Recording information: Hexagon Sun.

Photographers: Marcus Eoin; Michael Sandison.

The first American release by this Scottish duo has drawn rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. The music ranges from goofball, Perry-Kingsley style retro-techno to ambient (in fact, sometimes eerily reminiscent of Eno's "Ambient Music I") to just about anything else you can dream up for a couple of synthesizers and a drum machine. Boards Of Canada's music has drawn frequent comparisons to wildlife documentaries from the '70s, but you've got to wonder what kind of nature documentary would have distorted drum machines and weird voices darting in and out of the mix. Weird? How about downright goofy? Like the nitrous-oxide flashback of "The Color Of Fire" where a distorted girl's voice keeps repeating "I...love...you" through the dizzy haze. Much of the disc has delightful vignettes interspersed between the longer tracks, and the longer tracks will reveal something different with each listen. Unabashedly lo-fi, this is the soundtrack to a drug experience for which no drug exists.

Although Boards of Canada's blueprint for electronic listening music -- aching electro-synth with mid-tempo hip-hop beats and occasional light scratching -- isn't quite a revolution in and of itself, Music Has the Right to Children is an amazing LP. Similar to the early work of Autechre and Aphex Twin, the duo is one of the few European artists who can match their American precursors with regard to a sense of spirit in otherwise electronic music. This is pure machine soul, reminiscent of some forgotten Japanese animation soundtrack, or a rusting Commodore 64 just about to give up the ghost. Alternating broadly sketched works with minute-long vignettes (the latter of which comprise several of the best tracks on the album), Music Has the Right to Children is one of the best electronic releases of 1998. ~ John Bush