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{{boc|We recorded a sort of mini-album called 'Twoism', for the first time with the intention of sending them to bands we liked. We got 100 copies pressed on vinyl with our own cash. I think we only gave away about 50 copies in the end, to a few bands and friends and so on. One of the copies went to Autechre, and Sean Booth called us up the day after we sent it, and asked us to do a record with their label Skam, which they were involved with. Then Warp called us up, and asked us to release our first album with them}} | {{boc|We recorded a sort of mini-album called 'Twoism', for the first time with the intention of sending them to bands we liked. We got 100 copies pressed on vinyl with our own cash. I think we only gave away about 50 copies in the end, to a few bands and friends and so on. One of the copies went to Autechre, and Sean Booth called us up the day after we sent it, and asked us to do a record with their label Skam, which they were involved with. Then Warp called us up, and asked us to release our first album with them}} | ||
− | Today: an original copy of Twoism, extremely rare, can cost more than a thousand euros: a few | + | Today: an original copy of Twoism, extremely rare, can cost more than a thousand euros: a lucky and wealthy few get them from auction sites ... inflated prices that reflect the aura of the group, growing: from Radiohead to Röyksopp, Boards Of Canada's sickly beats, psychedelic effects and child-like melodies seem to have contaminated all music. |
<The sound of Boards Of Canada has contaminated some of the most beautiful records of recent years: review of victims. | <The sound of Boards Of Canada has contaminated some of the most beautiful records of recent years: review of victims. | ||
− | ''' | + | '''Parallel Universes''' |
− | The influence of Boards Of Canada can not be measured simply by | + | The influence of Boards Of Canada can not be measured simply by their record sale figures or the rare concerts of the duo. No noise, no mass phenomenon, the sound of Boards Of Canada has yet infiltrated a number of major records of recent years. First, we find Radiohead by Kid A and Amnesiac: the frozen rhythms of these two discs and their polar atmosphere seem to take root in the compositions of Music Has the Right to Children. Similarly, the soundtrack composed by Air for The Virgin Suicides matches with the English duo's pocket anthems. . Hip-hop, too, seems to have tapped into the interstices of the duo: groups as innovative as cLOUDDEAD or Anti-Pop Consortium have taken over a few sonic lessons from Boards Of Canada. They particularly exploited all the aesthetics dirty and degraded their sound: a patina that contrasts with the rest of the production of the genre, often very clean. Finally, Norwegian Röyksopp Melody AM sails in the same waters as Boards Of Canada, while a band like Bola (signed on Skam, Boards Of Canada's first label) pushes the duo's lessons into their darkest more melancholic and full of bile, especially in the recent and very endearing Fyuti. Also among the most egregious (and gifted) Telefon Tel Aviv, EU, Manitoba, Gorodisch, Pilote or Savath & Savalas ... Boards Of Canada cultivates a modesty in this respect: |
− | degraded their sound: a patina that contrasts with the rest of the production of the genre, often very clean | ||
{{boc|It's very flattering ... We do not really have any idea about these stories, but if we inspired anyone, so much the better.}} | {{boc|It's very flattering ... We do not really have any idea about these stories, but if we inspired anyone, so much the better.}} | ||
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{{boc|We spent years playing music in the 'standard band format' of drums guitars and voices. We were never DJ's or whatever, and we didn't come to electronic music from the computer side of things. When we first got into electronics in the mid-1980's we would record all the parts by hand, we didn't have sequencers. So it makes sense that we still write in that way nowadays.}} | {{boc|We spent years playing music in the 'standard band format' of drums guitars and voices. We were never DJ's or whatever, and we didn't come to electronic music from the computer side of things. When we first got into electronics in the mid-1980's we would record all the parts by hand, we didn't have sequencers. So it makes sense that we still write in that way nowadays.}} | ||
