Boards of Canada have been busy scattering little mysteries around the release of the forthcoming Tomorrow’s Harvest, but "Reach for the Dead" is a timely reminder that Scottish brothers Mike and Marcus Sandison don’t need to lean too hard on such devices. It feels like a teaser for the album, suggesting much but veering away from a full-on reveal of exactly where it's heading. It’s certainly much darker than most of their prior material, marrying the mournfulness of Popol Vuh’s soundtrack work with the swell of underground artists producing John Carpenter-indebted electronica.

But a subtle sense of grace that creeps in as the track progresses is what separates "Reach for the Dead" from similar work from other artists. Boards have chosen beauty over macabre thrills, excising the shock value from horror soundtrack tropes and instead crafting their own artful take on them. That sense of fond nostalgia you get from their past work is noticeably absent; instead this appears to reflect on a gloomier side of Britain’s past, a place where Boards tap into a strangely powerful amalgam of sickness and sorrow.