Boards of Canada_Tomorrows Harvest

From the Opening intro melody of Tomorrows Harvest you can tell boards of Canada are back. It’s been eight years since their last album the campfire headphase and it was worth the wait.

BOC were a pioneering part of the IDM scene in the 90’s. Their dreamlike sound design and use of sampling made them one of the cornerstones of the genre. But their sound (although highly influential) has always belonged to them. Tomorrows Harvest replicates this sound all over again and will fit nicely into their back catalogue but still has some new ideas that keep it fresh and interesting. Synthesizers are very much the forefront to Tomorrows Harvest. Looped samples of more traditional instruments have taken a side line on the most part, with the music beds being made this time from drone and pad sounds giving the album a more ambient dreamlike feel overall.

This is where BOC excel. To me their music feels like when you wake up from a dream but can’t quite remember what happened or whether it was a nightmare. Their music constantly hints at feelings but rarely brigs them to the forefront of the track. There’s always an underlying feeling of something dark lurking in the albums shadows. What cuts through these ambiguous textures is the heavily processed drum patterns, chopped and sequenced to perfection which drive all the tracks forward.

Tomorrows Harvest manages slip into your subconscious and buries itself there. With repeat listens the album starts to feel like its been there all along. You get a continuous feeling that your about to uncover and understand it and yet its constantly evading you which makes it a captivating piece of work.