Friday 24 May 2013

EXCLUSIVE TRACK-BY-TRACK REVIEW OF BOARDS OF CANADA'S TOMORROW'S HARVEST

 

Gemini
Fairly nondescript mellow intro track with soft, jittering 808 beats, mildly distorted harmonium tones and ripe grapefruit squelches.

Reach For The Dead
Populist wet disco single featuring Nile Rogers, that bloke out of N.E.R.D. and Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. First heard via an electric billboard(of Canada) installed on the streets of Tokyo after a mysterious message appeared on the Cartoon Network’s twitter feed at 6:37am on Record Store Day. Fluffier than ‘Chromakey Dreamcoat’. Taller than Bonaparte.

White Cyclosa
This one is exactly like waking up in a bath of frozen peas to find both your kidneys have been replaced by the left knees of the Proclaimers twins, a blacked-up Taylor Swift is silently miming the words of Throbbing Gristle’s ‘Persuasion’ into one end of a grimy loofah, while Carl Barat trims his fringe in the mirror with a pair of broken safety scissors. Achingly grotesque.

Jacquard Causeway
Filler track only audible to hounds.

Telepath
Similar to John Cage’s 4’33”. Only not silent. And with greater emphasis on the slide whistle.

Cold Earth
Imagine a barbershop quartet dressed up in full Kiss regalia. Now imagine there’s fourteen more of them and they’re all squeezed chock-a-block in that cupboard under the stairs at George Michael’s place. One of them has brought an egg sandwich and the solidified albumin is crumbling out of the cling film at an alarming rate. A baby house spider tries to make its terrified screams audible but is drowned out by the eighteentet’s cramped moans. Imagine Tim Hecker capturing the commotion on his four-track then throwing the results into a clammy landfill.

Transmisiones Ferox
If having your ears pinched by a blasé farmhand in a bright orange Stetson with half a beard and a penchant for crochet is your idea of fun, look no further.

Sick Times
Will.I.Am guests, unleashing the kind of devastating, take-no-prisoners lyrical flow that can only be attained from twenty-odd years in the professional rap game. Over a primordial rave thump, Will spits such gallantly ingenious lines as “Rub-a-dub-dub / We hit da club”, “I said ‘Yeah?’ / And she said ‘Yeah, yeah!’”, and “You can’t rhyme / Like I can rhyme / ‘Cos when I rhyme / I rhyme all the time”. Danny O’Donoghhue from The Script was also invited to contribute but was too busy sitting in a large red chair jiggling around like a yappy terrier that can’t work out if it needs to ejaculate or shit itself.

Collapse
Saucier than Donna Summer having an illicit rummage through Prince’s knicker drawer. Could redden the cheeks of even the most jaded octogenarian porn baron.

North American Corpse Desecration
Pleasingly boisterous cover of Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s frantic grind opus.

Split Your Infinities
Clearly indebted to Springsteen and the E Street Band. But less bothered about cars, chicks and headbands. Could do without the rowdy piccolo solo.

Uritual
Groundbreaking bonus track only accessible after emailing one’s Google password to the Warp Records mailing list. Once unlocked, the listener must connect their ipod to a 3D printer which will then generate a flat-pack music box for self-assembly. Depending on how fast the music box’s handle is turned the resulting noise sounds either like Björk excavating Jim Morrison’s grave with a wooden teaspoon or Dave Lombardo beating himself over the nose with a Sega Megadrive.

Nothing Is Real
Twoism plus ‘Olson’, multiplied by Snoop Lion, minus Laura Marling’s favourite plectrum, divided by Marc Almond, added to 20% of Nick Cave’s moustache equals ‘Nothing Is Real’.

Sundown
Obligatory dubstep number with mid-point minimalist bugle breakdown. The liner notes credit Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs with ‘additional production’ and the tap dancer from Tilly and the Wall with ‘encouragingly jaunty 4-4 handclaps’.

New Seeds
Nine long minutes of synthetic birdsong.

Come To Dust
Moon Safari played backwards under a disused railway bridge in the Outer Hebrides while a confectionary-addicted vicar mournfully licks the sugar off his final Fruit Pastille.

Semena Mertvykh
The closing piece is a futuristic collaborative symphony featuring a host of Warp Records alumni. Squarepusher provides characteristically fussy, beef-thumbed slap bass. Richard D. James spanks Aphex Twin’s buttocks with a rusty tambourine while headbutting Polygon Window’s grand piano. Chris Morris delivers a tasteless, vaguely satirical narrative about an abducted toddler. In the background, Autechre experiment with a range of specially modified electric toothbrushes. The chap with the hat out of Maximo Park made the coffee. A post-techno counterpart to the Traveling Wilburys’ ‘Handle with Care’.

Conclusion

Take one copy of Geogaddi, one copy of The Campfire Headphase, smash them into a blender, add two diced apples, a pinch of lemon rind, and mix on a high speed for 4-5 mins. Pour the liquid into a bowl and add flour, eggs, butter, and three ex-members of the Bluetones. Bake on a medium heat for eight years or until golden. Leave to stand for twenty minutes before icing with Paul Newman’s Tex Mex Salad Dressing. Chew upon Tomorrow’s Harvest with a childlike wonder.

1 comment:

  1. Enjoyed that, a lovely adventure into an unexpected abyss. Liked taller than bonaparte, taylor swift confronting taboos via our north, and will.i.am's lyrics feel very very real.

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