Tomorrow's Harvest

If you love BoC, then you will be very happy that you bough this album. I should probably be listening to this album a lot more before commenting, but I am just so excited about it. Its very weird stuff, and kind of melancholy at times. If you want to know what the creators of this album were thinking, then it is very useful to look up interviews with them on the internet. It will explain a lot. Once you have an understanding of what they are all about, what they are getting at, then their work starts to make much more sense.If you like this album, and have not yet heard Music Has The Right To Children, then you must get it. Its their best album, and probably the best album within it's genre.Does anyone know what the significance of the number "822" is in the liner notes? Or is it just random?

After nearly 8 years between this album and their previous album, Campfire Headphase Boards of Canada is back! As a BOC fan who had been jonesing for new material from the brothers, this was a surprise, and a pleasant one. It is a solid piece of work which compares well with their best work. I give it 4 1/2 to 5 stars.The standouts are Jacquard Causeway, Palace Posy and Nothing is Real.If you are a BOC fan, BUY THIS RIGHT NOW! You won't be sorry. If you are new to Boards of Canada, start with Geogaddi and then collect the other albums; don't bother with the EP's unless you really get hooked-quite a few of the EP tracks got put onto albums also.

It would be a major understatement to claim that Tomorrow’s Harvest was a highly anticipated release. It seems that ever since the group’s last record in 2005, The Campfire Headphase, the internet would light up with annual gossip of their return, the frenzy spreading fast and wide only to dead-end in another discredited rumor. So it’s no wonder that this time around, when Warp used the incredibly clever marketing campaign of embedding cryptic codes via six distinct entities (like BBC Radio 1, NPR and Adult Swim), I took some time in confirming the announcement’s authenticity. So what’s the big deal about Boards of Canada, and at what point did the Scottish electronic music duo reach this near cultish following? And why did I, along with so many, listened to the premiere of the album via YouTube and then immediately preordered both, the CD and vinyl?The word is that the two brothers, Mike Sandison and Marcus Eouin, began slowly working on their fourth studio album following the release of The Campfire Headphase. And if it took them almost eight years to produce the follow-up, then it was the eight years worth waiting for. There are many things I can say about the album, but it all boils down to this: Tomorrow’s Harvest is a classic Boards Of Canada album that only Boards Of Canada could make. Recorded at BoC’s own studio, called Hexagon Sun (located in south-west of Edinburgh, Scotland), the duo seemed interested in escaping the urban environment, preferring to work in isolation away from evolving genres and latest growing fads. This is perhaps why the sound of Tomorrow’s Harvest is so timeless, yet imprinted with that one specific point in time when Towism, Hi Scores and Boc Maxima used to dominate my playlists.“The challenge with this record was crafting the tunes into a specific style and time period we want to reference. [...] In this case there’s a deliberate VHS video-nasty element throughout the record and to get there it wasn’t just a case of processing sounds through old media, which is a given with us anyway, but we even went to the extent of timing changes in the music and the composition of the pieces, in really specific ways to give an impression of something familiar from soundtrack work that was around 30 years ago.” – Mike Sandison [1]The sound is full of lush, rich and deep ambient textures, stretching and warping through downtempo rhythms, like an old cassette tape left in a hot car over a weekend. There are plenty of vintage analog synth sounds and lo-fi treatments with even more subliminal messages and hypnotic layered patterns which immediately bring back the nostalgia of that dear ‘ol Boards of Canada. The title of the album, by the way, is inspired by Deadly Harvest, a 1977 film on widespread crop failures in North America, but that’s as close as the music comes to being post-apocalyptic. What’s even more explicit is the newly confirmed fact that those who’ve tried to replicate the BoC sound have definitely failed, as this imaginary soundtrack to the dusty documentary on ghostly cities is still the strength within their work. And that’s what the brothers have been working on all these years.There is a lot more that I could say about this record. But as with many critically acclaimed albums I often wonder if I should even bother. It’s not like I feel a responsibility of proclaiming my new discovery to the world and letting you know that this is an album you must own – I’m sure that you already do. It’s not like I must produce a counted amount of words to keep my day job as a critic – I’m sure I’d never write a word. I guess for me, this coverage is more like a statement of an acknowledgment, that yes, I’ve had incredibly high hopes for Boards of Canada, and yes, it certainly delivered! And after more than a dozen plays, here’s to many more rotations to come!

Not as good as there other offerings. If you're looking for your first BoC album, Music Has the Right To Children is a much better choice. It won't have the one & only single, but it is also available on another EP (Trans-Canada Highway) that I would suggest over Tomorrow's Harvest.

tomorrow's harvest picks up where the other Boards of Canada albums left off, but this one holds a unique theme that ties the whole album together. The theme of a world without human beings may be a post-apocalyptic world for us, but the dynamic duo suggest it may be the best thing for the world, and a natural state of affairs for nature l. This album meditates on this theme, and while cold and icy to the touch it brings a lot of enjoyment. I didn't like it as much as Geogaddi, but it's still better than most music that comes out these days.

