#920 Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Welp. Its a Boards of Canada album, bringing together ambient and glitch sensibilities with a basic backbones of beats. The usual. Does Tomorrow's Harvest sound feel less adventurous because it's more familiar than it was 15 years ago? Sure. It's also tighter: it's tempered, annealed, generally more aurally pliable and readily agreeable than their previous efforts. There are strange voices and burbles and hisses and hums, but they simmer under the surface as texture instead of landscape.

Paradoxically though, the more consistent sound that makes it sound less alien also makes it sound more alien; there's less of a sense of studio exploration and more of a sense of a fully found alien artifact. The mythology rings less true, which makes it ring more true.

Let me explain it this way: Geogaddi, for example, sounded like two guys making music that sounded like it was from another dimension. Tomorrow's Harvest sounds like two guys found an actual recording of music from another dimension and put some beats underneath it to make it understandable to human ears. This is a less adventurous album, but its otherworldly consistency makes it compelling in its own timeless way that may yet stand the test 4/5