Boards of Canada – ‘Inferno’ album review: phantasmic electronics still spook after all these years
After 13 years away, the Boards of Canada brothers return from the wilderness to explore the fraught terrain of spirituality on the much-anticipated fifth LP, Inferno, via the ever-loyal Warp Records.
The Skinny: They’re having to navigate an electronic world largely of their making. Ever since Music Has the Right to Children unleashed its spectral energy onto the IDM underground back in 1998, Scotland’s Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin’s creative stamp of artfully sampling public information films and documentaries sparked a whole cultural offshoot known as ‘hauntology’. It’s eerie sonics and prod of the collective social memory wander a phantasmic library of the UK’s yesteryear that’s been eagerly wielded by the likes of the Ghost Box label, Adam Curtis’ apparitional archive plundering, and the universe of vapourwave spooking up Bandcamp like abandoned shopping malls.
It’s hard to feel the same hauntological shiver in the 2020s after pop culture is so inured by its revenant flair, but Boards of Canada chart a respectable course in steering their illusory soundscapes away from the oversaturation. Sandison and Eoin still know how to coax a stirring effect from the faintest aural activity. Even decades since its ubiquity on various DAW plug-ins, those sonic degradations and fluttering tape warbles still fire the senses in a transportive way, albeit with such evocations not ascending to elegeiac heights as peaked on earlier records.
They travel a decent mile, however. ‘Deep Time’ dwells in an electric realm of liturgical communion in the best Brian Eno tradition, an ambient wander rippling and breathing with cavernous glow that’s set to gun straight into the affections of longtime fans. The sonic palette expands to their love of John Carpenter’s spiky electronic scores on ‘Arena Americanada’, all nocturnal skulk that radiates midnight menace with its sinewy arpeggios and industrial lead. Other welcome flashes of kaleidoscopic instrumentation pierce Boards of Canada’s grand canvas, ‘Blood In The Labyrinth’, deploying Asian scales in its heady brew that keeps Inferno away from one spot in the electronic ether.
As ever, Boards of Canada never divulge any explicit theme or obvious arc to Inferno’s ruminative soar, but a perennial motif of spiritual ritual and the roads religion can pull one down to sit amid the album’s moral tensions. Is it mere exotic sampling? From Hare Krishna chants that snake their way around ‘Naraka’s trip-hop shuffle, to the crises of faith bottled on ‘Father and Son’s vocal ooze, any real point remains dimmed by the pair’s elusivity.
The real time a stance is shone is on the recurring narrator that rears its head on the icy ‘Prophecy At 1420 MHz’ and later again on ‘All Reason Departs’, a robotic mouthpiece that feels booming out of some dystopian city speaker, spitting a volley of muscular Christianity, preparing the devout for battle, be it judgment day or the culture war right down on Earth.
Boards of Canada achieve the right balance of past echo and contemporary on their latest LP effort. If you can forgive some of the soggy drumbeats that rob the cuts of their ambient power, Inferno reveals itself to be a rich and rewarding listen, an electronic statement that frizzles with weird pertinence in an age of digital uniformity and scant time to stop and consider the madness of the world.
Standout Track: ‘Prophecy At 1420 MHz’
The Verdict: While not crafting ambient elevators to greatness as they used to, Boards of Canada still know how to craft moving wanders of electronica that manage to avoid the clichés of their hauntological successors.
Release Date: May 29th, 2026 | Producer: Mike Sandison | Label: Warp
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