Inferno

As the incessant loop of the brief Inferno opener roils across your eardrums, it's hard not to feel a wave of nostalgia. Not that it should come as a surprise: Boards of Canada have always harnessed that to great effect.No, this is different. It's a callback to a sound within their own sonic universe. It's the same sound you'll hear on their older track "Happy Cycling," found only on US and Canada releases of Music Has the Right to Children and later reissues of the 1998 album. It closes off their magnum opus — and opens their latest album with a wink, nod, and outstretched arm to the diehards who've been following their career since the mid-90s.As for all those long-haul fans, how can they give BoC an honest shake, refracted by the lens of a story three decades long? Short answer: they can't. No one can, really. It's hard to look at the Scottish duo without comparing them to all that's come after, as well as they themselves. Just look at their previous release.It's not to say that Tomorrow's Harvest was a flop ─ all the wistful, trademark elements are there and they culminate into a pretty solid album ─ but despite how many BoC boxes were ticked, it always seemed like an unfinished piece of work. It's not half-baked by any means, but not quite fully-formed either; more like a series of good ideas that burnt on the launchpad rather than reaching the stratosphere, as all our calculations had predicted.Then, of course, the pressure of a legendary duo's first album in 8 years was almost insurmountable, especially in the wake of such a lauded back catalogue. Yet, here we are again, with an even longer hiatus — which begs the question, "Does Inferno live up to the hype?" Thankfully, it unequivocally does.One thing that BoC have nailed is that their music sits somewhere between downtempo hip-hop and an instructional video from the '70s on how to operate some bygone piece of machinery. They make great use of those obscure shards of sentiment that are impossible to place, yet oddly familiar.Inferno is packed full of such oddities. "Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan" plays like a synth-heavy score to some retro thriller movie that never existed and "Arena Americanada" could easily back an underground level on an old platformer game, while the beautiful, slowly rising ambient waves of "Deep Time" call to mind a vast celestial awakening.On first listen, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Edinburgh brothers had recently found God. Inferno is rife with biblical references: the vocals on "Prophecy at 1420 Mhz" state, "I am God / The ultimate resonance," while "I pray this" can be heard on "Age of Capricorn," and most obviously, the album's standout track "Father and Son" names "the Lord" multiple times.There's always the possibility that it's meaningless. Boards of Canada aren't exactly known for using awe-inspiring lyrics in their vocals: "Aquarius" merely says the word "orange" and a series of numbers, but it still remains one of their best tracks. This, however, feels more purposeful.In fact, as you replay Inferno, the simple God aesthetic shape-shifts into deeper meaning. Mentions of consciousness and embryos pop up throughout the record, revealing that, if there is an overarching theme here, it's creation itself. Either way, it's certainly thought-provoking, which is no small feat for this style of music.BoC have yet again successfully pulled off their show-stopping trick, implanting a boundless sense of feeling into music that could easily come off as cold and distant in someone else's hands. It takes a special kind of alchemy to transport listeners to an '80s film and the crucible of our universe in the same breath. And what is creation if not an absolute inferno?