Clearly, I wrote this a bit ago and life has been such an incredible whirlwind since then that I'm only finding time to edit and post it now.
5/31/26
The new Boards of Canada Album (Inferno):
Now that I’ve marinated in the sound of listening to Inferno repeatedly for days, as one must to get the full scope of any Boards of Canada album, I feel prepared to formulate my thoughts. This album not only slaps, it throws down the gauntlet reinforcing why they are revered not only as musicians, but as artists in general. It reminds us why artists like Deadmau5 got excited and immediately posted a song he made as a fan tribute to BOC on his IG upon hearing they were releasing a new album. It cements for us the reason why they are the unintentional progenitors of the entire Hauntology genre, taking this to truly apocalyptic levels.
One misguided reviewer suggested that the intention/meaning behind their art was lost in their elusiveness. First, this person obviously doesn’t get BOC. And secondly, they don’t understand something that BOC seems to from the get go, that a work of art once released into the universe becomes a living changing entity that has its original intent altered by the perspective and experiences of every person who perceives it. It seems that BOC has understood this and subtly endorses it with their gentle support of fan made videos and fan made works. To understand the message or meaning of this album, it is truly an immersive endeavour and experience. It’s not just about listening to the album (with headphones on), you have to take that in with the videos they’ve released, the visualizers for each song, and the booklet that came with the album. Because BOC not only carefully crafts and curates each individual sound, they also do so with every image and video they have altered.
Gone are the beautiful nostalgic messages of MHTRTC. Although admittedly even that album had a sinister undercurrent with the changing Children Have the Right to Music to Music Has the Right to Children. The distorted retro images that have whispered a nostalgic idealism in the past are not only degraded in an aged manner in Inferno, but some are also splattered with what could be construed as blood.
We’re seeing the decline of civility, the decline of empathy and compassion which is being fueled by religions that at their foundational core purport to be based on those very ideas. But have some of the bloodiest histories, which is so very contradictory for faiths with a non-negotiable commandment not to kill. But religion itself is like a balm and a bane for our existential crises. When the fervor is taken to cult-like levels (as we’ve seen and are currently seeing in our Cult of Personality in America) it drives out reason, drives out free will, drives out regard for other people’s personal freedoms (the most central ideal to the founding of the USA) and regard for anyone else’s right to a dissenting opinion or right to live freely or live at all whilst holding that opinion. We are seeing the environment being decimated in the name of capital making this place uninhabitable for a much closer generation in the future. But it’s all okay because humans are temporary and sooner or later the sun will go super nova and wipe out all of our existence, all of our histories, all of these religions. The idealistic past that was so great is also soaked in blood, suffering, and silence for so many and that’s what some are so eager to return to. This is the message I take away from the artistic experience.
This is of course from the perspective of an American raised in the Pentecostal faith and disillusioned with religion in general as I see it clearly as a tool initially used to calm the existential dread and twisted to be used by men in power to control the masses so they don’t realize their true power for centuries now. I try not to make everything a commentary on my country, but with the song All Reason Departs occurring right before Arena Americanada and the second to last picture in the booklet has a crashed car with the license plate “26 USA,” at least parts are about our current situation.
