Boards of Canada – Queen City Sounds and Art

Mokhov’s Melodic Ambient Song “Treasure the Good Times” is an Inducement to a Good Mood and Lightness of Spirit

“Treasure the Good Times” may well be the signature track to Mokhov’s album For Monkey (released March 7, 2023) which was dedicated to his dog Monkey who passed away on Monday, 19 December 2022 from a brain tumor at 6 and a half years old. The song is an effervescent, upbeat song of saturated synth melodies with bright tones and syncopated beats with white noise textures coursing through like a breeze on a sunny day. It’s a song that invites a good mood and a lightness of spirit that comes from good memories and a sense of tranquility. Fans of Boards of Canada’s more playful moments and Tycho circa Past is Prologue or Dive will appreciate what Mokhov has going on here. Listen to “Treasure the Good Times” on YouTube and follow Mokhov at the links below.

Mokhov on Twitter

Mokhov on Bandcamp

mokhov.net

Glassmanet’s Micro Album Video For “Glassplanet” is a Blissfully Psychedelic Odyssey Through Our World’s Ecological Horrors and Wonders

With the video for “Glassplanet,” Norwegian dream pop artist Glassmanet showcases her intertwined gifts for creative soundscaping and video art. It’s a short film and journey through entrancing streams of melody crafted from luminescent droplets of guitar floating through flares of distorted tone that give the ethereal whole some definition while letting go into free flowing anti-structures as styles and visuals evolve quickly but gently into the next phase of ideas with the artist frequently seen frolicking about and performing in gossamer outfits in colorized, negative image footage and animation collage. It’s mostly a summery and otherworldly experience but the “Waves Cannot Be Crushed” portion introduces a twinge of menace like if Bricks Are Heavy period L7 followed its most psychedelic instincts. It’s a full ten minutes eleven seconds but “micro albums” don’t often come this fully realized and engrossing. And wait until after the credits for some of the most blissed out sections of the album as the synth tones go full on Boards of Canada-esque but with some anchoring grit that makes the come down from this delightfully unusual trip into cosmic musicality land easy. Watch the video for “Glassplanet” on YouTube and follow Glassmanet at the links below.

Glassmanet on Facebook

Glassmanet on Instagram

Glassmanet on Bandcamp

Clouds in a Headlock Deliver Downtempo, Cosmic, Psychedelic Hip-Hop With “Phantasia”

Clouds in a Headlock, photo courtesy the artists

The psychedelic and downtempo chillout beats for “Phantasia” by Clouds in a Headlock with its imaginative stream of consciousness lyrics with the project’s various MCs delivering bars as the song sits back into a transporting passages between blocks of words like getting otherworldly, free verse meditations on organic spiritual observations born of navigating a confusing world as a thoughtful person. The music video coupled with the song with a cast of characters like street mystics wandering a large urban park relocated to the edge of town is reminiscent of a fan video for a Boards of Canada song. The first rapper presented projects his face beyond his immediate body in one of the most beautifully visually disorienting parts of a particularly colorful video treatment like a long lost cable access video from a time when you could find some of the strangest and most original examples of home grown cinema around before it became accessible to anyone with a smart phone. This lends the whole experience of seeing and listening to the song an air of mystery that is often missing in modern media. But that mystery comes with an inviting energy that emanates from the figures we see and the music that’s lush and easy on the brain and gently transporting. It’s a remarkable piece of work that recalls the IDM-esque, ambient flavored works of other practitioners of psychedelic hip-hop like A Tribe Called Quest and Digable Planets. Witness the wondrous strangeness of “Phantasia” on YouTube and follow Clouds in a Headlock, flagship artists of the ŌFFKILTR circle at the links below.