− | It is this approach to composition, inherited from rock or pop, that drives the music of the duo. A music that is revealed on Geogaddi, even more | + | It is this approach to composition, inherited from rock or pop, that drives the music of the duo. A music that is revealed on Geogaddi, even more damaged and battered than usual. The tracks, never sanitized, are filled with swings, stops, sails and bumps. The album, in the end, is of a dull beauty, populated by ghosts and spectra in a bad way. |
{{boc|We just destroy the sound. Most people spend ages trying to polish the sound and improve it, but we use tapes and old gear and analogue synths to downgrade the sound and make it more damaged, to sound older. The damaged sound adds a character that you can associate with an imaginary and distant time or place. It's like a barely controlled chaos, it's always on edge, threatening to fall apart, just like the best music of the past, before everyone started using computers to sanitize and sterilize music in a cold and clinical way.}} | {{boc|We just destroy the sound. Most people spend ages trying to polish the sound and improve it, but we use tapes and old gear and analogue synths to downgrade the sound and make it more damaged, to sound older. The damaged sound adds a character that you can associate with an imaginary and distant time or place. It's like a barely controlled chaos, it's always on edge, threatening to fall apart, just like the best music of the past, before everyone started using computers to sanitize and sterilize music in a cold and clinical way.}} |
title | Un Cabane Au Canada |
---|---|
author | Joseph Ghosn |
publication | Les Inrockuptibles |
date | 2002-02 (Feb/Mar) |
issue | No.327 |
pages | pp.20-23 |
Par Joseph Ghosn Photo Peter Iain Campbell
Avec un premier album bucolique et enfantin, les Ecossais de Boards Of Canada inventaient un folk électronique, dont l'influence rayonne aujourd'hui de Radiohead au hip-hop. Avec Geogaddi, le mystérieux duo livre un deuxième chef-d'œuvre pastoral et inquiet.
Des ermites autistes, des paranoïaques aigus enchaînés à leurs ordinateurs, des fous cloîtrés devant leurs machines... Les rumeurs les plus folles circulent sur Boards Of Canada depuis la sortie de leur premier album Music Has the Right ta Children, il y a cinq ans. Duo insondable, le groupe avait alors réussi un coup de force rarement imité, véritable OPA implicite sur la musique, de tout bord et de tout crin. Leur son, égrené en une poignée de morceaux électroniques, est parvenu, presque sournoisement, à réconcilier en un même mouvement les activistes de toutes les tendances, les ayatollahs du rap, du rock et de l'electronica.
Au départ, pourtant, rien ne distinguait vraiment les Ecossais Marcus Eoin et Mike Sandison de leurs contemporains. Pour beaucoup, le duo n'était qu'un clone supplémentaire d'un autre groupe à l'aura presque mystique : Autechre. Les similitudes étaient flagrantes : même maison de disques (Warp), même traitement sombre des ambiances musicales délétères, même formation à deux, faux couple uni devant les machines et passionné par la création d'univers parallèles, autant graphiques que musicaux. La similitude, pourtant, s'arrête là. Autant la musique d'Autechre est pétrie dans des paysages postindustriels violents, souvent arides et crevassés, autant celle de Boards Of Canada est empreinte de visions pastorales, quasi impressionnistes et oniriques.
Ecouter Boards Of Canada, c'est souvent se retrouver confronté à un étrange sentiment de familiarité lointaine, comme si le disque qui tourne était composé de bribes de souvenirs évanescents, d'étincelles de réminiscences. Boards Of Canada met en scène une musique étrangement pénétrante, très diffuse et presque vénéneuse. Un sentiment que renforce pleinement Geogaddi, attendu par beaucoup comme une sorte de messie électronique, alors même que l'époque semble mettre en berne la plupart des tentatives d'électronique abstraite, trop isolationniste. Un travers qui aurait pu précipiter Boards Of Canada au terminus des prétentieux : le duo trimballe une réputation peu enviée de hippies enfermés dans une communauté perdue en Ecosse, vivant en vase clos, dans une ferme surprotégée de toute attaque physique ou virtuelle. Un havre devenu légendaire chez tous les fans du groupe, qui ont bâti via le Net une incroyable mythologie autour du duo, devenu un emblème malgré lui de la génération des hackers technoïdes, obsédés par leurs ordinateurs.
La réalité, pourtant, est différente. Les deux membres de Boards Of Canada ne ressemblent en rien à des héros. Jeunes trentenaires que leurs photos montrent toujours habillés avec les mêmes vieilles fringues — survêtements élimés, bonnet enfoncé jusqu'aux oreilles —, ils semblent surtout soucieux d'éviter les modes, de tuer dans l'œuf toute catégorisation. Plus que tout, le groupe revendique pleinement son attachement à sa musique et sa haine des compromis.
