Boards of Canada

Boards of Canada's first widely available EP isn't as lush as their later, more lysergic work; its drum-machine beats are cruder, their locking, popping links to '80s electro-funk as plain as their tape heads are dirty. But even then they had discovered the detune knob on their vintage synths, creating a queasy sense of depth behind the glistening chords. Their melodies aren't so much melancholic as emotionally numb -- like scraps of emotion code sputtered out by a dot-matrix printer -- but that's also their charm, and their cool.