Boards of Canada are Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin. Two Scottish brothers who have to date released three landmark albums in electronic music. In June this year they make their much-anticipated return, Tomorrow’s Harvest. Theirs is a precedent unmatched in modern music for their reach and influence relative to their visibility.

From Radiohead to Deerhunter, Four Tet to Burial, Clams Casino to Mike Will, BOC are a fingerprint apparent across contemporary music. Distant and anonymous, their enigmatic air is not a contrived device but cast by their well-reasoned seclusion in the Scottish wilderness – a singular vision to create their music far from urbanity – the product of which is an intuitive depth and maturity to the fidelity and concept of their music, unsurpassed by their peers.

Early influences cited by the band range from Industrial to Post Punk, New Wave to Hip Hop, Prog to Folk, but Boards of Canada have sought to create something unique and authentic for themselves – understanding that music is not a study in its form, but in its essence. Tomorrow’s Harvest follows their previous work with a deliberate palette underpinned by a wealth of cultural and political references beyond a linear narrative. One can only speculate what social crisis the brothers were trying to evoke as plates of ever thickening drone build huge plateaus, and slowly break and disperse. From pulsing, evolving analogue chords, thick kicks build towards cataclysmic events. It is powerful throughout, heavily charged and at times unrelenting – but the characteristic emotional maturity of this music comes in a rooted understanding of harmony, as the weight gives way to an optimistic final chord – after extinction, a resurrection.