Pas étonnant que le plus vieux souvenir musical de Boards Of Canada soit Seasons in the Sun, cette reprise folk-rock d'un morceau de Jacques Brel, aux airs délétères rappelant étrangement les atmosphères nocturnes et la nostalgie rémanente qui sourd de la musique du duo. Une nostalgie toute pastorale, ainsi que l'explicitait déjà le titre d'un single sorti entre leurs deux albums, In a Beautiful Place out in the Country ("Dans un bel endroit à la campagne").
Réfugié en pleine campagne, le groupe ne rencontre que rarement les journalistes. Pour la sortie du nouvel album, il ne répond d'ailleurs aux interviews que par e-mails. Cette mise à distance, qui est commune à plusieurs musiciens électroniques, traduit-elle une timidité maladive, masquée par la pratique des machines ?
Les premiers jours... Boards Of Canada est né des cendres de l'indie-rock des années 8o et de son chant du cygne : Loveless, le dernier album en date de My Bloody Valentine, qui mêlait guitares éthérées et beats salis, dans un déluge onirique et infernal de distorsion, d'échos psychédéliques et de ritournelles organiques violées.
La sortie de ces années de vaches maigres se fait par le biais d'Autechre :
Aujourd'hui: une copie originale de Twoism, rarissime, peut coûter plus de mille euros : quelques veinards fortunés se les arrachent sur les sites de vente aux enchères... Des prix prohibitifs qui traduisent l'aura du groupe, grandissante : de Radiohead à Röyksopp, les beats maladifs, les effets psychédéliques et les mélodies enfantines de Boards Of Canada semblent avoir contaminé toutes les musiques.
<Le son de Boards Of Canada a contaminé quelques-uns des plus beaux disques de ces dernières années : revue des victimes.
univers parallèles
L'influence de Boards Of Canada ne se mesure pas simplement aux chiffres de vente de leurs disques ou aux rares concerts du duo. Sans bruit, sans phénomène de masse, le son de Boards Of Canada s'est pourtant infiltré dans un certain nombre de disques majeurs de ces dernières années. En premier lieu, on retrouve le Radiohead de Kid A et Amnesiac : les rythmes glacés de ces deux disques et leur atmosphère polaire semblent prendre racine dans les compositions de Music Has the Right to Children. De même, la BO composée par Air pour Vire Suicides correspond avec les hymnes de poche du duo anglais. Le hip-hop, aussi, semble avoir puisé dans les interstices du duo : des groupes aussi novateurs que cLOUDDEAD ou Anti-Pop Consortium ont repris à leur compte quelques leçons soniques de Boards Of Canada. Ils ont notamment exploité toute l'esthétique crade et dégradée de leur son : une patine qui tranche avec le reste de la production du genre, souvent très propre sur elle. Enfin, Melody A.M. des Norvégiens de Röyksopp navigue dans les mêmes eaux que Boards Of Canada, tandis qu'un groupe comme Bola (signé sur Skam, premier label de Boards Of Canada) pousse les leçons du duo dans leurs retranchements les plus noirs, les plus mélancoliques et remplis de bile, notamment dans le récent et très attachant Fyuti. Signalons également parmi les disciples les plus flagrants (et doués) Telefon Tel Aviv, EU, Manitoba, Gorodisch, Pilote ou Savath & Savalas... Boards Of Canada cultive à cet égard une modestie distanciée :
J. G.>
L'influence de Boards of Canada passe sans doute par une approche de la composition qui tranche avec les idiomes de la musique électronique, plutôt portée vers des morceaux assemblés par superposition de couches sonores. Boards of Canada, au contraire, semble chérir une approche classique : leurs morceaux sont d'abord des chansons, dans lesquelles on reconnaît des refrains, des ponts, des couplets. Mais le duo remplace les instruments traditionnels par des synthétiseurs et des boîtes à rythmes et le chant par des échos de voix d'enfant, déformées et triturées par tous les côtés.
