Boards of Canada

Anyone else listen to Boards of Canada at all?
Pretty interesting group, definitely worth checking out if you haven't before.
They're doing some very unique things with music, if you don't get it... Then you probably weren't listening hard enough ; )


(this first track was actually in a JOSS edit...)



Some of their song structures use unusual groupings of 7 and 10 and 5, some the fibonacci sequence, and other elements from math. They're also deeply interested in psychedelia.

From an interview with them:
"You can use rules or set theory to dictate timings and note intervals", expands Sandison about their composition strategies. "For instance, you can imagine your melody to run vertically instead of horizontally, so that you're thinking of a vertical spiral, running on the spot. There's a thing you can calculate for plants called divergence, which is a ratio of complete turns of spiral leaf positions relative to the number of leaves in that spiral. In plants, this usually gives a Fibonacci number, which is pretty uncanny, but it's basically a natural law that's trying to create optimum distribution of leaf positions, to stop leaves from obsucring each other in sunlight. You can apply a similar idea to a vertical spiral of music, to calculate optimal temporal event positions in a pattern or texture. It doesn't always make for easy listening though," he adds, laughing."