Clouds in a Headlock on Instagram

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Conflict at Serenity Pools’ “faraway” is Like the Mysterious Opening Sequence to a Lo-Fi Cosmic Science Fiction Noir

Conflict at Serenity Pools, photo courtesy the artist

The rippling sideways cascade of sounds and flow of texture in the beginning of “faraway” by Conflict at Serenity Pools pairs well with the rippling painterly naturaly imagery in the music video. Plants warp and move in tandem with the arc of the music, like a sine wave form treatment on the footage. Together it reinforces the song’s sense of otherworldliness, discovery and serenity. We hear birds in the background like we’re catching these views in the early morning hours before the beat of the sun drives all creatures into seeking shade and cooler places. It has the feel of the introduction of something. The organic atmospheric quality with resonant bell-like tones echoing and the sound of a breeze as background distorted drone suggests an old 70s, Utopian science fiction movie. Without invoking library music and media archaeology the song conveys a the mood of a neglected aesthetic like mixing avant-garde folk with IDM in a way that hasn’t already been done by Boards of Canada. Like an experimental music video shot to Hi-8 and rediscovered decades hence with no identifying markers and the technology used to make it the only signifier of context. If the intro to an album is supposed to get you to listen to more or the opening of a film to get you to commit to viewing the whole this song with its attendant video accomplish just that.

Conflict at Serenity Pools on TikTok

Conflict at Serenity Pools on Instagram

LI:EVE’s Mysterious Video for “White Secrets” is Like a Visit to a Friend’s Fantastical Realm of Dreams

LI: EVE’s single “White Secrets” finds its embodiment in a beautifully enigmatic music video. A figure whose head seems comprised of an array of flowers can be seen frolicking in a park including on the playground in the early morning mist and throughout the day into the dusk carrying a lantern like Diogenes looking for one honest man in Athens. Throughout the song the sound of an electronic cold wind blowing is interesting as the sound that supposedly accompanies portals between dimensions. Or at the very least the transition between consciousness and the unconscious mind. The vocals begin with vocoder and flow into a more accented cadence and a human melodies rather than the more cybernetic. Bending and resonating, lingering guitar traces the outer edges of the melody like a luminous, sonic nimbus that frames the song with bleeding edges of tone. It’s reminiscent of something Boards of Canada might do if it discarded some of its inspired, library-music-esque dreamscaping but maintaining that unusual structure, instead employing a more psychedelic rock sound palette. Whatever the roots of this music might be and the intent it conveys a sense of the otherworldly with a rare poetic elegance and the more you listen to the song the more fascinating details emerge. Watch the video for “White Secrets” no YouTube and follow LI-EVE at the links below.

LI:EVE on Instagram

Majority Razorblade Deconstructs Nostalgic Sounds to Craft Dreamlike Ambient Pop on “Infinite Golden Egg”

Majority Razorblade, photo courtesy the artist

Majority Razorblade sounds like a future, musical archaeologist on “Infinite Golden Egg.” Like he’s sifting through layers of media content that blurs indie pop stems and analog synth collages separated from their original contexts by time. The song has cohesion and also feels like a flowing experiment of sounds and textures like he’s reassembling bright, ambeint pop songs by real time finding the tonal and stylistic threads and mixing them together to see if that creative DNA resonates and not quite knowing if it’s an exact replica of the original. Who can say what approach songwriter Colin Pate took to assembling this song and the rest of Mr. Moonlite simply listening to these beautifully strange compositions but fans of The Spirit of the Beehive, Black Moth Super Rainbow and Boards of Canada will appreciate the ways in which Pate takes sound ideas and puts them into arrangements that could seem haunted and spooky but the vibe is comforting and benevolently entrancing. Listen to “Infinite Golden Egg” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of the album and connect with Majority Razorblade on the project’s LinkTree.

Majority Razorblade LinkTree

Miynt’s Video for “Of the sun” Cleverly Contrasts Scenes of Stockholm Winter With a Spirit of Warm Playfulness

