Difference between revisions of "O Brothers Where Art Thou"

Latest revision as of 01:16, 2 November 2022

title	O Brothers Where Art Thou
author	Heiko Hoffmann
publication	Groove
date	2005/11
issue	97 (Nov/Dec)
pages	20-24

O Brothers Where Art Thou was an interview (in German) by Heiko Hoffmann originally published November 2005 in Groove magazine Number 97 (November/December).

Original Text[edit]

Über kaum eine Band, die so erfolgreich ist, ist so wenig bekannt, wie über Boards Of Canada. In einem seltenen Interview melden sich die beiden Schotten Mike Sandison und Marucs Eoin anlässlich ihres Albums The Campfire Headphase nach fast vier Jahren zurück und sprechen über ihre missverstandene letzte Platte, die Schwierigkeit, sich unter Erwartungsdruck weiterzuentwickeln und ihre Nostalgie-getränkte Electronica. Und überraschen gleich zu Beginn mit einem Outing.

Text: Heiko Hoffmann, Foto: Peter Iain Campbell

Mike Sandison guckt leicht irritiert. Er redet, aber scheint an etwas anderes zu denken. Er guckt Marcus Eoin an. Zögert. Dann bittet er, das Aufnahmegerät für einen Moment auszuschalten und fragt Marcus, ob es ok sei darüber zu sprechen. Das Interview läuft erst seit wenigen Minuten. Es ist das erste Gespräch das Boards Of Canada mit einem deutschen Journalisten führen, seit sie vor sieben Jahren ihr Debütalbum Music Has The Right To Children veröffentlicht haben. Und eigentlich läuft die Sache überraschend entspannt an. In der Cafeteria des Royal Museum in Edinburgh sitzen einem keine verstockten elektronischen Erdnuckel gegenüber wie man es befürchtet hatte – im Gegenteil. Mike Sandison und Marucs Eoin wirken sehr offen symphatisch und artikuliert. Doch dann wird man plötzlich gebeten, das Interview zu unterbrechen, nur weil man nochmal bei der Standardfrage nachhakt, wann sich die beiden überhaupt kennengelernt haben. Mike, der farblich passend zum hellblauen Kaputzenpulli nicht nur ein Basecap, sondern auch ein hellblaues Pflaster an der rechten Hand trägt, entschuldigt sich und erklärt:

Wir haben bisher nie darüber gesprochen, aber Marcus und ich sind Brüder!

Bisher hatten Mike und Marcus Sandison („Eoin“, der Nachname, den Marucs immer angeben hat, ist eigentlich sein zweiter Vorname) immer erzählt, sie hätten sich als Kinder angefreundet, weil ihr Eltern im gleichen Dorf an der Nordküste Schottlands wohnten. Nun also Brüder. Ihre Verwandtschaft haben sie bislang verborgen, so die beiden, weil sie zu Beginn ihrer Karriere Vergleiche zu dem Brüder-Duo Orbital vermeiden wollten. Und überhaupt hätte diese Information nur von dem eigentlich wichtigen abgelenkt: ihrer Musik.

Es ist keine große Sache für uns,

behauptet Mike, der mit 34 um zwei Jahre ältere der beiden Brüder.

Aber weil uns niemand danach gefragt hat, sahen wir uns bisher auch nicht veranlasst, das richtigzustellen.

Der ersten Überraschung folgt das Schulterzucken. Während Bands wie White Stripes oder Ween in der Vergangenheit vorspielten, Geschwister zu sein und damit gesteigerte Aufmerksamkeit auf sich zogen, ist es bei Boards Of Canada das Gegenteil. Doch die Überraschung hält sich in Grenzen, weil in der Öffentlichkeit die beiden Mitglieder stets nur als Einheit wahrgenommen wurden ohne als Individuen zu existieren. Da beide ausschließlich als Mitglieder von Boards Of Canada in Erscheinung treten und sie in ihrer Musik keine eindeutig unterscheidbaren Rollen ausüben (anders als das zum Beispiel bei anderen Geschwister-Bands wie den Sparks, Oasis oder gar den Jackson 5 der Fall ist), ist es kaum von Bedeutung in welchem Verhältnis die beiden zueinander stehen.

Mike Sandison: Wir waren so etwa sechs oder sieben Jahre alt, als wir anfingen Instrumente zu lernen und zusammen zu musizieren. Mit zehn haben wir dann begonnen, unsere Musik aufzunehmen. Wenn deine Eltern einen Kassettenrekorder und ein Klavier herumstehen haben, fängst du halt irgendwann an, damit herumzuspielen. Natürlich hatten wir damals kein Mehrspuraufnahmegerät, aber wir hatten zwei Kassettenrekorder. Also nahmen wir mit dem einem Rekoder Musik auf, die wir zum Beispiel auf dem Klavier spielten. Dann steckten wir die Aufnahme in den anderen Rekorder, spielten sie ab und begleiteten sie auf einer Gitarre oder dem Schlagzeug, während wir alles zusammen erneut auf dem anderen Rekorder aufnahmen, der fünfzig Zentimeter entfernt stand. Diesen Prozess wiederholten wir solange, bis die Aufnahmen so verzerrt klangen, dass man kaum mehr die einzelnen Instrumente wahrnehmen konnte und das Band schon völlig zerschlissen war. Es war eine extrem einfache Art des Multitrack-Recordings, aber für uns war es eine gute Möglichkeit zu lernen unsere eigenen Sachen zu komponieren.

Marcus: Später, als wir auf die High School gingen, waren wir dann eine zeitlang in unterschiedlichen Bands.

Mike: Aber wir nahmen zuhause weiterhin gemeinsam Musik auf. Mitte der Achtziger war Marcus in einer schrecklichen Heavy Metal-Band, deren Musik ich überhaupt nicht leiden konnte. Also fragte ich ihn eines Tages, ob er nicht Lust hätte, in meiner Band mitzuspielen. Das war das erste Mal, dass wir anfingen mit Synthesizern zu arbeiten, während alle anderen Bands auf unserer Schule reine Gitarrenbands waren.

Beeinflusst von EBM- und Industrial-Gruppen wie Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 und Test Department, von Folk-Musikern wie der ebenfalls aus Schottland stammenden Incredible String Band oder Joni Mitchell, sowie den ätherisch klingenden Rock-Gruppen Cocteau Twins und My Bloody Valentine machen die Brüder Sandison seit 1989, in verschiedenen Line-Ups, als Boards Of Canada Musik. Namensgebend waren die öffentlich-rechtlichen Erziehungs- und Natur-TV-Filme des National Film Board Of Canada, die im Kindesalter einen bleibenden Eindruck auf die Beiden hinterließen.

