Boards Of Canada, eh?

Boards of Canada are an electronic duo that employ minimalistic, repetitive hip hop beats with atmospheric loops and samples that come together to form a hypnotic flow perfect for putting on when you're driving, doing homework or just kickin' back. 1998's 'Music Has The Right To Children' album is one of the seminal works in the retardedly-named IDM (intelligent dance music) genre. I would venture to call this music trip-hop, but even that's a name not worthy of this band. They sound at once futuristic and retro, like a dystopian sci-fi movie, yet maintain a very hip hop feel. Even though their songs are mostly cyclical, they're so well constructed that the progressions sound new every time they're repeated. Plus their albums have plenty of trippy interludes and the songs bleed together perfectly.

To newcomers I can say that if you like "Endtroducing" by DJ Shadow, you will dig on these guys a lot (Radiohead are big fans of BOC and their influence can be heard on 2000's "Kid A" and 2001's "Amnesiac"). The albums that are essential in the Boards of Canada catalog are the aforementioned 'Music Has The Right To Children' and an alternate mix of that album called 'BOC MAXIMA.' 2002's 'Geogaddi' is where to look next if you're down.

Their sound also happens to be conducive to scoring weird-ass found-footage montages by filmmakers who want to cut their teeth editing weird things together in a Soviet Montage kind of way. The first is called "Everything You Do Is A Balloon" off 'BOC MAXIMA.' The mash-up of sound and video on this is perfect and my friend Justin said "it seemed like I was on an Oxy Contin trip for 7 minutes." Be patient because the main beat kicks in at the 1:35 mark. Primus has also used this video footage as well at their concerts.

The next is a fan made video of "Happy Cycling" off 'Music Has The Right To Children' featuring some impressive home-made CG that goes well with a condensed version of the original 7 minute album closer.

Finally a weird mash-up of "ROYGBIV" also off 'Music Has The Right To Children' to what appears to be edited together from commercials and promotional video for software companies in the 80's.