Music and Nostalgia

Nostalgia has featured a lot in my life lately - a 40th anniversary school reunion next year is generating lots of social media chatter with associated memories and Mr and Mrs 9Feet Underground have been enjoying a 22nd wedding anniversary - all of which has prompted me to write this piece on music and nostalgia.

Let's get straight to the point: when it comes to music, in general, I'm not keen on nostalgia.  Let me expand on that.  I don't mean that I don't listen to any music that was written / recorded / released in the past. Far from it.  To me "new music" just means music I've not heard before, whether it was recorded yesterday or before I surfaced, screaming, onto this planet.  The key thing is to not only be open to new music but to actively seek it out; I'm not interested in the view that all the good music was made in the sixties, seventies, eighties, or whatever period happens to coincide with the speaker’s youth. There always has been good music and always will be - you just have to be prepared to find it.

I also struggle with bands or artists trading on former glories: I really don't want to go to a greatest hits gig - I like bands to be writing new material, ideally that can match or surpass the best of their past.  Feel free to distribute the old stuff amongst the new stuff! I'm not against bands re-forming - as long as they intend to write new material - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it’s better than being a museum piece.  It's not unusual for bands who have been ripped off in the past and go out on the road to capitalise on their back catalogue: that's fine and dandy and I’m sure they deserve the money they make but in the majority of cases it's just not for me.

Traditionally on our anniversary Mrs 9Feet Underground has fed my music addiction and this year was no exception. This year’s choices span the decades - one each from the 1970s and 2000s, a couple from the 1990s and another from this year - and it's one of those from the 1990s that closes off this nostalgia themed post.

Originally released in 1996 but re-released several times since, most recently in 2014, the 'Hi Scores' EP from Boards of Canada is a standout.  I've been a long-time enthusiast of Boards of Canada ever since I heard them on John Peel and bought their debut full-length album 'Music has the Right to Children' back in 1998. The ‘Hi Scores' EP was a bit of a gap and known to contain a couple of gems from their back catalogue.

Boards of Canada's music evokes past memories, perhaps even childhood memories which are both comforting and at the same time eerily menacing. In that sense their music can be nostalgic, though more than that it surfaces a sense of danger, witchcraft, moonlit rituals, malevolence. Without warning you are alone on a desolate plain, disturbingly cut off from everyone you know or have ever known. Therein lies its beauty and emotional power.

'Everything you do is a Balloon' from the 'Hi Scores' EP captures that nostalgic melancholy perfectly: at first disjointed until the drums kick in at around 2 minutes then followed by the sinuous melody line at around 3 minutes 30 seconds, then you are transported...'The Wicker Man', 'Children of the Stones', these things come to mind.