Um die Sandisons herum entstand das lose Künstlerkollektiv Hexagon Sun, das neben Musik auch Filme machte und Vollmondparties in Burgruinen und Wäldern veranstaltete. 1996 verschickten sie Demotapes, die noch als Trio (das dritte Mitglied sollte unter dem Namen Christ Jahre später auf dem Edinburgher Label Benbecula Platten veröffentlichen) entstanden, an die Labels Warp, Rephlex und Skam. Das von Autechre betriebene Skam-Label meldete sich als einziges zurück und veröffentlichte in Kleinstauflage und zum Teil in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Funkstörung-Label Musik Aus Strom in Kleinstauflage eine Reihe von vielbeachteten Singles, sowie das Minialbum „Hi Scores“, das gerade zeitgleich mit dem Erscheinen des neuen Albums wieder aufgelegt wurde. Rückblickend erscheint diese Zeit als die einzige, in der man Boards Of Canada einer bestimmten Szene zurechnen konnte. Boards Of Canada spielten als Vorgruppe von Seefeel und Autechre, arbeiteten mit Funkstörungs Michael Fakesch zusammen und wurden schließlich konsequenter Weise doch noch bei Warp unter Vertrag genommen.

Music Has The Right To Children, das 1998 veröffentlichte Debütalbum, markierte mit seiner sorgfältig zusammengefügten Nostalgie-Electronica nicht nur einen Meilenstein der elektronischen Musik, sondern wurde selbst von Rockmagazinen wie dem englischen Mojo, zu einem der wichtigsten Alben der 90er erklärt. Für Warp bedeutete es zudem den größten Überraschungserfolg der Labelgeschichte: Aus den ursprünglich 5.000 hergestellten Platten wurden mittlerweile mehr als 200.000 verkaufte Alben – was Boards Of Canada vermutlich zur erfolgreichsten Gruppe macht, die weder Singles oder Videos veröffentlicht, noch auf Tour geht. In den Folgejahren konnte man ihre charakteristsiche Mischung aus Kinderstimmen-Samples, Mono-Synthesizern und HipHop-Beats nicht nur auf unzähligen Electronica-Produktionen wieder finden, sondern ihr Sound hatte auch Einfluss auf die Musik von Air oder Radioheads Kid A-Album.

Campfire Headphase

Bereits als vor dreieinhalb Jahren das letzte Album Geogaddi erschien, kündigten Boards Of Canada an, dass die Nachfolge-Platte schon halb fertig sei. Doch erst jetzt erscheint mit The Campfire Headphase das neue Album. Dreieinhalb Jahre sind auch für die meisten anderen Musiker eine überdurchschnittlich lange Zeit für eine neue Platte, aber bei Mike und Marcus Sandison wird dieser Umstand verstärkt durch ihren übrigen Mangel an Output. Sieht man von drei Remixen für Boom Bip, Clouddead und zuletzt Beck einmal ab, ist in der Zwischenzeit kein einziger neuer Ton von Boards Of Canada erschienen und auch auf Konzerte verzichteten sie in der Zwischenzeit. Wie sonst vielleicht nur bei Kraftwerk fragt man sich, was Boards Of Canada den ganzen Tag über so machen.

Es gab einige Veränderungen in unseren Leben,

erklärt Mike.

Zuerst sind wir beide umgezogen und haben uns neue Studios eingerichtet, was fast ein Jahr in Anspruch genommen hat. Dann habe ich ein Kind bekommen und die ersten neun Monate war da an Musik ebenfalls nicht zu denken.

Beide Brüder wohnen nun in der Nähe von Edinburgh auf alten Bauernhöfen. Marcus in East Lothian an der Ostküste Schottlands, Mike in den Boarders an der Grenze zu England. Etwas mehr als ein Jahr haben beide tatsächlich mit der Fertigstellung der neuen Platte verbracht haben. Bis Juni haben sie täglich 12 bis 15 Stunden in einem ihrer beiden Heimstudios gearbeitet.

The Campfire Headphase ist wieder eine unverkennbare Boards Of Canada-Platte, jedoch mit einigen wesentlichen Neuerungen: Auf den bislang typischen Einsatz von Vocal-Samples wird diesmal verzichtet und die Stücke klingen klarer, einfacher und auch optimistischer als zuletzt auf Geogaddi. Auffallend ist auch die Verwendung von Streichern, Schlagzeug und vor allem leicht verstimmt klingende Gitarren, die mitunter an My Bloody Valentines „Loveless“ erinnern. Exemplarisch für diese Neuausrichtung ist der Track „Dayvan Cowboy“, der vorab auf Bleep.com veröffentlicht wurde. Nach einem langen, atmosphärischen Intro, während dem nicht viel zu passieren scheint, steigert sich das Stück zu einem für Boards Of Canada-Verhältnisse wilden Track voll Percussion, Streichern und Tremolo-Gitarren, der DJ Shadow und Sigur Ros gleichermaßen begeistern dürfte.

Mike: Wir wollten auf der neuen Platte ein paar Schritte zurückgehen und einfach nur eine Band sein. Wir wollten eine Platte machen, so wie sie auch eine Garage Rock Band machen würde. Wir stellten uns dafür einen Trip vor, während dessen jemand mitten in der Nacht irgendwo auf dem Land sein Auto parkt, ein Lagerfeuer anzündet und sich dann den Rest seiner Reise zusammen träumt. Wir wollten Sounds generieren, die an alte 70er Jahre Folk-Platten von John Denver oder Joni Mitchell erinnern. Das Problem mit uns ist, das wir diese schizophrene Herangehensweise an Musik haben, die uns auch jetzt noch verfolgt. Als wir mit der Arbeit an der neuen Platte anfingen hatten wir eine Art Kampf. Auf der einen Seite wollten wir eine sehr stark elektronische Platte machen, auf der anderen Seite eine sehr von Gitarren bestimmte Platte. Das Problem ist, wie wir diese beiden Extreme zusammenführen können. Wir waren nie große Freunde von Laptop-Musik und es war uns auf dieser Platte wichtiger als zuvor, Musik zu schaffen, die nicht ausschließlich aus elektronischen Kisten stammt.

Marcus: Einige der Stücke, an denen wir gearbeitet haben, sind so extrem in einer Richtung, dass wir sie einfach nicht benutzen können. Sie passen einfach überhaupt nicht in das BOC-Ding. Die ersten Reaktionen auf unsere neue Platte zeigen schon, das es zwar einige Leute gibt, die sehr glücklich mit dem Ergebnis sind, aber es gibt auch welche, die ein Problem mit den Gitarren-Sachen haben. Wenn wir also ganz diese Richtung eingeschlagen hätten, würde niemand glauben, dass es sich noch um die gleiche Gruppe handelt. Es würde niemand darauf kommen, dass wir das sind.

Mike: Die neue Platte ist wahrscheinlich die langsamste, die wir je gemacht haben. Wir haben die Gitarren bewusst benutzt, weil wir uns weiterbewegen mussten. Uns hat es gestört, dass man in die großen Plattenläden geht und unsere Musik in der Dance-Abteilung findet. Wir haben in unserer ganzen Karriere keine einzige Dance Platte gemacht, aber unsere Platten werden trotzdem dort einsortiert. Mit dieser Platte wollen wir raus aus der Dance-Ecke und rein in die Hauptabteilung neben Bands wie Abba und A-ha (lacht). Wir sind einfach eine Band und zwar weder eine IDM-Band, noch eine Dance-Band.

