Music Has the Right to Children is the debut studio album by Scottish electronic music duo Boards of Canada, released on 20 April 1998 in the United Kingdom by Warp and Skam Records and in the United States by Matador. The album was produced at Hexagon Sun, the duo's personal recording studio in Pentland Hills, and continued their distinctive style of electronica, featuring vintage synthesisers, degraded analogue production, found sounds and samples, and hip-hop-inspired rhythms that had been featured on their first two EPs Twoism (1995) and Hi Scores (1996). going on to inspire a variety of subsequent artists. It has been included on various best-ever lists by publications such as Pitchfork and Mojo.
Background
The members of Boards of Canada, brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin, had been creating music together as early as 1981, layering synths over cassette recordings of shortwave radio. Throughout the 1990s, the band were members of the Hexagon Sun artistic collective based in Pentland Hills, Scotland, and released self-produced cassettes produced in small quantities and given to friends and family members. According to Eoin, around 1987 or 1988, they started experimenting with tape demos they later destroyed. He called it the "seed of the project".
Recording and production
thumb|Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison recorded the album entirely in their own studio in Pentland Hills.
The album was recorded in the duo's studio in Pentland Hills, which had been described as a "bunker" by various media publications. The duo described this as "just an exaggeration on the part of the record label" in an interview around the time of the album's release.
In interviews, the band has identified Devo, Wendy Carlos, DAF, TV and film soundtracks, Jeff Wayne, Julian Cope, My Bloody Valentine, 1980s pop music, and Seefeel as influences of the album's sound. Jesse Dorris of Pitchfork said: "Boards of Canada coaxed breaks into motion as if excavating ancient rock formations while high on their own supply of hairy psych-rock samples (even Hair itself). It's nostalgic but not dissociative: The album's most idiosyncratic aspect are the wobbling voices that gurgle, 'I love you...' or 'There are a lot of different me's...' mostly summoned from 1970s North American public television, that ancient medium of collective meaning-making." The original CD was released in a traditional jewel case, while the 2004 re-release was packaged in digipak format.
Critical reception
Music Has the Right to Children was received positively by critics upon release. Writing for Manchester Evening News, critic Neil Davenport stated that it was "the best album you'll hear this year", and that it was a "landmark in the evolution of emotive electronica". Tucker Petertil of The Olympian wrote that although tracks on Music Has the Right to Children shared similar elements, each track had small differences in sound. In a review for the Daily Telegraph, Alexis Petridis stated that the album was "packed with warm, human, even witty material" and had "rare qualities".
James Delingpole of the Sunday Telegraph noted he enjoyed the album's "moody, edgy, weirdly beautiful ambient soundscapes". Ben Rayner of the Toronto Star ranked Music Has the Right to Children at number seven on his list of the ten best albums of 1998. In a piece for the Winnipeg Sun, critic Mark Perry gave the album three and a half stars, but called the album a "soothing, naturally textured world of warm synth tones, hip-hop beats and millisecond vocal snippets that warble and flit a bit like bird calls".
Legacy
Retrospective reviews
The album received widespread acclaim upon release. Slant Magazine described the album as "nestled somewhere in between the warm hues of 1970s flocked wallpaper and the sleek electronic sheen of the future." The album was also placed at number two on its "50 Best IDM Albums of All Time" list released in 2017. It was ranked number 91 in Mojo magazine's "100 Modern Classics" list. The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Influence
The album has been noted as a major influence on the electronic music genre. Fact magazine identified Lone, Gold Panda, Lapalux, Tim Hecker, Leyland Kirby, Bibio, Four Tet, and Ulrich Schnauss as musicians directly influenced by the album, calling it not "just a classic album or many people's personal favourite," but also "an artifact in its own lifetime, a present-day relic that recalls an innocent time in more ways than one."