What does “Geogaddi” mean?
To find out I went to the Web and conducted an
exhaustive search. What I found: dozens, yea, hundreds of complimentary
reviews for the latest disk by Boards of Canada, those progenitors
of so-called IDM or “Intelligent Dance Music.” The
Scottish group have entitled their second album Geogaddi, and
I spent some time trying to figure out what the word meant. Maybe
it’s Gaelic for “gentle, swelling, hypnotic glitch-hop,”
I thought.
From its opening to the utter silence of the final
track Geogaddi is a pretty consistent spacious experience, except
maybe when the vocoder refrain of “1969” kicks in—that
grated on me on first. The album’s 23 tracks long, and 11
of those are shorter than a minute thirty. If some of the shorter
tracks sound pretty but gimmicky—“Opening the Mouth”
is literally a minute plus of someone breathing rhythmically in
and out through their mouth against flute-like electronics—the
longer tracks like the airy, scratchy “You Could Feel the
Sky” prove atmospheric and engaging. “Gyroscope”
sounds likes something Tom Waits might’ve written (or Tricky
might sample) if he were a Scottish electronic musician. “Julie
and Candy” proves an exceptionally sweet ‘n’
slinky concoction. But some of the best tracks are the creepiest:
"The Devil Is in the Details" is an appropriately claustrophobic
affair, with a mewling vocal loop and a sinister, distorted female
voice telling us, “Just relax and enjoy this pleasant adventure.”
Right on. And with its grating, distorted elephantine trumpeting
and sampled calls and cries of children, “Dawn Chorus”
sounds like a disturbing way to wake up in the morning. It grooves
nonetheless.
Spoken-word samples float throughout the effort,
spliced, diced and stuttering, sometimes even in toto: on “Dandelion”
we learn about some enigmatic link between dandelions and volcanoes.
Many of these snippets feature children, so does the cover art
and liner notes. What is it with this absorption with children?
A yearning for their naïveté? Even the band’s
stellar debut album was called Music has the Right to Children.
On this follow up to that album, The Boards sometimes
deliver music which ambles along rather than developing into anything
significant (well, this is ambient music), but, overall, Geogaddi
is a ticklish, disorienting soundscape.
But what does “Geogaddi” mean? Hell
if I know. “Headphone heaven” maybe?
Robert Stribley