Der Teufel im Detail

Boards Of Canada leben mit dem Widerspruch, dass sie einerseits ziemlich zurückgezogene und öffentlichkeitsscheue Künstler sind, denen sämtliche Aktivitäten, die über ihre Produktionen hinausgehen, suspekt erscheinen, aber andererseits sehr – vielleicht zu sehr – auf die Außenwahrnehmung ihrer Veröffentlichungen bedacht sind. Ein wichtiger Grund, warum sich Mike und Marcus Sandison jetzt öffnen, ist sicher Geogaddi und die unerwarteten Folgen.

Auf ihrem zweiten Album schufen Boards Of Canada 2002 eine düstere Traumwelt, auf der es nicht nur musikalisch viel zu entdecken gab. Die Platte ist voll von, zum Teil versteckten, Anspielungen auf mathematische Gleichungen, heidnische Kunst und Okkultismus. Schon wenn man die CD einlegt, zeigt der Player eine Gesamtlaufzeit von 66 Minuten und 6 Sekunden an. Auf dem Track „The Devil Is In The Details“ etwa ist eine verlangsamte Frauenstimme zu hören, die sich in Selbsthynose spricht, dazu erklingt, was zunächst nach Gesangsfetzen klingt, sich dann aber als ein verzweifelt schreiendes Kind herausstellt. Desweiteren befindet sich in dem Stück ein Riff, dem Fibonaccis Goldener Schnitt als Kompositionsgrundlage dient. Auf „You Could Feel The Sky“ ist nach zwei Minuten und 13 Sekunden, während eine Kirchenglocke erklingt, im Hintergrund eine Stimme zu hören. Spielt man sie rückwärts ab sagt sie: „A God With Horns… A God With Hooves“ – womit niemand anders als der Teufel gemeint sein kann. Und all das, nachdem bereits die zuvor veröffentlichte EP „A Beautiful Place In The Country“, die auf den ersten Blick ein idyllisches Landleben preist, sich als Platte über die Sekte der Branch Davidianer herausstellt, die 1993 im amerikanischen Waco in einem Blutbad unterging.

In Internetforen und Newsgroups entwickelten Fans ein zum Teil obsessives Interesse an der Platte. Immer neue – tatsächliche wie mutmaßliche – versteckte Details der Platte wurden entdeckt. Die Gerüchteküche brodelte. Fortan gelten Boards Of Canada bei nicht Wenigen als Okkultisten. Wer weiß, vielleicht führten sie gar ihre eigene satanistische Sekte in der Abgeschiedenheit der Hügel von Schottland?

Mike: Als wir Geogaddi gemacht haben, waren wir an lauter obskuren Sachen wie Numerologie und Formeln, Architektur…

Marcus: … heidnische Kunst…

Mike: … religiöser Kunst überhaupt und solche Sachen interessiert. Wir haben versucht diese Sachen anzudeuten, aber es ist nicht so, dass sich das Album nur damit beschäftigt. Es ist kein Konzeptalbum. Aber diese Themen haben sich im Artwork, den Titeln und zum Teil auch den Tracks selbst wiedergefunden. In soweit ist unser neues Album eine direkte Reaktion auf Geogaddi. Die ganze Stimmung der Platte ist erhebender und fröhlicher. Wir gelangten an einen Punkt, an dem wir die ganzen Geheimnisse und die Magie und den ganzen Nonsens, der sich um die letzte Platte aufgebaut hat nur noch lächerlich fanden. Leute fanden plötzlich Dinge in unserer Musik, die gar nicht dort waren und behauptet, dass alle Stücke einen teuflischen Unterton hätten. Dabei sind wir überhaupt nicht so. Es war eines der Themen denen wir auf Geogaddi nachgehen wollten, aber die Leute schlossen daraus, dass wir immer und überall geheime, düstere und satanische Sachen in unsere Musik tun. Und all das wurde auf einmal wichtiger als die Musik selbst. Mit der neuen Platte wollten wir das Ganze wieder einfacher machen und uns auf die Musik konzentrieren.

Marcus: Wir stellten fest, dass manche Leute, die unsere Platten hörten, anstatt der Musik zuzuhören, sofort erstmal anfingen nach versteckten Sachen zu suchen.

Mike: Die Leute fangen auch jetzt schon wieder an, danach zu suchen, obwohl es gar keine versteckten Nachrichten auf der neuen Platte gibt. Geogaddi war ein Experiment, das zu erfolgreich war. Wir dachten, dass wir mit diesen geheimen Dingen, eine interessante Sache machen würden, über die ein oder zwei Leute stolpern würden, wenn sie sich mit der Platte beschäftigen. Uns war nicht klar, dass es diesen Kult schaffen würde.

Mike: Ich denke, wenn es das Internet nicht gegeben hätte, wäre es ok gewesen. Aber durch das Internet wurden diese Sachen sehr schnell verbreitet und sind ausgeufert. Für uns war das zum Teil nichts weiter als ein Witz zwischen uns beiden. Einige dieser düsteren Sachen, aber wir nur aus Spaß gemacht, oder um den Stücken mehr Textur zu geben. Sachen wie Stimmen, die man verstehen kann, wenn man sie rückwärts abspielt, sind ein Verweis an all die Bands, die so etwas in den 70ern gemacht haben.

Marcus: Die Entscheidung, die Platte 66,06 Minuten lang zu machen wurde zum Beispiel im letzten Moment getroffen. Uns hat gestört, dass Leute oft ihre CD-Player auf Wiederholung stellen und dann die Platte ohne Pause sofort wieder von vorne losgeht. Wir mochten den letzten Track auf Geogaddi sehr und wollten das vermeiden. Also wollten wir dem letzten Stück etwas Stille hinzufügen, so dass es eine Pause geben würde, bevor das Album wieder von vorne losgeht. Als wir uns überlegte wie lange die Stille dauern sollten, schlug Steve Beckett (Warp-Boss) vor, die Platte insgesamt 66 Minuten und 6 Sekungen lang zu machen, weil dann jeder denken würde, der Teufel hätte die Platte gemacht. Und wir haben nur gelacht.

Mike: Leute haben dann Sachen gefunden, die gar nicht existieren. Es wurde über Palindrome, also Wörter die vorwärts genau wie rückwärts klingen, geschrieben. Es gibt tatsächlich ein Palindrom, aber Leute behaupten, dass da noch viel mehr sind. Andere sagten: wenn du diesen Song an dieser Stelle verlangsamt hörst du einen Klang, der wie ein Becken klingt, aber wenn du ihn rückwärts spielst, hört man ein Kind das schreit. Dabei ist es einfach nur ein Becken!

