BOARDS OF CANADA Inferno 2xLP/7” flexi (Warp)

I was joking with some colleagues that this record should be sponsored by Flexeril, then decided to go over to Erowid to find something that would make this joke funny enough for a review and the very first trip journal I clicked on for Flexeril mentions Boards of Canada. https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=10357 If you’re a fan of muscle relaxers or their effects, this might be the one for you, though I would recommend it digitally if you’re not being tripsat so you don’t have to get up.

But really ... what dim view must two people take of what’s left of this Earth to make something this flatlined? As a journal of dread, fear of automation, whatever negs this might dredge up, it certainly works in that regard. But you can go outside and get that, now more than ever. Horrible politics, humans who’ve forgotten how to be around humans, thoughtless errors, 40-degree Fahrenheit temperature swings resulting in violent weather, no realistic limit on how much things can cost. Not gonna take this line of thought much further, though, because realistically Inferno could be about anything, and no one in the room had the temerity to tell these guys after 13 years that they had made a record that sounds like giving up. Beyond ambient, it’s wallpaper, and I forgot I was listening to it in its middle tracks, so the only thing that burned up was Boards of Canada’s ambitions. Pure silence would have been preferable.

SAN KAZAKGASCAR This Slog LP (Lather)

Jed Brewer and crew hit the moon mile after two decades of working through the Eastern-fleck psych changes with San Kaz, a six-piece unit of expected instruments, winds and synths at time of recording This Slog (kind of anything but, really). The four composed pieces here get to the threshold of Cul De Sac or certain Bishop Brothers notions but stop short of any particular spirit transfer or loss of purpose; this is psychedelic journey music but committed to a clean, mannered recording style that lets what they do come across, a thematic lock-in of tightly-constructed, increasingly urgent instrumentals with a certain economy of movement that really allows listeners to position themselves in the moment. Nothing here is all that flashy, something that may read as a negative until you realize that it just gets you that much closer and involved with the songs, particularly “Driver Ate,” a small miracle of four-chord tension that keeps winding up until it breaks. Sidelong closer “Passarell Spirit” (improvised in honor of late bandmate Tony Passarell) works from a buzzing drone into the record’s heaviest, most direct lock-in, well-paced and confident in the strides they make through the veil. Maybe tear-your-head-off psychedelic music isn’t the move all the time. Todd Rundgren said “you need your head” (truthfully he’s said many things) but these days, you do, and it’s gotta be on a swivel.