Excellent album. Excellent pressing. Just... excellent.

I have not set out to write reviews of the music content as “beauty is in the ears of the listener”. These reviews are about the quality (or not) of the recorded sound. To read about how the reviews are done please see my profile.This recording opens with a deep rich resonant sound which impresses and sets the standard of a wide detailed sound stage. From the outset this recording has a wow factor. The clarity in places is staggering.The sound has no audible compression and is broad and deep. The channel separation is good and the channel balance is used to enhance the atmosphere of the recording. The dynamic range is excellent yet the high notes do bnot become shrill. The recording has many layers of tonality each of which builds and grows. Often the sound is underpinned by a pure reverberant bass theme.Some of the sounds have an intentional distortion but this is offset by the pure sounds creating a spacious atmospheric sound. These sounds together with the hich tinkling sounds evoke a beach or waterfront. The clarity of the sound and recording gives ones imagination free range.The drum sounds are strange being almost “twisted” to highlight the themes being built around the sparse rhythms. When strings are introduced they blend in the sound yet it is clear that they are strings.If you like this genre you will love listening to this recording.

I know its credentials (so called) dark introspective minimal its all these things but its got no depth, production is brittle (I got the vinyl and had to mess with bass and treble to get decent sound which failed) It drags and does not ignite. I got to side 3 and took it off the deck. Don't have the motivation to put it on again.BOC ....emperors new clothes....

I'm surprised it took me this long to get it. It's a BOC album, much like the others. It's good. It takes a while to settle in. It's perhaps darker. But it has its moments of glory. It just took me a while to figure it out.The melodies aren't so obvious and I think they've moved beyond a pretty melody to hold up what they're trying to say. But this album has grown on me.

Seven long years since the Trans Canada Highway EP. Then the strange change on the website 'transmisiones...' and then flickers of news finally giving way to the Boards 4th full album.I got it over a month ago, and it has not stopped, suiting the unusual still heat of the summer we have been getting. Looking through the sleeve booklet you'll find fairly typical 70's style photos yet most , when thought of as a continuous piece seem to paint a picture of surveillance in a world that seems dusty and shattered.So the music! Well to say 'brilliant' is too easy. Its great too of course, but not in the way that 'heroes' by bowie is a great song for this is captivating in a whole different way. So different that frankly I'm not sure why its great, only that it is so immersive and its not letting go!It begins with a 70's style tv broadcast announcement 'jingle' and thrusting us into gemini; with lush bass and radio frequencies, alluding to my theory on the surveillance theme, and at which point 'the campfire headphase' is already a distant dream and I'm nearer to a 'beautiful place out in the country'. Except this is not beautiful, this is dark.Reach for the dead, has that unmistakeable BoC bass with a rich depth of sound pulsating almost from the heart of the earth itself. This, to me, is one of BoC's most sublime moments; there is much time at the beginning of this track where nothing particularly happens, its all in the tones before the beat and pace picks up then dumps you and leaves you, (well, me anyway) feeling bewildered.White Cyclosa is a spider apparently, (I didn't know), and here it is coming, creepng up quite fast, and then pounding....Escape onto 'jacquard causeway' with its throbbing relentless beat and classic Boards sound, distorted yet wonderfully melodic . I could go on, but you should find out for yourself and go on your own journey with it, I don't know where it leads, it hasn't finished with me yet but its the best BoC journey yet.While Geogaddi has been my favourite album and 'a beautiful place....' my favourite ep this could uproot both. It certainly follows on better from those and perhaps some of 'twoism' and 'music has the right' than the 'campfire...' whch I still struggle with.So is it all brilliant? Well, I don't particularly like 'palace posy' to the point I don't even know what its doing here, its title and clumsy rhythm jar against my vision of what's going on with this album.... although the track does get better at the end! Cold Earth is standard Boards so it gets no prizes either, but then you get moments of genius like the achingly hauntingly beautiful 'split your infinties', and 'come to dust' amongst others that make it, on balance, brilliant!!

After an 8 year hiatus comes the new BOC effort. Like many an electronica band, not every track hits the mark dead-solid-perfect, but many do.TOMORROW'S HARVEST may seem patchy at first, but repeated listening quickly demonstrates their trademark intelligence, cultural savvy and brilliant sound design. REACH FOR THE DEAD has to rank amongst the best tracks this year. COLD EARTH recalls the best of GEOGADDI, whilst NOTHING IS REAL and COLLAPSE hark back to their earlier, lower-tech roots. It's closed out by the strangely compressed expansiveness of SEMENA MERLVYKDH....and....so.....until the next time........Welcome back Boards Of Canada....