Die Nostalgie Der Speichermedien

Alle drei Boards Of Canada-Alben zeichnen sich durch ihren sorgfältigen und mitunter besessenen Umgang mit ihrer Klangbeschaffenheit aus. Typisch ist dabei das künstliche Ältermachen der Stücke. Mit zahlreichen Effekten versuchen Mike und Marc Sandison ihren Tracks eine fiktive Geschichte zu geben und sie soundästhetisch nach Aufnahmen aus einer bestimmten Zeit klingen zu lassen. Auf ihrem Debüt-Album dienten als klangliches Vorbild etwa die Dokumentar- und animierten Kurzfilme des National Film Boards Of Canada, die Ende der 70er und Anfang regelmäßig Oscars gewannen und auch in Deutschland gesendet wurden. Nicht zuletzt durch diese Bearbeitung wirkt ihre Musik oft sentimental und ruft Erinnerungen hervor, die sich verflüchtigen noch bevor man sie konkret benennen kann. Das hat nichts mit Retro zu tun. Boards Of Canada machen Musik wie sie nur heute entstehen kann, aber versehen sie in der Nachbearbeitung mit einem Klang, der auf die Zeit ihrer Kindheit verweist.

Für uns ist das eine sehr persönliche Angelegenheit, mit der wir auch unsere Traurigkeit über den Verlust der Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit, den man als Kind besitzt, zum Ausdruck bringen wollen,

erklärt Mike Sandison.

Manchmal denke ich, dass unsere Musik stark an diese Generation gebunden. Kids, die heute aufwachsen werden wohl einmal nostalgisch an die perfekten Digitalfotos und Crazy Frog-Klingeltöne ihrer Kindheit denken. Das ist für mich nicht mehr nachvollziehbar. Das ist unweigerlich eine andere Zeit.

Boards Of Canada gehören zu einer Generation, die der Wandel von analogen zu digitalen Speichermedien wesentlich geprägt hat – von Super 8-Filmen über VHS zu DVD, von Schallplatten über Kassetten und CDs zu Mp3s– was zu einer Nostalgie für die analogen Artifakte ihrer Kindheit führt. Von vergilbten Polaroid-Familienbildern, die sie auf ihren Covern zeigen, bis zu Vinylknistern und leiernden Tonbändern.

Mike: Es gab eine kurze Zeit nach Music Has The Right To Children, als wir viel mit Computern und Sequenzern wie Logic Audio experimentiert haben. Aber nach etwa einem Jahr hatten wir damit jede Menge Probleme. Das Problem für uns war, dass du anfängst durchzudrehen, wenn du unendliche viele Audiotracks zur Verfügung und keine Restriktionen hast. Wenn man ein einfaches Setup wie einen Mono-Synthesizer und eine Drummachine hat, sind die Sachen, die du damit machen kannst, begrenzt, aber das macht dich auch kreativer im Umgang damit.

Marcus: Es ist einfach direkter. Man kann sofort zum Punkt kommen.

Mike: Die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass du mit wenigen Sachen interessantere Musik machst, ist größer, weil man einfallsreicher sein muss. Mit einer unbeschränkten Zahl an Audiotracks kannst du alles haben: einen großen Chor, Streicher und gallopierende Pferde… Aber je mehr du benutzt, desto unbestimmter wird deine Musik. Ich denke bis zu einem gewissenn Grad bestimmen die Beschränkungen denen du ausgesetzt bist deinen Sound und machen ihn erst unterscheidbar.

Marcus: Nimm etwa die White Stripes: die Grenzen, die sie sich setzen, machen ihren Sound so besonders. Es ist nur eine Gitarre, seine Stimme und das Schlagzeug. Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass eine Band, die mit einem Computer anfängt, auf solche Musik kommen würde.

Mike: Es gibt einfach die Versuchung, immer mehr Tracks zu benutzen, einfach weil sie zur Verfügung stehen.

Marcus: Mittlerweile benutzen wir Logic Audio mehr oder weniger wie einen Kassettenrekorder. Wir haben viele Instrumente live eingespielt und dann den Computer etwa so benutzt, wie wir die Kassettenrekorder benutzt haben, als wir Kinder waren.

Mike: Oft nehmen wir Zeug auf und basteln dann daran herum und editieren es.

Marcus: Tatsächlich ist es der schwierigste Teil für uns, einen Song zu Ende zu bringen.

Mike: An den meisten Tracks haben wir so peinlich genau gearbeitet, dass es Monate gebraucht hat, bis sie fertig waren. Den Track „84 Pontiac Dream“ haben wir zum Beispiel ursprünglich vor dreieinhalb Jahren gemacht und seitdem hat er uns in verschiedenen Erscheinungsformen beschäftigt. Wir hatten ihn schon ungefähr acht Mal fertiggestellt. Man kann also davon ausgehen, dass es für jeden Song auf dem Album etwa ein dutzend Versionen gibt, die es nicht geschafft haben. Wir arbeiten nie auf eine lineare Weise, sondern an vielen, vielen Stücken parallel.

Marcus: Anstatt mit einem Song anzufangen und an ihm zu arbeiten, bis er fertig ist, sitzen wir zeitgleich an hunderten von Stücken. Und abhängig von unserer Stimmung nehmen wir uns dann verschiedene vor. Wir haben beide ziemlich kurze Aufmerksamkeitsspannen.

Mike: Wir haben immer genug Material für mehrere andere Alben aber während unser Material da sitzt und auf uns wartet, haben wir irgendwann genug davon und beschäftigen uns mit etwas anderem. Es gibt also jede Menge Musik, die vermutlich niemals veröffentlicht wird.

Marcus: Das ist eine weitere Manifestation dieses schizophrenen Problems, das wir haben. Wir versuchen einfach zu viele Dinge aufeinmal anzupacken.

Mike: Vor Jahren haben wir auch eine akustische Version von Music Has The Right To Children gemacht, die immer noch existiert.

Marcus: Der Grund warum wir so etwas bislang nicht veröffentlicht haben ist, dass es den Eindruck entstehen könnte, als wenn wir uns ständig mit Sachen beschäftigen würde, die wir bereits gemacht haben.

Das Interview ist vorbei. Durch den verregneten schottischen Herbstnachmittag geht es noch ein paar Ecken weiter zu einer Pizzeria. Mike und Marcus Sandison plaudern über ihre Pläne nach dem Studiomarathon der letzten Monate. Gerade erst mussten sie aus Termingründen das Remixangebot einer „sehr bekannten Synthie-Pop-Gruppe, die bald ein neues Album herausbringt“ ablehnen. Jetzt freuen sie sich darauf, Zeit mit den Familien zu verbringen, auf Snowboarden, Venedigbesuche, und darauf sich endlich mal ein Album von Four Tet anzuhören. Oder vielleicht doch auf Tour gehen? Pläne für eine Vierer-Band mit dem Bassisten von Ian Brown und aufwändigen Videoprojektionen gibt es zumindest. Und ein Angebot auf Zusammenarbeit ihrer alten Helden Cocteau Twins. Und sogar Solopläne.

Mike: Unser nächstes Projekt wird radikal anders sein, als das was wir bisher gemacht haben, aber wir möchten darüber momentan noch nicht sprechen. Wir wollten mit Music Has The Right To Children, Geogaddi und Campfire Headphase eine Serie von Alben machen, auf die man zurückblicken und einen roten Faden erkennen kann. Ich denke, wenn man diese drei Alben zusammen betrachtet, kann man verstehen, dass sie einen kompletten Satz bilden.

