After a 13-year hiatus, the return of electronic music titans Boards of Canada with their new album, Inferno, has been met with a rather surprising chill. Personally, I think the anticipation for this release was palpable, given their profound impact on the sonic landscape. Their signature blend of nostalgic, spectral ambient vistas underpinned by classic hip-hop beats carved out a unique niche, influencing everything from cloud rap to the burgeoning “hauntological” scene. It’s a sound that conjures images of forgotten public television broadcasts and the slightly unsettling utopian promises of the mid-20th century, a carefully curated blend of the charmingly kitsch and the subtly creepy. This distinctive sonic fingerprint made them darlings of filmmakers and music aficionados alike.
However, with Inferno, it feels as though Boards of Canada themselves are now trapped in the very past they so masterfully sampled and recontextualized. What makes this particularly fascinating is how their contemporaries have evolved, often picking up the BOC torch and running with it in more dynamic directions. The album’s title, Inferno, hints at a Dantean exploration of spiritual themes, and while the duo attempts to grapple with ideas of deliverance and damnation, the execution often feels, in my opinion, rather shallow. Tracks like "Father and Son," which playfully chops up voices in crisis, or "The Word Becomes Flesh," using embryo development samples for an electro beat, strike me as attempts at humor that fall flat, bordering on the excruciatingly unfunny. This reliance on familiar sonic tropes, like the sampled Hare Krishna chanting on "Naraka," feels less like insightful commentary and more like a lazy, almost dismissive, orientalism, a pitfall they unfortunately revisit with the sitar on "Deep Time." It’s a shame, because a more nuanced critique of religion does surface on "All Reason Departs," where a chilling Christian nationalist diatribe is whispered into a demonic growl, offering a glimpse of the depth I expected.
From my perspective, the more significant issue with Inferno isn't its thematic ambition, but rather the pervasive dullness of much of the actual music. While I appreciate the brothers’ efforts to expand their sonic palette, evidenced by the introduction of guitars on tracks like "Prophecy at 1420 MHz," which recalls Mogwai, or the drumless dream pop of "Somewhere Right Now in the Future," these additions don't always coalesce effectively. There are moments, like the satisfyingly fat synthwave lines in "Arena Americanada" and "Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan," that hint at the classic BOC magic. Yet, the beats accompanying these moments, and indeed many others, are, to put it bluntly, wretchedly pedestrian. They plod along with a dreary, funkless rhythm that makes tracks like "You Retreat in Time and Space" sound like elevator music for a broadband provider. This is a far cry from the masterful, light-touch trip-hop beats of their earlier EPs like In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country, or the innovative rhythmic explorations found in tracks like "Amo Bishop Roden."
What this really suggests is that Boards of Canada's true strength lies not in intricate beat programming, but in their ability to craft atmospheric, beatless soundscapes. When Inferno leans into this, as on "Age of Capricorn" with its Coldplay-esque chiming ambient sound, or "The Process" with its bewildering AI-like female voice and watery instrumentation, there's a spark of the old brilliance. The brief, terrifying interlude "Acts of Magic" is another standout, a raw throb of noise that truly feels like standing at the edge of hell. These moments, however, are fleeting glimmers across a sprawling 70 minutes. If you take a step back and think about it, Inferno feels like an album statement from a band clinging to their legacy. Diehard fans will likely find solace in their signature corrupted nostalgia, but for the rest of us, it’s a reminder that even the most influential artists can, in their later years, become more like cult leaders – figures of immense past charisma whose current substance feels increasingly questionable. It leaves me wondering what the future holds for artists who so heavily rely on a specific past sound.
