Boards of Canada held their private listening parties of their new album, Inferno, this past weekend, which took place across the globe in Paris, Berlin, Glasgow, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo, with each session in a different type of institution exclusive to each city. Berlin’s was in a former crematorium, Glasgow’s was in an abandoned chapel, and Los Angeles’s, of course, was in a movie theater designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, underneath Barnsdall Art Park to be precise.
If you haven’t been to Barnsdall Art Park, it’s the surrounding gardens of a series of Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings. Built with peculiar façades and structures, it gives off the features of Aztec influence – pretty much the go-to spot for the best picnic in L.A. – very on brand for Boards of Canada.
As the scheduled listening party neared, families, trippers, and travelers from afar made themselves comfortable on the quad as the surrounding trees’ falling sap reflected in the sunlight with the Griffith Observatory and Hollywood sign looming in the background.
Upon entry, we’re led into the theater which was designed like a bunker styled in brutalist architecture. A deep, low-end throb rumbled from underneath us as we made our way underground, where a 300-seat screening room filled with fog and saturated red light – the stage aligned with candles and what appeared to be a lighting fixture in the shape of a hexagon.
As soon as the doors locked behind us, a large rotating hexagon faded up on screen, with a distorted voice transmitting overhead describing that our signing of a waiver (which we did not) submits us to a series of social experiments involving “audio triggers.” This then faded into a younger girl’s voice reciting what sounded like a foreboding nursery rhyme, mentioning “Helter Skelter,” witches chanting, babies burning, and that it would soon be “her turn.”
The rotating hexagon then became a window with a looping flame inside of it, like something out of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as the opening notes of “Introit” settled us in.
If you’ve heard the first singles, you could pretty much picture the setting, so we won’t bore you with those details. Needless to say, the Boards of Canada we’re familiar with sets in after these first couple tracks. The tracks that follow contain the same DNA of the Boards of Canada we know, but venture out into different territory. Several tracks contain syncopated vocal samples and snippets of dialog which, paired with the spinning inferno on the screen, conjured an image of discussion around a campfire. Soon enough, those bits of dialog harmonize with each other in time, becoming the tracks’ percussive elements themselves.
Early reactions have cited the new material as “demonic,” or “Geogaddi-esque.” And while the new album does contain elements of their previous “dooming” work, that’s not quite the label we’d prescribe. It’s not quite demonic, not quite happy either. Instead, we’d call it hopeful, tender. In other words, perfect for a road trip, fitting snug in between their earlier records.
The instrumentation that follows contain plenty of new ground for Boards of Canada fans to savor: raw, un-processed overdriven bass guitar, sitar melodies, a track we clocked in 5/4 time signature (maybe even 10/4?), and… wait, is that a harmonica? The album’s also not one, unbroken track as previously theorized, although several tracks do seem to bleed into each other.
As the album continued, more cryptic vocal messages are dispersed throughout, with the four-on-the-floor rhythm (albeit repetitive at times) holding up a noticeable absence of right-hand keyboard melody work that ornamented their earlier material. That is until the second to last track, “You Retreat in Time and Space,” when the spinning inferno on screen suddenly dissolved into pastoral family home videos accompanied by the nostalgia-driven feel reminiscent of their early days we know and love so well. Videos of family road trips, kids playing football, and cookouts donned the screen for the entire track, an image not too dissimilar from the family picnics taking place just outside the listening session.
Throughout it all, the one thread that connects everything is a heartbeat, which appears in different forms. Early on in the album one could make out what sounds like a heart murmur accompanied by what one could assume is the sound of blood rushing through veins. At another point, one could swear they’d hear an EKG (a heart monitor) machine that arises and descends, which could be mistaken for another synthesizer sample.
During the last track, the hexagon flame gradually turned into a more turquoise color, slowly fading out and shrouding the theater once again into darkness. The last thing we hear is a heartbeat.