Translated text[edit]

Hardly any band that is so successful is as mysterious as Boards Of Canada. In a rare interview, the two Scots Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin report back after almost four years on the occasion of their album The Campfire Headphase and talk about their misunderstood last record, the difficulty of developing under pressure of expectations and their nostalgia-soaked electronica. And surprise right at the beginning with an outing.

Text: Heiko Hoffmann, Photography: Peter Iain Campbell

Mike Sandison looks slightly irritated. He is talking, but seems to be thinking about something else. He looks at Marcus Eoin. Hesitates. Then he asks to turn off the recorder for a moment and asks Marcus if it's okay to talk about it. The interview has only been going on for a few minutes. It's the first conversation Boards Of Canada have had with a German journalist since they released their debut album Music Has The Right To Children seven years ago. And actually, things are getting off to a surprisingly relaxed start. In the cafeteria of the Royal Museum in Edinburgh there are no obdurate electronic earth suckers sitting opposite you as you had feared - on the contrary. Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin seem very openly sympathetic and articulate. But then you're suddenly asked to pause the interview just for asking again the standard question of when the two met in the first place. Mike, who wears not only a baseball cap to match his light blue hoodie, but also a light blue band-aid on his right hand, apologizes and explains:

We've never talked about it before, but Marcus and I are brothers!

Until now, Mike and Marcus Sandison ("Eoin," the last name Marcus always gives, is actually his middle name) had always said they had become friends as children because their parents lived in the same village on the north coast of Scotland. So now they are brothers. They have hidden their relationship until now, they say, because at the beginning of their career they wanted to avoid comparisons with the brother duo Orbital. And anyway, that information would have only distracted from what's really important: their music.

It's not a big deal for us,

says Mike, who at 34 is two years older than the two brothers.

But because no one has asked us about it, we haven't felt compelled to set the record straight yet.

The first surprise is followed by a shrug of the shoulders. While bands like White Stripes or Ween pretended to be siblings in the past and thus attracted increased attention, it's the opposite with Boards Of Canada. But the surprise is limited, because in the public the two members were always perceived only as a unit without existing as individuals. Since both appear exclusively as members of Boards Of Canada and they don't perform any clearly distinguishable roles in their music (unlike, for example, other sibling bands like the Sparks, Oasis or even the Jackson 5), it hardly matters in which relationship the two stand to each other.

Mike Sandison: We were about six or seven years old when we started learning instruments and making music together. Then we started recording our music when we were ten. When your parents have a tape recorder and a piano sitting around, you start playing around with it. Of course, we didn't have a multitrack recorder back then, but we had two cassette recorders. So with the one recorder, we recorded music that we played on the piano, for example. Then we would put the recording into the other recorder, play it back, and accompany it on a guitar or drums while we recorded it all together again on the other recorder, which was fifty inches away. We repeated this process until the recordings sounded so distorted that you could barely make out the individual instruments and the tape was already completely shredded. It was an extremely simple way of multitrack recording, but for us it was a good way to learn to compose our own stuff.

Marcus: Later, when we went to high school, we were in different bands for a while.

Mike: But we continued to record music together at home. In the mid-eighties, Marcus was in a terrible heavy metal band whose music I didn't like at all. So one day I asked him if he would like to play in my band. That was the first time we started working with synthesizers, while all the other bands at our school were pure guitar bands.

Influenced by EBM and industrial groups such as Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 and Test Department, folk musicians such as the Incredible String Band, also from Scotland, and Joni Mitchell, as well as the ethereal-sounding rock groups Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine, the Sandison brothers have been making music as Boards Of Canada in various line-ups since 1989. The name was inspired by the public education and nature TV films of the National Film Board Of Canada, which left a lasting impression on the two as children.

Around the Sandisons, the loose artist collective Hexagon Sun was formed, making music as well as films and hosting full moon parties in castle ruins and forests. In 1996 they sent demo tapes, still as a trio (the third member would release records under the name Christ. years later on the Edinburgh label Benbecula), to the Warp, Rephlex and Skam labels. The Skam label, run by Autechre, was the only one to report back, releasing a series of well-received singles in small print runs and partly in collaboration with the Funkstörung label Musik Aus Strom, as well as the mini-album "Hi Scores", which was reissued just at the same time as the new album was released. In retrospect, this period seems to be the only one in which Boards Of Canada could be attributed to a certain scene. Boards Of Canada played as support band for Seefeel and Autechre, collaborated with Funkstörung's Michael Fakesch and were eventually signed to Warp after all.

Music Has The Right To Children, the debut album released in 1998, not only marked a milestone in electronic music with its carefully assembled nostalgic electronica, but was also declared one of the most important albums of the 90s even by rock magazines such as the English Mojo. For Warp, it also meant the biggest surprise success in the label's history: the original 5,000 records produced have now become more than 200,000 albums sold - which probably makes Boards Of Canada the most successful group that neither releases singles or videos, nor goes on tour. In the following years, their characteristic mixture of children's voice samples, mono synthesizers and hip-hop beats could not only be found on countless electronica productions, but their sound also had an influence on the music of Air or Radiohead's Kid A album.

Campfire Headphase

Already when the last album Geogaddi was released three and a half years ago, Boards Of Canada announced that the follow-up record was already half finished. But only now the new album The Campfire Headphase is released. Three and a half years is an above average time for a new record for most other musicians, but for Mike and Marcus Sandison this circumstance is amplified by their other lack of output. Apart from three remixes for Boom Bip, Clouddead and most recently Beck, not a single new sound has been released by Boards Of Canada in the meantime, and they have also refrained from playing concerts in the meantime. Similiarly perhaps only with Kraftwerk, one wonders what Boards Of Canada do all day long.

There were some changes in our lives,

Mike explains.

First, we both moved and set up new studios, which took almost a year. Then I had a baby and for the first nine months music was out of the question. Both brothers now live near Edinburgh on old farms. Marcus in East Lothian on the east coast of Scotland, Mike in the Boarders on the border with England. A little over a year they have both actually spent finishing the new record. By June, they were working 12 to 15 hours a day in one of their two home studios.

The Campfire Headphase is again a distinctive Boards Of Canada record, but with some significant innovations: The previously typical use of vocal samples is dispensed with this time and the tracks sound clearer, simpler and also more optimistic than on Geogaddi. Striking is also the use of strings, drums and especially slightly out-of-tune sounding guitars, which sometimes remind of My Bloody Valentines "Loveless". Exemplary for this new direction is the track "Dayvan Cowboy", which was released in advance on Bleep.com. After a long, atmospheric intro during which nothing much seems to happen, the track builds up to a wild track by Boards Of Canada standards full of percussion, strings and tremolo guitars that should delight DJ Shadow and Sigur Ros alike.

Mike: We wanted to take a few steps back on the new record and just be a band. We wanted to make a record like a garage rock band would make. We imagined a trip where someone parks their car in the middle of the night somewhere in the country, lights a campfire, and then dreams up the rest of their trip. We wanted to generate sounds reminiscent of old 70s folk records by John Denver or Joni Mitchell. The problem with us is that we have this schizophrenic approach to music that haunts us even now. When we started working on the new record we had a kind of struggle. On the one hand, we wanted to make a very heavily electronic record, and on the other hand, a very guitar-driven record. The problem is how we can bring these two extremes together. We've never been big fans of laptop music, and it was more important to us on this record than before to create music that didn't come exclusively from electronic boxes.

