Boards Of Canada Music Has the Right to Children

Michael and Marcus Eoin Sandison's 1998 debut hit with the force of an idea fully formed—and beamed from a distant galaxy, at that. The sources of their crackling ambient tracks—the boom-bap beats of '80s hip-hop, the eerie synths of '70s nature documentaries—are familiar, but the overall effect is as strange as an out-of-body experience. Melodies warble like warped tape, and disembodied voices dart through the murk like auditory hallucinations. It's a spellbinding balancing act between childlike wonder and grown-up dread.