Yeah, That’s Right

Boards of Canada “Aquarius” (Version 3/Peel Session 1998)

The voices in “Aquarius” are all sourced from Sesame Street clips from the ‘70s, but only the bit of a child’s voice saying “yeah….that’s right!” signals itself as such. The rest either sounds remarkably like a numbers station or melts into incoherence, another texture in a psychedelic funk song that’s halfway between nostalgic vague familiarity and the unknown. In the context of Music Has the Right to Children “Aquarius” feels like a piece of a larger musical collage pulled from some Jungian collective unconscious of Gen X childhood. This version of the song – ostensibly recorded live in session for the BBC though I cannot tell exactly what constitutes “live” for this sort of music – feels somewhat looser and warmer, and somehow takes a different shape in isolation while being just about the same in structural terms. There’s a little more urgency to the rhythm and a bit more pop to the bass. When the numbers start falling out of sequence the mischief of it feels more pronounced, like you can tell that on some level the BoC brothers were enjoying the chance to mess with people’s heads in real time for once rather than well after the fact.

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