Marcus: Some of the tracks we worked on are so extreme in one direction that we just can't use them. They just don't fit into the BOC thing at all. The first reactions to our new record already show that while there are some people who are very happy with the result, there are also some who have a problem with the guitar stuff. So if we would have gone completely in this direction, nobody would believe that it's still the same group. It wouldn't occur to anyone that it was us.

Mike: The new record is probably the slowest we've ever done. We deliberately used the guitars because we needed to move on. We were bothered by the fact that you go to the big record stores and find our music in the dance section. We haven't made a single dance record in our entire career, but our records still get sorted there. With this record we want to get out of the dance section and into the main section next to bands like Abba and A-ha (laughs). We are just a band and neither an IDM band nor a dance band.

The Devil In The Details

Boards Of Canada live with the contradiction that, on the one hand, they are rather reclusive and publicity-shy artists to whom all activities beyond their productions seem suspect, but on the other hand, they are very - perhaps too much - concerned with the external perception of their releases. An important reason why Mike and Marcus Sandison are now opening up is certainly Geogaddi and its unexpected consequences.

On their second album, Boards Of Canada created a dark dream world in 2002, on which there was much to discover, not only musically. The record is full of, partly hidden, allusions to mathematical equations, pagan art and occultism. Already when you put the CD in, the player shows a total running time of 66 minutes and 6 seconds. On the track "The Devil Is In The Details", for example, a slowed-down female voice can be heard speaking in self-hynosis, accompanied by what at first sounds like snatches of singing, but then turns out to be a child screaming in despair. Furthermore, there is a riff in the piece that Fibonacci's Golden Ratio serves as the compositional basis for. On "You Could Feel The Sky," after two minutes and 13 seconds, while a church bell is ringing, a voice can be heard in the background. If you play it backwards it says: "A God With Horns... A God With Hooves" - which can't mean anyone else but the devil. And all this after the previously released EP "A Beautiful Place In The Country", which at first glance praises an idyllic country life, turns out to be a record about the Branch Davidian sect, which perished in a bloodbath in 1993 in the American city of Waco.

In Internet forums and newsgroups, fans developed a sometimes obsessive interest in the record. More and more new - actual as well as suspected - hidden details of the record were discovered. The rumor mill was bubbling. From then on, Boards Of Canada were regarded by many as occultists. Who knows, maybe they even ran their own satanic sect in the seclusion of the hills of Scotland?

Mike: When we did Geogaddi, we were into all kinds of obscure stuff like numerology and formulas, architecture...

Marcus: ... pagan art...

Mike: ... religious art in general and stuff like that. We tried to hint at those things, but it's not like the album is just about that. It's not a concept album. But these themes have been reflected in the artwork, the titles and to some extent the tracks themselves. In that sense, our new album is a direct response to Geogaddi. The whole mood of the record is more uplifting and joyful. We got to a point where we found all the mystery and magic and nonsense that built up around the last record just ridiculous. People suddenly found things in our music that weren't there at all and claimed that all the pieces had a devilish undertone. We are not like that at all. It was one of the themes we wanted to pursue on Geogaddi, but people concluded that we always and everywhere put secret, dark and satanic things in our music. And all of that suddenly became more important than the music itself. With the new record, we wanted to make it simpler again and focus on the music.

Marcus: We found that some people who listened to our records, instead of listening to the music, immediately started looking for hidden stuff.

Mike: People are starting to look for it again now, even though there are no hidden messages on the new record. Geogaddi was an experiment that was too successful. We thought that with these secret things, we would do an interesting thing that one or two people would stumble upon when they got into the record. We didn't realize it would create that cult following.

Mike: I think if it wasn't for the Internet, it would have been okay. But because of the internet, this stuff got spread very quickly and got out of hand. For us, some of it was nothing more than a joke between the two of us. Some of that gritty stuff, but we just did it for fun, or to give the tracks more texture. Things like voices that you can understand when you play them backwards are a nod to all the bands that did that kind of thing in the '70s.

Marcus: For example, the decision to make the record 66.06 minutes long was made at the last moment. We were bothered by the fact that people often put their CD players on repeat and then the record immediately starts all over again without a break. We really liked the last track on Geogaddi and wanted to avoid that. So we wanted to add some silence to the last track so that there would be a pause before the album starts all over again. When we were thinking about how long the pause should be, Steve Beckett (Warp boss) suggested making the record 66 minutes and 6 seconds long in total, because then everyone would think the devil made the record. And we just laughed.

Mike: People then found stuff that didn't exist. There was writing about palindromes, words that sound exactly alike backwards and forwards. There is actually a palindrome, but people claim there are many more. Others said: if you slow this song down at this point you hear a sound that sounds like a cymbal, but if you play it backwards you hear a child screaming. Yet it's just a cymbal!

The Nostalgia Of Storage Media

All three Boards Of Canada albums are characterized by their careful and sometimes obsessive handling of their sound texture. Typical is the artificial aging of the tracks. With numerous effects Mike and Marc Sandison try to give their tracks a fictitious history and make them sound aesthetically like recordings from a certain time. On their debut album, for example, the documentary and animated short films of the National Film Board Of Canada, which regularly won Oscars at the end of the 70s and were also broadcast in Germany, served as a sonic model. Not least because of this adaptation, their music often has a sentimental effect and evokes memories that evaporate even before you can name them concretely. This has nothing to do with retro. Boards Of Canada make music as it can only be created today, but in the post-processing they provide it with a sound that refers to the time of their childhood.

For us it is a very personal thing, with which we also want to express our sadness about the loss of the ability to perceive, which one has as a child,

Mike Sandison explains.

Sometimes I think our music is strongly tied to this generation. Kids growing up today will probably once think nostalgically of the perfect digital photos and Crazy Frog ringtones of their childhood. I can't relate to that anymore. It's inevitably a different time.

Boards Of Canada belong to a generation that has been significantly shaped by the shift from analog to digital storage media - from Super 8 films to VHS to DVD, from records to cassettes and CDs to Mp3s-leading to a nostalgia for the analog artifacts of their childhood. From yellowed Polaroid family pictures featured on their covers to vinyl crackles and leaking tapes.

Mike: There was a brief period after Music Has The Right To Children when we experimented a lot with computers and sequencers like Logic Audio. But after about a year, we had all kinds of problems with that. The problem for us was that when you have an infinite amount of audio tracks available and no restrictions, you start going crazy. When you have a simple setup like a mono synthesizer and a drum machine, the things you can do with it are limited, but it also makes you more creative.

Marcus: It's just more direct. You can get to the point right away.

Mike: You're more likely to make more interesting music with just a few things, because you have to be more inventive. With an unlimited number of audio tracks, you can have anything: a big choir, strings and galloping horses... But the more you use, the more vague your music becomes. I think to some extent the limitations you have define your sound and make it distinct.

