Review: Inferno, by Boards of Canada

Always fun when a favorite artist drops a whole album without warning after many quiet years: in this case, Inferno by Boards of Canada. I heard some things. Going to play the album once more and jot down some unedited thoughts.

“Introit”. Mid-century futurist optimism, but it’s weak and lo-fi, and promptly obliterated by an all-consuming crescendo of red noise:

“Prophecy At 1420 Mhz”. Everything from here on out is massive and urgent. The percussion and bass has weight, a gravitational pull, it has you turning the volume higher. Synths punch and tear like steel pistons through fabric. A disembodied voice (nothing new for a Boards of Canada track, but this voice is about 100x bigger) makes electronic declarations of supremacy.

“Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan”. Something is wrong. A top-heavy rhythm supported by unsteady rickety synths, a system teetering on collapse.

“Age Of Capricorn”. You’re being brainwashed by a machine with the intelligence of a child? No, a machine with the intelligence of a child is being brainwashed by something more sinister.

“Father And Son”. Speaking of brainwashing / Chopped up and mutilated voices / Machines still need humans, to operate them, submit their lives to them, be consumed by them.

“Somewhere Right Now In The Future”. Imagine wringing a towel, but the towel is your brain.

“Naraka”. We finally meet the malevolent force in control. Unthinking social and technological machinery dominating and consuming our lives. Oppressive and overwhelming but we are too entranced to turn away.

“Acts Of Magic”. A throbbing radio signal broadcasting from a realm of dead things.

“Memory Death”. You’re in a hospital bed, or a spaceship. Falling into a blinding light.

“The Word Becomes Flesh”. The terrifying relentless march of anything self-replicating, be it biology or technology.

“Into The Magic Land”. Guitars reverberating in the desert / Grateful for another intermission.

“Blood In The Labyrinth”. Stuffed into the trunk of a rusted Trans-Am drifting through the nuclear-blasted remains of Phoenix. The trunk opens and you stumble blinking into a crowd of survivors who long ago forgot hope.

“Deep Time”. Even with the fallout, the sunset is still beautiful. Maybe the fire will keep us warm tonight.

“All Reason Departs”. Machines always have a plan, and all the patience in the world.

“Arena Americanada”. Deep into a forest of metal cables, open yet closed, layer upon layer into the depths, blocking all trace of the horizon.

“The Process”. Control will inevitably fail.

“You Retreat In Time And Space”. A burial in space for a lost ally. But then, out of the lonely shadows, strangers emerge with post-apocalyptic digital folk instruments and wordlessly join together in solidarity and song.

“I Saw Through Platonia”. The end.

Coda

I often come back to these thoughts, in reference to Great Tide Rising:

“Refugia, they call them: places of safety where life endures. From the refugia, mice and toads emerged blinking onto the blasted plain. Grasses spread, strawberries sent out runners. From a thousand, ten thousand, maybe countless small places of enduring life, forests and meadows returned to the mountain.”

@afewbugs, November 7, 2024.