Now revealed as brothers, Scots Mike and Marcus Eoin Sanderson have built up something of a cultish following since the 1998 debut Boards Of Canada album Music Has The Right To Children. But it was the allegedly malevolent intentions of 2002's Geogaddi that brought forth all manner of blogger theories and vaulting conclusions.

Though firmly denied, the duo aren't totally blameless. The artwork for Geogaddi's lead-off EP In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country featured still of David Koresh's Waco compound in the American deep south, and the duo's seemingly distant Scottish locale drew inevitable Wicker Man comparisons in these fearfully folkish times.

However, mystique can be the motor of expectation. And to say the misty morning hues of The Campfire Headphase are eagerly awaited would be an understatement. Or should that be the memory of misty morning hues?

For once wrapped in the faded, shaded unravelling of Satellite Anthem Icarus or the charm-like folds of Peacock Tail, one cannot be sure whether this softly giddying glissade is original material, or some manifestation of collective unconsciousness. Well, generous ol' me is willing to give the Sanderson brothers full credit for this supreme collection of future-perfect broken nostalgia.

Though using acoustic, analogue instruments in tandem for the first time with their aladdin's cave of electronic delights, The Campfire Headphase was still recorded and re-recorded in the Boards Of Canada way of source to source ad infinitum, expunging the crystalline detail and ready assembled meaning that's best left to lesser mortals.

Perhaps more upbeat than its predecessor, there is still something of Geogaddi's under-the-surface disquiet, a grainy cousin of Angelo Badalementi's score for Mulholland Drive. Obscured signposts like Tears From The Compound Eye and Oscar See Through Red Eye are half-remembered playground laments, hinting at devilish archetypes, where something wicked may be lurking just behind the schoolhouse.

Hey Saturday Sun's hazy cowbell and shifting, glistening guitar is the retrofit soundtrack to a half-remembered, sun-blind beach holiday, yet suffuse with intimations of an all-too-adult uncertainty and foreboding. Curiously though, The Campfire Headphase, like all other Boards Of Canada werks, side-steps any intimations of bleakness by stripping away calloused layers of forgetfulness to provoke suppressed wide-eyed wonder. It's a combination perfectly in harmony with the technologies and suspicions of a post-millenial world.

As minimal as The Campfire Headphase often is, Boards Of Canada are no Stars Of The Lid. Dayvan Cowboy smoulders in melancholic isolation before flowering chromatically with Four Tet-like crashing cymbals and elevating strings.

The track-titles just might be red herrings (like Geogaddi's The Devil Is In The Details) or they may be knowing references to conceptual thinking. The few seconds of A Moment Of Clarity just might be prima facie evidence that the Sanderson siblings understand that clear thought might not be all its cracked up to be, while the fluttering Constants Are Changing may well be a nod in the direction of the duo's mathematical approach to composition. Best leave that to the obsessives.

Still, no boffin is required to understand that The Campfire Headphase will be another prime number in the year's list of most wanted albums. And that's no conspiracy theory.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees