Music Has the Right to Children

Is this what getting high in the 90s sounded like?

I’m far too late for the Boards of Canada party. I only discovered the band in 2026 through their latest album "Inferno".On first listening, their debut album "Music Has the Right to Children" is even more abstract and austere, yet fascinating at the same time. It's an impressive debut and definitely a reason to delve into the band’s entire discography.

Life’s too short and this list is TOO long for another EDM record.

Now we're talking. Actually, although boards of canada are on a lot of my electro playlists and mixes and whatnot, I've always found them boring and background-music-y. But I have never listed to a full album, so let's see. OK, I still feel this way. It's pleasant but definitely not a 100% attention kind of listening experience for me.

Lotta color + shape talk (in the titles).

Highlight: the title 'Rue the Whirl' is like something I would come up with (therefore: good)

Perhaps I wasn’t listening closely enough, or maybe I’m too used to these sounds… it seems like this album was incredibly influential. But nothing really captured my attention. Every now and then, I’d listen more closely. And it made me think of my own worst impulses as an electronic musician: playing repetitive beats with microscopic changes that only I like or notice. Perhaps I’ll listen again and reconsider, but for now, I found it quite middling.

Down right depressing

I feel like I got it by the end, but I'm still not convinced that I can love music this atmospheric.

This is why I am on this list. An album I don't have the patience to listen to all the way through that makes me sit down and listen to it, and I'm grateful for it. There are albums on here that are more traditional pop albums that are more repetitive and boring then this. They seem to know how to create music that changes just enough to keep the music interesting, and they also seem to understand when to end a song. This is what I want Brian Eno to be. Also so many musicians I like now I hear they blatantly stole sounds from this album. its really good.

This band and this album are legendary in my 9th grade memory.

It’s all just a bit too boring. Tracks like ‘Kaini Industries’ and ‘Bocuma’ dont even develop beyond the initial opening. Just an album of background music

While I must applaud them for the immensely creepy album name, yesterday's album (that I hated) was only 30 minutes. This is an hour and 11 minutes! I wish people would embrace brevity with album run times...

Telephasic Workshop was REALLY annoying. I sort of enjoyed Turquoise Hexagon Sun. Ditto Rue The Whirl.

If I was just sat listening to this with the intent of focusing entirely on the music, I'd be having a bad time. As I listened to it while scrolling music posts on Reddit and drinking a cuppa it allowed me to tune it in and out. And I honestly started to enjoy it a little. At least enough that it easily avoids the indignity of a 1 star rating. I think this might be a 2.5 star album in a half star world, but I'm being generous and giving a 3 (which means I expect I will drag up my group's score significantly):

3/5

Jamais écouté avant.

Pas grand chose à dire sur cet album, je ne suis clairement pas le public, et je ne connais pas suffisamment la musique électronique pour me rendre compte de son importance. Tout repose sur le mélange entre textures ambient souvent difformes et beats hip-hop midtempo lancinants. C'est très long et répétitif sur la longueur de l'album, mais entre la dimension organique, la chaleur humaine, apportée par les synthés analogiques et une espèce de malaise constant, de tension permanente mais jamais vraiment résolue, notre attention est sans cesse sollicitée, et on ne s'ennuie que rarement. Reste que je ne vois pas vraiment dans quel contexte je pourrais réécouter Music Has the Right to Children, qui a clairement l'ambition d'être un album de musique électronique "à écouter" plutôt qu'à diffuser sur les pistes de danse.

Top : Roygbiv
Flop : Smokes Quantity

Es klingt hier wie ein endloses, verwaschenes Kinderzimmer‑Flimmern: nostalgisch gemeint, aber am Ende nur dumpfes Gejaule im Nebel.

Love these slightly spooky beats

Boring over all, but I found myself digging my head to several songs so I guess it's a weak 3...

It’s definitely a 5.

I always like to point out the sense of progression that always feels necessary in electronic music like this; if you’re too stagnant for too long, you risk losing the trance you’re trying to put the listener in, and once they’re out of that trance, a track may not hit quite the same even if they get back into it. This is an album that challenges that for me, at least in terms of how often I’d prefer tracks to progress. These tracks move slowly, perhaps meant to be comprehended & explored with the same deliberate over-explanation that some children need. I was definitely a curious enough kid that I’d ask too many questions about things. That probably annoyed adults who were desperate to move on. Music has the right to children, at least as much as it does to adults.

This album, to me, feels like an exploration of trying to rediscover that same imaginative spark in your adulthood, weaving through a melted wave of childhood memories (hence, all of the samples of classic TV) & digging through them with the same slow deliberation befitting a child’s desire to learn. I’m often an advocate for tracks progressing more quickly, and while I found myself initially bothered by some of these soundscapes lasting for 2 or 3 minutes at a time without doing much, I later came to appreciate it, especially as the progressions themselves grew more complex & more engaging throughout the album. By the end, via the bonus track “Happy Cycling”, that repetition just felt like an essential part of what’s trying to be evoked here. It feels like a lesson in patience; if you continue to cultivate someone’s desires while making them earn it as opposed to just giving it to them, they’ll end up with a greater appreciation for what they’ve gained. That feels like this album’s ethos to me.

Of course, mileage will vary on other people’s interpretations of these soundscapes, or their appreciation for electronic music in general. I find it disheartening that this has a 2.92 on the site, because it just tells me people aren’t engaging with this at the deeper level that’s intended, and that’s a shame. For my tastes, it’s one of the most complete electronica albums we’ve gotten on the list, and while that repetition I’ve come to appreciate is stopping me from going any higher than a 5 on a first pass, it’s very possible that with enough time, this could go as high as a 10. It seems like it can be that sonically fulfilling, and I truly hope it eventually will be for me. For now, it’s a very easy 5, and it feels like it should be mandatory for it to be on the list, even if you somehow get nothing out of it. It’s challenging, yes, but if you can accept that challenge, it might open up a greater appreciation for this style of music & what it’s trying to do.

Enoish, w/ the same caretaking sentiments of ambiance & abstraction, yet I don't think quite as intelligent b/c not quite as lovable, Boards of Canada are classic to the extent that they're influential, but not much more for me. It's not a matter of being too long - Music Has the Right to Children is indeed too long tho - it's that by track 4 I was wondering how much longer. I like it as a sampled work of art, & it does pay its homages to hip-hop, which I not only appreciate but hold onto as a buoy of both sense + realism, but it also has its allegiances to trip-hop, a genre that, in its atmospherics, faceplants in pretentiousness (often not always). In other words, too Portishead to be anything I'd listen to again, it's a record I don't like but I understand aloofly.

Et vanskelig album å bedømme. Jeg måtte høre det to ganger for å komme inn i det. Første del hørtes ut som en del ting som ble skrapt på og bokser med skrot som ble ristet på. Så ble det mer Air-aktige halvveis. Det er både ambient og groovete. Alle små motivene utgjør en stor reise og jeg følte jeg forsvant inn i albumet. Hadde fått toppscore om det var litt kortere.

Lovely stuff.

Too review guy doesn't like Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath off the album Black Sabbath. What a jackass!

Not sure what to say about this except I'll definitely be exploring this album and group further and adding this album to my personal collection

⭐⭐⭐.51?
⭐⭐⭐⭐?