100 Greatest Songs of the 90’s #9 Boards of Canada – Aquarius

Released : 1998

Latterly revealed as brothers, reclusive Scottish producers Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison’s retro-futurist ambience had already been given limited exposure on the mini albums Twoism and Hi-Scores. They came accompanied by a ready made legendarium, the duo’s back catalogue having already passed into the stuff of legend as being supposedly made up of items so rare public copies had never come unavailable.

Their proper full debut Music Has The Right To Children drew it’s power from an almost fetishistic use of analogue equipment, it’s dream and nightmare textures blended with heavily processed samples (See if you can hear a snatch on Aquarius lifted from Sesame Street). In this dystopian paradise beats chugged, spectral voices carried and icy Moog waves rose and fell apparently in a state of drug induced hypnosis. In 1998 almost nothing else sounded like it; within a few years they were the most emulated artists in their field.