Boards of Canada: Tomorrow's Harvest

Interviewing the late John Balance of Coil in 2004, he noted that the cult Scottish electronic duo Boards Of Canada – with whom Coil were friends – did “astonishing things; they disconnect themselves from the internet while recording an album... It’s a hermetically sealed environment, such a personal thing.”
According to a recent interview, BOC – aka brothers Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison – followed their usual procedure whilst recording Tomorrow’s Harvest, retreating to their rural studio to work, as in “an urban setting you can’t really escape being reminded of the current year, and music fashions”. This perhaps goes some way to explaining why BOC still sound so utterly uncontaminated by outside influence.
It’s been eight years since the duo’s previous effort, The Campfire Headphase, and if that album found BOC incorporating acoustic instrumentation and striving for a chilled rural aesthetic, Tomorrow’s Harvest – its title inspired by a ‘70s film about climate change and crop failure – relocates their sound to the heart of the city, a point reinforced by the spectral image of San Francisco on the cover.
The dsytopian theme is flagged on the opener ‘Gemini’, the dark electro menace of which recalls the cyber-noir of Blade Runner. Sandison and Eoin have noted that horror movie composers such as John Carpenter and Riz Ortolani were reference points during the recording, and the dread-filled, ‘80s VHS video nasty sensibility informs such wonderfully sinister tracks as ‘Reach For The Dead’, ‘Sick Times’ and ‘Collapse’.
Though there is a nod to their landmark debut Music Has The Right To Children on both ‘Jacquard Causeway’ and ‘Nothing Is Real’, the key element on the album is dread-soaked paranoia. Such is the sense of foreboding on tunes like ‘Telepath’, ‘Transmisione Ferox’ and ‘Come To Dust’, the government may well choose to make Tomorrow’s Harvest the telephone holding music after the bomb goes off.
The record finishes in suitably ominous fashion with the malevolent drone of ‘Semena Mertvykh’, completing one of the most unsettling experiences this side of the Fine Gael Ard Fheis. Tomorrow’s Harvest is a timely reminder of BOC’s unique brilliance, even if – to paraphrase the aforementioned Coil – it’s definitely music to play in the dark.

Key Track: 'Come To Dust'