Boards of Canada: Geogaddi

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * * )

After delivering their 1998 debut, Music Has the Right to Children, this notoriously reclusive Scots duo has become the electronica name to drop - especially as comparison point when Radiohead went a bit weird and guitar-allergic on their past two albums.

That's made Geogaddi a much-anticipated album by the fusebox cognoscenti. But perhaps the most curious thing that you notice is how approachable and digitally conventional it sounds.

Its 23 tracks over 66 minutes still make for an oddly alluring soundscape. It emerges part Brian Eno-ambient, part something harsher care of a pronounced electro-rhythmic undertow, and there's many an unsettling touch care of BOC's use of disembodied, often unintelligible vocals.

But it still makes for quite a headphone album, especially on its more mindbending moments like when Diving Station's plaintive piano segues into You Could Feel the Sky, which sounds like the sonic equivalent of light not being able to escape a black hole. Add the hydraulically beaty Music is Math or Dawn Chorus to give it just enough momentum throughout and Geogaddi becomes something strangely beguiling and unsettling. And Boards of Canada - Marcus Eloin and Michael Sandison - emerge with that enigma intact.

Label: Warp