C'est cette approche de la composition, héritée du rock ou de la pop, qui anime la musique du duo. Une musique qui se révèle, sur Geogaddi, encore plus amochée et cabossée qu'à l'accoutumée. Les morceaux, jamais aseptisés, sont remplis de sautes, d'arrêts, de voiles et de bosses. L'album, au final, est d'une beauté sourde, peuplé par des fantômes et des spectres mal en point.
En écoutant Geogaddi, en regardant les visuels déformés de la pochette, on a l'impression de tenir un groupe imaginaire, sans substance humaine. Comme si ces morceaux-là étaient fabriqués à partir d'une matière intangible, comme un collage de matériaux hétéroclites, venus de civilisations perdues, cristallisés dans des coulées de lave. Les voix de gosses, les extraits de messages informatifs, qui naviguent entre les beats lents, concourent à créer une musique funky et très cérébrale, qui fait songer à du Sly Stone déformé par les synthétiseurs de Brian Eno. Une confrérie de rêve qui rassemble, sur un même disque, les meilleurs artisans musicaux.
Le duo cherche d'ailleurs, avant tout, à décloisonner sa musique, à induire son auditeur en erreur, à lui indiquer de fausses pistes.
Boards Of Canada diffuse en direct de Mars. •
By Joseph Ghosn Photo: Peter Iain Campbell
With a pastoral and childlike first album, the Scots of Boards Of Canada invented an electronic folk, whose influence shines today from Radiohead to hip-hop. With Geogaddi, the mysterious duo delivers a second pastoral and uneasy masterpiece. Autistic hermits, acute paranoids chained to their computers, fools cloistered in front of their machines ... The wildest rumors circulating on Boards Of Canada since the release of their first album Music Has the Right, five years ago . An impenetrable duo, the group had then managed a power grab rarely imitated, real OPA implied in the music, on all sides, unbridled. Their sound, ginned into a handful of electronic pieces, has managed, almost slyly, to reconcile in the same movement the activists of all tendencies, the ayatollahs of rap, rock and electronica.
Initially, however, nothing really distinguished the Scots Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison from their contemporaries. For many, the duo was just another clone of another group with an almost mystical aura: Autechre. The similarities were obvious: same record company (Warp), same dark treatment of deleterious musical moods, same duo formation, false pair united in front of machines and passionate by the creation of parallel universes, as graphic as it is musical. The similarity, however, stops there. As much as Autechre's music is steeped in post-industrial and violent landscapes, often arid and crevassed, Boards Of Canada is marked by pastoral, quasi-impressionistic and dreamlike visions.
To listen to Boards Of Canada is often to be confronted with a strange feeling of distant familiarity, as if the record that was playing was composed of fragments of evanescent memories, sparks of reminiscences. Boards Of Canada features a strangely penetrating music, very diffuse and almost poisonous. A feeling that fully reinforces Geogaddi, expected by many as a kind of electronic messiah, even though that the time seems to put down most attempts at abstract electronics, too isolationist. A trick that could have precipitated Boards Of Canada at the terminus of the pretentious: the duo lugs an unmissable reputation of hippies locked in a community lost in Scotland, living in isolation, in a farm overprotected from any physical or virtual attack. A haven that has become legendary among all fans of the group, who have built via the Net an incredible mythology around the duo, which has become a symbol of the technoid hackers generation, obsessed by their computers.
The reality, however, is different. The two members of Boards Of Canada are nothing like heroes. Young in their thirties, their pictures always show them dressed with the same old clothes - tracksuits, cap pressed to the ears -, they seem especially anxious to avoid the fads, to nip in the bud any categorization. More than anything, the group fully claims their attachment to the music and their hatred of compromises.
No wonder the oldest musical memory of Boards Of Canada is Seasons in the Sun, this folk-rock reprise of Jacques Brel's piece, with deleterious melodies strangely reminiscent of nocturnal atmospheres and the lingering nostalgia of the duo's music.. A pastoral nostalgia, as already clarified by the title "In a Beautiful Place out in the Country", an EP released between their two albums.
Sheltered in the countryside, the group rarely meets journalists. For the release of the new album, they only respond to interviews by e-mail. Does keeping this kind of distance, common to several electronic musicians, translate to an unhealthy shyness, masked by the practice of machines?
