Geogaddi\nBoards of Canada\nWarp Records\nDo you remember those faded, scratchy nature filmstrips your teacher showed you in grade school? You might not have realized it then, but the bulk of those were made with money from the National Film Boards of Canada, and it's from those relics of the pre-VCR/cable days that Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada take both their name and a good deal of the inspiration for their evocative ambient music.\nThe pair ambled out of the underground in 1998 with their debut LP, Music has the Right to Children, a record that definitely took influences from Warp labelmates like Aphex Twin and Autechre -- twisted, crunchy beats and meandering keyboard melodies -- but mellowed them out and took them to a beautiful place out in the country. They stayed there for their next release, the 2000 EP incidentally titled In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country.\nGeogaddi, the full length follow-up to Children and Country, doesn't break a whole lot of new ground, but expands the sonic palette enough that Boards fans should stay both pleased and interested. The Children formula is adhered to -- short, one-minute passages of ethereal ambience alternate with longer passages of ethereal ambience with beats. Just as before, there's a certain David Lynch quality to the peaceful drones, as if something ominous is lurking just below the surface. \nThere's some subtle packaging psychology at work here as well; where Children's sleeve was cool, hazy turquoise photographs of 1970s families, Geogaddi's booklet is warm and red, with geometric kaleidoscope patterns of, um, children. These images, combined with track names like "Music is Math," "The Smallest Weird Number" and "A is to B as B is to C" reflect a shift towards the scientific end of the inspiration spectrum. Maybe they were watching a filmstrip about volcanoes and not the forests of Northern Canada this time, but the Boards are still definitely exploring the same beautiful place.\n
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