Once you decide to enter the realm of 'IDM', read lists on what are essentials, and decide to listen to records, this is amongst the first records you will encounter, just Googling "idm records" results in you seeing the turquoise cover as first result, it is celebrated as amongst the finest works of the genre—a genre seemingly bound by ideology rather than sound as whoever listens to more records rapidly will realize—and it's a record that also served as my introduction to the world of experimental music.

Boards of Canada have crafted an immense fanbase behind them by simply being the first stop for people when they delve into experimental music, and it makes sense, the record is at a glance fairly conventional, a sound influenced by the likes of hip-hop, but one that drives further into electronica and into building an atmosphere of its own. Amongst the first descriptors people utilize for the record are the likes of nostalgic, bittersweet, meditative, etc. The record sounds as if it were the result of reminiscing about one's childhood; backgrounds are filled with monosynth pads, lines, distorted by tape wow and flutter, eclectically sourced samples are generally short and mangled, initially meaningless, cryptic or unintelligible, as if it were being picked up randomly from memory, and sounds drift from the menacing and bittersweet to the natural and hypnotic, akin to the ranges of experiences one would pick up from childhood.

One of the rather large gripes people have with electronic music stands with it being bound to its time, but the intersection between the sounds of 70's and 90's electronic music, from one side the sound of fairly rudimentary, basic synthesizers, the foley filled sound design of the time, and samples from contemporary video, ranging from children's television to the outro of a porno, and in the other the sound of trip-hop drum programming, ingenious sampling techniques and effects usage carve the record into being timeless, of course it rather helps that the sound of 90's hip-hop never really drifted itself into being passé, and the sounds of those synthesizers remaining pleasant to the masses, but Boards of Canada records remain novel and unique despite them coasting into the 20 year old mark, a feat that is rather incredible in the world of electronic music.