The first days ... Boards Of Canada was born from the ashes of 80s indie-rock and its swan song: Loveless, the last album of My Bloody Valentine, which mixed ethereal guitars and dirty beats, in a dreamlike and infernal flood of distortion, psychedelic echoes and breached organic refrains.
The exit of those lean years was through Autechre:
Today: an original copy of Twoism, extremely rare, can cost more than a thousand euros: a lucky and wealthy few get them from auction sites ... inflated prices that reflect the aura of the group, growing: from Radiohead to Röyksopp, Boards Of Canada's sickly beats, psychedelic effects and child-like melodies seem to have contaminated all music.
<The sound of Boards Of Canada has contaminated some of the most beautiful records of recent years: review of victims.
Parallel Universes
The influence of Boards Of Canada can not be measured simply by their record sale figures or the rare concerts of the duo. No noise, no mass phenomenon, the sound of Boards Of Canada has yet infiltrated a number of major records of recent years. First, we find Radiohead by Kid A and Amnesiac: the frozen rhythms of these two discs and their polar atmosphere seem to take root in the compositions of Music Has the Right to Children. Similarly, the soundtrack composed by Air for The Virgin Suicides matches with the English duo's pocket anthems. . Hip-hop, too, seems to have tapped into the interstices of the duo: groups as innovative as cLOUDDEAD or Anti-Pop Consortium have taken over a few sonic lessons from Boards Of Canada. They particularly exploited all the aesthetics dirty and degraded their sound: a patina that contrasts with the rest of the production of the genre, often very clean. Finally, Norwegian Röyksopp Melody AM sails in the same waters as Boards Of Canada, while a band like Bola (signed on Skam, Boards Of Canada's first label) pushes the duo's lessons into their darkest more melancholic and full of bile, especially in the recent and very endearing Fyuti. Also among the most egregious (and gifted) Telefon Tel Aviv, EU, Manitoba, Gorodisch, Pilote or Savath & Savalas ... Boards Of Canada cultivates a modesty in this respect:
J. G.>
The influence of Boards of Canada undoubtedly depends on an approach to composition that contrasts with the idioms of electronic music, rather focused on pieces assembled by superposition of sound layers. Boards of Canada, on the other hand, seems to cherish a classical approach: their songs are at first songs, in which we recognize choruses, bridges, couplets. But the duo replaces the traditional instruments with synthesizers and drum machines and singing with echoes of children's voices, distorted and triturated by all sides.
It is this approach to composition, inherited from rock or pop, that drives the music of the duo. A music that is revealed on Geogaddi, even more damaged and battered than usual. The tracks, never sanitized, are filled with swings, stops, sails and bumps. The album, in the end, is of a dull beauty, populated by ghosts and spectra in a bad way.
Listening to Geogaddi, looking at the distorted visuals in the cover, one has the impression of holding an imaginary group, without human substance. As if these pieces were made from an intangible material, like a collage of heterogeneous materials, from lost civilizations, crystallized in lava flows. Kids' voices, informative message excerpts, which navigate between slow beats, combine to create funky, cerebral music, reminiscent of Sly Stone distorted by Brian Eno's synthesizers. A dream brotherhood that brings together, on the same disc, the best musical craftsmen. The duo seeks, above all, to de-compartmentalize their music, to induce their listener in error, to point out red herrings.
Boards Of Canada broadcasts live from Mars.
Source: J Ghosn's Blog retrieved Feb 2008 [1]
Une interview de Boards of Canada, réalisée par email au moment de l'album Geogaddi. J'ai gardé la version originale, comme au cinéma, maisj'ai oublié de sous-titrer. bonne lecture et décryptage.
I've been in love with music since I was a baby, it's very hard to remember a specific time. I can remember when I was a toddler standing up on the back seat of my parent's car singing songs at the top of my voice. The earliest record I can remember hearing on the radio was Terry Jacks' version of 'Seasons in the Sun', which was in the charts at the time.
I started to make my own music when I was about 5 or 6 years old, because my grandparents had a piano and I used to beg my parents to let me go there to play it. I didn't do formal lessons at that time, so I just made tunes up.