Marcus: Take the White Stripes, for example: the limitations they put on themselves are what make their sound so special. It's just a guitar, his voice and the drums. I can't imagine a band starting out with a computer coming up with music like that.

Mike: There's just a temptation to use more and more tracks just because they're available.

Marcus: Meanwhile, we use Logic Audio more or less like a tape recorder. We've recorded a lot of instruments live and then used the computer about the same way we used the tape recorders when we were kids.

Mike: A lot of times we record stuff and then tinker with it and edit it.

Marcus: Actually finishing a song is the hardest part for us.

Mike: Most of the tracks we worked on so meticulously that it took months to finish. For example, the track "84 Pontiac Dream" we originally did three and a half years ago and it's been with us in various guises ever since. We had already finished it about eight times. So you can assume that for every song on the album, there are about a dozen versions that didn't make it. We never work in a linear way, we work on many, many songs in parallel.

Marcus: Instead of starting with one song and working on it until it's done, we sit on hundreds of pieces at the same time. And then depending on our mood, we pick different ones. We both have pretty short attention spans.

Mike: We always have enough material for several other albums but while our material is sitting there waiting for us, we eventually get tired of it and move on to something else. So there's plenty of music that probably never gets released.

Marcus: That's another manifestation of this schizophrenic problem we have. We're just trying to tackle too many things at once.

Mike: Years ago we also did an acoustic version of Music Has The Right To Children, which still exists.

Marcus: The reason we haven't released something like that yet is because it might seem like we're constantly dwelling on stuff we've already done.

The interview is over. Through the rainy Scottish autumn afternoon, we head a few more corners to a pizzeria. Mike and Marcus Sandison chat about their plans after the studio marathon of the last months. Just recently, they had to turn down a remix offer from a "very well-known synth-pop group that has a new album coming out soon" due to scheduling issues. Now they're looking forward to spending time with families, snowboarding, visiting Venice, and finally listening to a Four Tet album. Or maybe going on tour after all? There are plans for a four-piece band with Ian Brown's bassist and elaborate video projections, at least. And an offer to collaborate with their old heroes Cocteau Twins. And even solo plans.

Mike: Our next project will be radically different from what we've done before, but we don't want to talk about that right now. We wanted to do a series of albums with Music Has The Right To Children, Geogaddi and Campfire Headphase that you can look back on and see a common thread. I think if you look at these three albums together, you can understand that they form a complete set.

Scans[edit]

Highlights[edit]

External Links[edit]

