Boards of Canada have recorded yet, so good that it bumps the entirety of The Campfire Headphase up a notch. Not every track on The Campfire Headphase contains guitar samples, though, so it's very fortunate that of those which lack this new feature, the majority are standouts. "Oscar See Through Red Eye" places drifting, etherial synth over fuzzy snares and muffled vocal samples to create something alltogether wonderful, while the beautifully serene "Tears From the Compound Eye" feels like a Music Has the Right to Children outtake. The guitar is also absent during most of the group's trademark shortened interludes, which serve their usual purpose as both ambient breathers between the longer compositions and great little songs in their own right. So The Campfire Headphase is kind of pleasing and disappointing at once, but the bottom line is that there really is plenty to like about the album. It certainly grows on you over multiple listens, as all the new tricks settle in. Anyone who likes the other albums is encouraged to pick it up (if they haven't already). Despite the fact that it doesn't live up to its predecessors, it's still a very solid album, and they can't all be earth-shattering masterpieces, can they? |