If you want rich soundscapes and something to help you drift away then you’d be hard-pressed to find a better candidate this year and even though this album is an unmistakable throwback, there’s a lot of modern technique and some surprising moments of tempo and chord play. I’ve never heard anything sound so much like Boards of Canada that isn’t Boards of Canada.
The ultimate chill-fest to take away stress and troubles
Although having been released last July (2020) it wasn’t until over the festive period that I saw a number of posts relating to what was really down with the cool kids. In what’s been a very trying year for some, rants and raves aplenty described the benefits of Cult 48 (whose second release 1.1 dropped on New Year’s Day) declaring it the ultimate chill-fest to take away stress and troubles.
Turns out they weren’t wrong and Catalog 1 is an instant hit in my books and a very pleasant listen. As with many modern releases and the advent of easily-accessible streaming services, mystery surrounds the identity of the creator but that hasn’t stopped many from calling out the incredibly large elephant in the room—I’ve never heard anything sound so much like Boards of Canada that isn’t Boards of Canada.
In fact if you’re one of those people that would rather ignore the BoC output post-2005 then this will delight you and you’ll have lots of fun pretending that they never changed style and never dropped off the radar. It’s so uncanny, from the rhythms, use of public-information style soundbites, and the glide speed on pads, that it’s sometimes hard to listen to this release as its own unit.
Enough about the similarities though, there’s plenty of good stuff here and it easily holds steady on its own merit. It’s fantastic the whole way through and almost a textbook exercise in production and emulation of good-sounding music.
One of the only qualms I have is that some of the songs are just too damn short—the perfect length for skits and outros (a further nod to the aforementioned likeness associated with interludes)—but definitely leaving you wanting more, especially when it happens in tracks with almost perfect cadence. A great example of this is the favourite “Slowly The Sky Turned Black” (or “Happy Cycling 2020” as I’ve been referring to it internally), which doesn’t turn slowly enough in my opinion and makes me reach for the repeat button every time.
It’s a solid release and it certainly stands out. If you want rich soundscapes and something to help you drift away then you’d be hard-pressed to find a better candidate this year and even though this album is an unmistakable throwback, there’s a lot of modern technique and some surprising moments of tempo and chord play—a trait which definitely continues on the January follow up. Big thumbs up.
Catalog 1 is available on Bandcamp.
