When music eats everything else including the words

I am totally overwhelmed by The Campfire Headphase. It gets better with each listen. And already my first aural encounter was mesmerising. I think I made it through six complete listens in the last four days. No. 7 is about to finish. There is no other album I can put on. The Boards have eaten my entire music collection and I don't care about it.

TCH is much better than its predecessor which had some corny almost cheesy tracks on it. And it is even better than the first album as there is not one dud track on the new one. The dreamy bucolic mood holds from the beginning to the end. The inclusion of guitars was a great idea. They add an extra warm acoustic flair to their music. Amazing how tired they sound. The band probably got that effect by rerecording the recording of the guitars many times.

I am not sure which track I like most. Maybe Dayvan Cowboy which in the beginning has got that late My Bloody Valentine quality where distortion is used to make a simple repetitive melody even more appealing. After two minutes it takes off to another, a slower, a riper universe. Where words are superfluous.

TCH is my fave album of this year so far and it is definitely much too beautiful for the disgusting rotten world I live in.

Collected via Metacritic.

Nick Southall in Stylus Magazine:

“Dayvan Cowboy” is an ambient wash of distant, corroded, almost unheard hum for two minutes before open, reverberating guitar chords fall into place and strings lift this typically Boards Of Canada sound and make it soar like they never have done before. A rattle of drums three minutes in is like Dylan going electric or something. It’s their most tangible, solid moment of music since “Roygbiv,” and it might just be my favourite song on the album.

Mike McGonigal for Amazon.com:

"Dayvan Cowboy,"for instance, is a slow-paced bit of moody psychedelia; the drums don't even kick in until two thirds of the way through.

Steve Hands for musicomh:

Dayvan Cowboy smoulders in melancholic isolation before flowering chromatically with Four Tet-like crashing cymbals and elevating strings.

Dan Nishimoto for Popmatters:

"Dayvan Cowboy" carefully organizes its sound palette to maximize dramatic potential. A subdued opening of fuzzed guitars in round tandem fall like pixel acid raindrops, while tambourine accents splash through the puddles. The calm is broken to the sound of a descending plane, a larger than life... guitar strum. It is a play between the unexpected and de rigeur. Epic crash cymbals, rides riding into infinity while a drum machine stuffed with pink insulation nods softly.

Peter Hepburn for cokemachineglow:

The real standouts come a few songs down the line, with the killer one-two punch of “Peacock Tail” and “Dayvan Cowboy.” Both build on more or less the same formula: build up a quiet, acoustic first half, and then blow it open later in the song. ... “Dayvan Cowboy” is even better, as BoC build the huge shimmering first two minutes of the song, pulling it all up for the guitar strum at 2:07 and then letting the orchestra and the beat hit right at the same time (2:42). None of the elements are over-powering, but again it just feels perfectly natural for all of this to be happening at once and throwing itself into that unstoppable melody in the second half of the track.

Iain Moffat for Playlouder:

In fact, 'Dayvan Cowboy' is probably the most Valentines-esque piece they've ever recorded, fitting in delightfully with the current vogue for New Shoe and standing out greatly in its own right.

John MacDonald for Prefixmag:

“Dayvan Cowboy” is Campfire’s one true progressive moment. Wayward synths build effortlessly before coalescing at the two-minute mark into stark tremolo guitar and gorgeous, compassionate strings. Ironically, it’s one of Boards of Canada’s most straightforward -- and most beautiful -- songs.

Almost Cool:

..."Dayvan Cowboy" literally sounds like a completely generic instrumental trip-hop track that could have poured out of the mixing table of just about any bedroom producer. It's innocuous and clean, and just interesting enough that it will probably be used for backing in about 10 different corporate commercials if the duo feels like doing some licensing with The Campfire Headphase (and honestly, I wouldn't blame them).

John Burgess in The Guardian:

They have, however, added guitars to their template, most effectively on Dayvan Cowboy, which is redolent of both Serge Gainsbourg and My Bloody Valentine.

I am surprised nobody mentioned Fennesz who on Endless Summer used some pretty similar electronic fuzz effects to alienate a beautiful simple tune as in the first two minutes of this song.