Cerebral – Music Has The Right To Children

Few albums have the capability to so quickly lull the mind into a state of dissociative relaxation as much as Boards of Canada’s Music Has The Right To Children. The record is considered a masterwork in the electronic music sub-genre of IDM or ‘Intelligent Dance Music’; a term ascribed to a more ‘cerebral’ sound, suited better to listening on the couch or bed than in a club or concert setting. IDM’s sounds are often otherworldly, it’s hooks and melodies made from patchworks of heavily-distorted samples, miscellaneous analogue sounds, or the atonal noises of old AV equipment that one would never think to call ‘music’.

Music Has The Right To Children was the first studio album by Scottish brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin – following a string of intriguing shorter projects – and was released on Monday April 20 1998, which also happens to be the same day that I was born.

This isn’t to say that this inane coincidence points to some form of far-flung spiritual connection. However, it’s an album that – sonically and thematically – is inextricably linked with the concepts of memory and nostalgia, making the serendipitous connection a novel fact worthy of a little exploration. It’s also often all too easy to look at your favourite albums as infallible. So, rather than spout further platitudes on how the album has become shorthand for a prescribed set of values, it feels befitting to take a page out of Sandison and Eoin’s book and reflect on some of its manifold evocations and feelings.

The album cover

The album cover, dosed in heavy tints of blue and green, depicts seven faceless people standing in front of a wall with what appears to be a mountain sitting far in the background. This setting harkens back to frequent road trips taken to the Blue Mountains, marked with an inevitable pilgrimage to the region’s premier rock formation: The Three Sisters. The faded quality of the image brings associations of a family photo from an old album, forgotten on a bookshelf or neglected on a coffee table. One day, someone finally looks at it, accidentally spilling water on it and degrading the image even further. It’s left out to dry and forgotten once more. Now it bears a haunting quality, though sentimental value ensures it’ll never be thrown away.

‘Wildlife Analysis’

Although only just over a minute in length, this track’s chiming synth drone brings to mind an expansive oasis of plant and animal life, albeit not the sort you’d see on broadcast TV being narrated by David Attenborough. Instead, think of the educational videos that you watched in primary school, rich in scantly-assembled onscreen text graphics and overly-compressed audio narration. Are these a lesson in the many types of flora and fauna that populate our sublime natural environment, or are they affronting challenges to the senses; stretching low-budget film aesthetics to their absolute limits?

‘Turquoise Hexagon Sun’

You’ve just moved after splitting up with a long-term partner and are living alone. A new apartment in a new locale. Life is filled with a strange combination of optimism and sombreness. On your first Saturday there you hear music pouring from the door of the pub just down the street and decide to go there. How to make new friends by yourself? Instead of heading to the bar you go straight to the bathroom, taking a few moments of reprieve in a cubicle before splashing your face with water. You eventually go grab a drink and lean on the bar, watching people chat, drink, and play pool. You get in your head about what could have gone better, how you’ve suddenly become ‘that guy over there by himself pretending to have a good time’. The music stops and, for a while, it’s just ambience filling the room. A small group of people walk past and you make eye contact with one of them.

‘Roygbiv’

This track has a sense of movement and an undertone of positivity that sneaks up on you. Like feeling obligated to go for a run after receiving a smart watch for Christmas and it doesn’t turn out as badly as you expected. Hesitation morphs into optimism as you look at its tracking statistics, realising that you’re not a 22-year-old with a geriatric body. You’ve gained a newfound appreciation for the urban sprawl of your suburb in all its glory of medium-sized apartment buildings and vaguely modernist townhouses. You saw a park you didn’t know existed and a new cafe you’d like to go to sometime soon. Maybe you’ll go home and make a smoothie with something green in it, read a few pages of the book you haven’t touched in months, and do some jobs around the house without having to listen to music to make it bearable.

‘Aquarius’

Like the methodical-yet-panicked plodding of last-minute study. After not taking notes during classes let alone attending lectures for an entire semester, you gain a false sense of security by committing to regimented study the night before an exam, discovering in the process that it is feasible to cover three months-worth of content in 18 hours. Resigned to the capabilities of long-term memory, you take to constructing an ephemeral memory palace. Objects in your childhood home become formulae; your best friend’s house is filled with quotes for an essay on Early Modern English grammar. Pacing back and forth, you listlessly recite information aloud until it ceases to have meaning. This goes on for some time until you realise that you should have left ten minutes ago and are now going to be late for the exam.

‘Pete Standing Alone’

The vacant trepidation of walking up the road to Stanmore McDonalds at 2am. A passing car mows through a nearby gutter puddle and lightly douses the right half of your body. Fibreglass shards of front bumper litter a section of footpath thanks to a car crash earlier. Swathes of food delivery drivers sit and smoke in the parking lot. Inexplicably, there are always seagulls around. You quickly become frustrated at the unresponsiveness of the self-serve kiosk touchscreens. Deciding to order from an actual person, you stand on the floor mark 1.5m away from the counter. The worker behind it seems to be ignoring you.

‘Happy Cycling’

In 2009, your Dad got back from an overseas business trip and bought you a copy of Secret Agent Clank for PS2. Unfortunately, upon startup, the console tells you it’s NTSC region locked. When consulted, an employee at the local Dick Smith quietly suggests going to a nearby computer repair shop/Internet Cafe that also does console modding. You feel like a small-time criminal as your Mum takes you there after school one day later that week. The queasiness in your stomach amplifies as you walk in and see various heads turn, they’re definitely wondering why an 11-year-old in his school uniform and his mother have just walked in. The wall-mounted TV in the corner is playing a very obviously bootlegged copy of Drag Me to Hell (2009, dir. Sam Raimi). The guy working there seems a bit on the uninterested side, and tells you that he can install a mod chip for around $90 but it voids the console’s warranty and may damage the save files on your memory card. The operation would take around three days – your Mum sweetly offers to pay for it. You say you’ll think about it and leave but decide almost immediately that you don’t want to take the risk. 

‘One Very Important Thought’

Over warbling synth notes, a robotic female voice – speaking with detachment – makes a plea to the listener. If, at some point in the future, they were to “serve as a juror in a censorship case, or a so-called obscenity case”, they would be the same people to stop you from listening to this very album, or to ‘violate others’ constitutional rights’ by complaining about the content of a book or TV show. Control over viewing and listening is correlated to control over thinking and speaking.

Perhaps Boards of Canada are asking the listener to regress into their memories. Not to deny themselves the pleasures of cultural signifiers, but to embrace them in feverish nostalgia.