I'll give my top 5 at this particular moment I can think of off the top of my head:
5th favorite:
"Doorways up and down the hall, wonder what's behind them all..."
4th favorite: Vocal/wind samples in Opening the Mouth. These paired with its repeating flute bit make this perhaps the most calming and entrancing thing they have ever committed to tape...just utterly beautiful (and pairs well with a particular plant I know that takes you away for a couple minutes
). Could use this as a sleep aid in my bed at night and that's not meant in a derogatory way at all, as it can as easily be such a great vignette with your eyes open or closed, lights on or off.
3rd favorite:
"Now that the show is over...."
Specifically the line:
....then it follows that you could be told what to say or think...
Chilling, moving, depressingly true penultimate track. Fantastic for cynics, probably pretty great for the optimistic as well. Another fantastic vignette. While the low end's changes are what really make the track musically, the slow climbing of the pitch is a nice touch as well.
2nd favorite:
"...up there! It must be a- look, up there! It must be a...."
Favorite of all:
"You're putting me on!" "We're going to try it, you ever try it?" "You're putting me on!" "I'm turning you on." "You're putting me on, where did you get that stuff?" "Oh, Nikki's growing a patch out in the backyard." "Come on, you're putting me on..." "Yeah, he's putting you on, he's a brat!" "Uh-huh, su-" (queue greatest BoC track ever's percussion)
Honorable mentions to the following though (no particular order):
Firstly - all warped (possibly brass instruments filtered heavily for the beginning and its reprise, I don't know) melodic samples, all "crackly" percussion samples including the sort of "epitome moment", all "wet" percussion samples, live drums (or just traditional percussion if that was not live drumming), all high pitched ambient sampler sounds, the female "choir" backing the majority of the track and finally all flutes - run through wind filters, vocal filters or just totally unfiltered in Julie and Candy. It is impossible for me to express completely just how this single track has
literally everything that means "Boards of Canada" to me and simultaneously expresses just what it is about them that makes them great in its five and a half minute run time.
Secondly - all spoken words in The Devil is in the Details, all spoken words in Dandelion, the screams in You Could Feel the Sky (particularly juxtaposed against such chill pads and the bassline), all spoken words in Sixtyniner, the sampled beat and iconic chopped vocal samples that started it all from Nlogax, "X....Y....ZZZZZ" (or more specifically "....Z[eeeeee]" if you pronounce it "Zed"), ambient noises from 747, flutes in almost anything from Geogaddi (with a lot of these obviously being original samples), "...pur..ple..." and the high pitched "redREDredredREdredredre-re-re-r-r-r" from the ending of Music is Math, flutes and orchestral elements in Dead Dogs Two, "I'm a goddarn (goddamn? can't tell) satanist, if I wanted I'd be in this business too.", vocoded "1969, in the sunshine", "Although not a follower..." and "NOOAAAATAAAK", "I'll be gone about a week...", audio palindrome in A is to B as B is to C, "I don't know, it makes me nervous. I still dream about it. I don't know, I just wish it never happened...", the sample at the very end of Hi Scores, chopped vocals in Spiro (second best use of this effect in my opinion),
countless others I cannot think of at the moment but will add If I do.
Boards' prolific yet tasteful sampling is one of the things that makes them my second favorite band ever. I feel that samples that aren't yours, if you're doing something commercial and claimed to be your work as opposed to a mashup record or something, are best used in a subtle manner or twisted around to the point where they are no longer recognizable. Most bands and artists fail to do this. Boards have done it ever since Hi Scores and do not rely on samples that are not theirs, just using them to add something of an audio easter egg to an original piece of music, with the results often being truly intricate and fascinating.
: http://bocpages.org/wiki/List_of_sample ... _of_Canada