The video treatment for Stockholm-based synth/dream pop band Miynt’s song “Of the sun” looks like a fan video for a Boards of Canada song. Except that it’s winter shots in Sweden, part performance with presumably the singer of the group wandering around the city offering observations and poetic statements in affectionate tones like “I wanted you to see that you knew you saw light in my eyes.” There’s a playfulness to the track that makes it irresistible when paired with its going off any standard pop songwriting trajectory with experimental tonal flourishes like the processing on the vocals to allow it to ring out and echo in perfect sync with the song’s wide-ranging dynamic centered around its eccentric set of melodies. At times it sounds like a hybrid of dream pop, and psychedelic funk and disco especially with that finely accented bass line. The guitar lead switches between that warping chorus and what sounds like a bit borrowed slightly from Level 42’s 1985 hit “Something About You.” Maybe that’s the hint of jazz and funk in the song but it really fits in with the warm tone to the song in nice contrast to the aesthetic of the music video. And watch that video for the song on YouTube, follow Miynt at the links below and look for the group’s debut LP Lonely Beach due out in May 2022.

Miynt on Instagram

Pyxis Iota Expresses the Magic of the Eternal Liminal Space of Extended School Breaks on “Summer ’94”

The engimatically titled “Summer ’94” by the creatively named Pyxis Iota establishes a simple yet inviting rhythm line early on that carries you along throughout the song. But around that line tones drift and gyre, intertwined with a meditative guitar line that shimmers in counterpoint to the shimmering and glimmering synth drones that swell and fade. Perhaps it’s the title but the way the song plays out, even when the guitar drops out replaced by gentle distorted waves of synths, it sounds like the act of remembering a time in your life when things seemed less compressed, when summer seemed to last forever with amble time to play, learn, explore, discover and travel before demands of school or of a job post-college graduation demanded the bulk of your time and energy. There’s something magical about that headspace, the eternal liminal, that seems to nourish the psyche and spirit and Pyxis Iota evokes that energy with this track. Fans of early Oneohtrix Point Never and turn of the century Boards of Canada will appreciate the textures and evolving atmospheres of this song greatly. Listen to “Summer ’94” on Soundcloud and follow Pyxis Iota at the links below.

Pyxis Iota on Bandcamp

Arkle Eerie Video For “Slowly Alive” Drifts us Uneasily Out of the Dreamstate

Arkle’s video for “Slowly Alive” is like a trailer for an A24 movie about existential, cosmic horror. The plot of the video seems to be about a woman who is taking her time wake up for the day and dreams of mythical landscapes depicted by colorful animation like something from a childhood story book crafted from illustrations and collage. The warping synth lines refracting and moving both forward and processed through light reverse delay at points sets a strong mood of otherworldly reverie. The insistent keyboard line serves as a tonal anchor point through the hazy soundscape as the visuals transition to abstract imagery of black and white kaleidoscopic visuals. The ghostly female vocals are like a tantalizing yet assuring beacon in the fog of this journey to wakeful consciousness guiding us to the track’s conclusion. Musically it’s reminiscent of a spooky and beatless Boards of Canada with Beth Gibbons-esque singing at her most icily ethereal. Watch the video for “Slowly Alive” on YouTube and connect with Arkle at the links below.

arklebeats.com

Lawrie Crawford/Arkle on Twitter

Arkle on Instagram

“Suspended In Blue” by Marigold Sun Articulates the Deep Sense of Peace and Awe at the Fingers of Sunlight of a Clear Sky On a Late Winter Morning

“Suspended In Blue” evokes the image of sunlight refracting in the sky and streaming down, sparkling now and then the way it seems to on a bright, late winter morning. Eric Li Harrison as Marigold Sun arranges the peaks of tones and fades of the track so that there is a continues flow of atmospherics so that the accents and lingering drones and gentle, subtle whorls of sound in the background stand out in with layers of sonic depth as though capturing that perfect moment when an icicle will catch the sunlight against a blue sky as well as the aforementioned streams of sunshine breaking the morning haze before the sun rises to the full power of its brightness in the sky. It’s a natural beauty that is difficult to express in words, as might be too obvious here, but it does have a restful and refreshing effect psychologically and the treatment of those feelings here is immediately affecting. It is reminiscent of some of the best library music of the 80s that are largely lost to time unless you have one of those great compilations of that music or you’re actively listening to the echoes of such in the work of Boards of Canada. Listen to “Suspended In Blue” on Soundcloud and connect with Marigold Sun at the links below.