References[edit]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 <onlyinclude>
 {{interview
-|title=Boards of Canada: O Brothers, Where Art Thou?
+|title=O Brothers Where Art Thou
 |author=Heiko Hoffmann
 |date=2005/11
@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 }}
 </onlyinclude>
+<onlyinclude>
+[[O Brothers Where Art Thou]] was an interview (in German) by Heiko Hoffmann originally published November 2005 in Groove magazine Number 97 (November/December).
+</onlyinclude>
 __TOC__
+== Original Text ==
-== Original Text ==
 <onlyinclude>
-[[Boards of Canada: O Brothers, Where Art Thou?]] was an interview (in German) by Heiko Hoffmann originally published November 2005 in Groove magazine Number 97 (November/December).
 {{original}}
-</onlyinclude>
-<onlyinclude>
-=== Boards of Canada: O Brothers, Where Art Thou? ===
 '''Über kaum eine Band, die so erfolgreich ist, ist so wenig bekannt, wie über Boards Of Canada. In einem seltenen Interview melden sich die beiden Schotten Mike Sandison und Marucs Eoin anlässlich ihres Albums The Campfire Headphase nach fast vier Jahren zurück und sprechen über ihre missverstandene letzte Platte, die Schwierigkeit, sich unter Erwartungsdruck weiterzuentwickeln und ihre Nostalgie-getränkte Electronica. Und überraschen gleich zu Beginn mit einem Outing.'''
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 == Translated text  ==
-<onlyinclude>
-{{translation-needed}}
+Hardly any band that is so successful is as mysterious as Boards Of Canada. In a rare interview, the two Scots Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin report back after almost four years on the occasion of their album The Campfire Headphase and talk about their misunderstood last record, the difficulty of developing under pressure of expectations and their nostalgia-soaked electronica. And surprise right at the beginning with an outing.
-</onlyinclude>
+Text: Heiko Hoffmann, Photography: Peter Iain Campbell
+Mike Sandison looks slightly irritated. He is talking, but seems to be thinking about something else. He looks at Marcus Eoin. Hesitates. Then he asks to turn off the recorder for a moment and asks Marcus if it's okay to talk about it. The interview has only been going on for a few minutes. It's the first conversation Boards Of Canada have had with a German journalist since they released their debut album Music Has The Right To Children seven years ago. And actually, things are getting off to a surprisingly relaxed start. In the cafeteria of the Royal Museum in Edinburgh there are no obdurate electronic earth suckers sitting opposite you as you had feared - on the contrary. Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin seem very openly sympathetic and articulate. But then you're suddenly asked to pause the interview just for asking again the standard question of when the two met in the first place. Mike, who wears not only a baseball cap to match his light blue hoodie, but also a light blue band-aid on his right hand, apologizes and explains: {{boc|We've never talked about it before, but Marcus and I are brothers!}}
+Until now, Mike and Marcus Sandison ("Eoin," the last name Marcus always gives, is actually his middle name) had always said they had become friends as children because their parents lived in the same village on the north coast of Scotland. So now they are brothers. They have hidden their relationship until now, they say, because at the beginning of their career they wanted to avoid comparisons with the brother duo Orbital. And anyway, that information would have only distracted from what's really important: their music. {{boc|It's not a big deal for us,}} says '''Mike''', who at 34 is two years older than the two brothers. {{boc|But because no one has asked us about it, we haven't felt compelled to set the record straight yet.}}
+The first surprise is followed by a shrug of the shoulders. While bands like White Stripes or Ween pretended to be siblings in the past and thus attracted increased attention, it's the opposite with Boards Of Canada. But the surprise is limited, because in the public the two members were always perceived only as a unit without existing as individuals. Since both appear exclusively as members of Boards Of Canada and they don't perform any clearly distinguishable roles in their music (unlike, for example, other sibling bands like the Sparks, Oasis or even the Jackson 5), it hardly matters in which relationship the two stand to each other.
+{{boc|'''Mike Sandison''': We were about six or seven years old when we started learning instruments and making music together. Then we started recording our music when we were ten. When your parents have a tape recorder and a piano sitting around, you start playing around with it. Of course, we didn't have a multitrack recorder back then, but we had two cassette recorders. So with the one recorder, we recorded music that we played on the piano, for example. Then we would put the recording into the other recorder, play it back, and accompany it on a guitar or drums while we recorded it all together again on the other recorder, which was fifty inches away. We repeated this process until the recordings sounded so distorted that you could barely make out the individual instruments and the tape was already completely shredded. It was an extremely simple way of multitrack recording, but for us it was a good way to learn to compose our own stuff.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': Later, when we went to high school, we were in different bands for a while.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': But we continued to record music together at home. In the mid-eighties, Marcus was in a terrible heavy metal band whose music I didn't like at all. So one day I asked him if he would like to play in my band. That was the first time we started working with synthesizers, while all the other bands at our school were pure guitar bands.}}
+Influenced by EBM and industrial groups such as Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 and Test Department, folk musicians such as the Incredible String Band, also from Scotland, and Joni Mitchell, as well as the ethereal-sounding rock groups Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine, the Sandison brothers have been making music as Boards Of Canada in various line-ups since 1989. The name was inspired by the public education and nature TV films of the National Film Board Of Canada, which left a lasting impression on the two as children.
+Around the Sandisons, the loose artist collective Hexagon Sun was formed, making music as well as films and hosting full moon parties in castle ruins and forests. In 1996 they sent demo tapes, still as a trio (the third member would release records under the name Christ. years later on the Edinburgh label Benbecula), to the Warp, Rephlex and Skam labels. The Skam label, run by Autechre, was the only one to report back, releasing a series of well-received singles in small print runs and partly in collaboration with the Funkstörung label Musik Aus Strom, as well as the mini-album "Hi Scores", which was reissued just at the same time as the new album was released. In retrospect, this period seems to be the only one in which Boards Of Canada could be attributed to a certain scene. Boards Of Canada played as support band for Seefeel and Autechre, collaborated with Funkstörung's Michael Fakesch and were eventually signed to Warp after all.
+Music Has The Right To Children, the debut album released in 1998, not only marked a milestone in electronic music with its carefully assembled nostalgic electronica, but was also declared one of the most important albums of the 90s even by rock magazines such as the English Mojo. For Warp, it also meant the biggest surprise success in the label's history: the original 5,000 records produced have now become more than 200,000 albums sold - which probably makes Boards Of Canada the most successful group that neither releases singles or videos, nor goes on tour. In the following years, their characteristic mixture of children's voice samples, mono synthesizers and hip-hop beats could not only be found on countless electronica productions, but their sound also had an influence on the music of Air or Radiohead's Kid A album.
+'''Campfire Headphase'''
+Already when the last album Geogaddi was released three and a half years ago, Boards Of Canada announced that the follow-up record was already half finished. But only now the new album The Campfire Headphase is released. Three and a half years is an above average time for a new record for most other musicians, but for Mike and Marcus Sandison this circumstance is amplified by their other lack of output. Apart from three remixes for Boom Bip, Clouddead and most recently Beck, not a single new sound has been released by Boards Of Canada in the meantime, and they have also refrained from playing concerts in the meantime. Similiarly perhaps only with Kraftwerk, one wonders what Boards Of Canada do all day long. {{boc|There were some changes in our lives,}} '''Mike''' explains. {{boc|First, we both moved and set up new studios, which took almost a year. Then I had a baby and for the first nine months music was out of the question. Both brothers now live near Edinburgh on old farms. Marcus in East Lothian on the east coast of Scotland, Mike in the Boarders on the border with England. A little over a year they have both actually spent finishing the new record. By June, they were working 12 to 15 hours a day in one of their two home studios.}}
+The Campfire Headphase is again a distinctive Boards Of Canada record, but with some significant innovations: The previously typical use of vocal samples is dispensed with this time and the tracks sound clearer, simpler and also more optimistic than on Geogaddi. Striking is also the use of strings, drums and especially slightly out-of-tune sounding guitars, which sometimes remind of My Bloody Valentines "Loveless". Exemplary for this new direction is the track "Dayvan Cowboy", which was released in advance on Bleep.com. After a long, atmospheric intro during which nothing much seems to happen, the track builds up to a wild track by Boards Of Canada standards full of percussion, strings and tremolo guitars that should delight DJ Shadow and Sigur Ros alike.
+{{boc|'''Mike''': We wanted to take a few steps back on the new record and just be a band. We wanted to make a record like a garage rock band would make. We imagined a trip where someone parks their car in the middle of the night somewhere in the country, lights a campfire, and then dreams up the rest of their trip. We wanted to generate sounds reminiscent of old 70s folk records by John Denver or Joni Mitchell. The problem with us is that we have this schizophrenic approach to music that haunts us even now. When we started working on the new record we had a kind of struggle. On the one hand, we wanted to make a very heavily electronic record, and on the other hand, a very guitar-driven record. The problem is how we can bring these two extremes together. We've never been big fans of laptop music, and it was more important to us on this record than before to create music that didn't come exclusively from electronic boxes.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': Some of the tracks we worked on are so extreme in one direction that we just can't use them. They just don't fit into the BOC thing at all. The first reactions to our new record already show that while there are some people who are very happy with the result, there are also some who have a problem with the guitar stuff. So if we would have gone completely in this direction, nobody would believe that it's still the same group. It wouldn't occur to anyone that it was us.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': The new record is probably the slowest we've ever done. We deliberately used the guitars because we needed to move on. We were bothered by the fact that you go to the big record stores and find our music in the dance section. We haven't made a single dance record in our entire career, but our records still get sorted there. With this record we want to get out of the dance section and into the main section next to bands like Abba and A-ha (laughs). We are just a band and neither an IDM band nor a dance band.}}
+'''The Devil In The Details'''
+Boards Of Canada live with the contradiction that, on the one hand, they are rather reclusive and publicity-shy artists to whom all activities beyond their productions seem suspect, but on the other hand, they are very - perhaps too much - concerned with the external perception of their releases. An important reason why Mike and Marcus Sandison are now opening up is certainly Geogaddi and its unexpected consequences.
+On their second album, Boards Of Canada created a dark dream world in 2002, on which there was much to discover, not only musically. The record is full of, partly hidden, allusions to mathematical equations, pagan art and occultism. Already when you put the CD in, the player shows a total running time of 66 minutes and 6 seconds. On the track "The Devil Is In The Details", for example, a slowed-down female voice can be heard speaking in self-hynosis, accompanied by what at first sounds like snatches of singing, but then turns out to be a child screaming in despair. Furthermore, there is a riff in the piece that Fibonacci's Golden Ratio serves as the compositional basis for. On "You Could Feel The Sky," after two minutes and 13 seconds, while a church bell is ringing, a voice can be heard in the background. If you play it backwards it says: "A God With Horns... A God With Hooves" - which can't mean anyone else but the devil. And all this after the previously released EP "A Beautiful Place In The Country", which at first glance praises an idyllic country life, turns out to be a record about the Branch Davidian sect, which perished in a bloodbath in 1993 in the American city of Waco.
+In Internet forums and newsgroups, fans developed a sometimes obsessive interest in the record. More and more new - actual as well as suspected - hidden details of the record were discovered. The rumor mill was bubbling. From then on, Boards Of Canada were regarded by many as occultists. Who knows, maybe they even ran their own satanic sect in the seclusion of the hills of Scotland?
+{{boc|'''Mike''': When we did Geogaddi, we were into all kinds of obscure stuff like numerology and formulas, architecture...}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': ... pagan art...}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': ... religious art in general and stuff like that. We tried to hint at those things, but it's not like the album is just about that. It's not a concept album. But these themes have been reflected in the artwork, the titles and to some extent the tracks themselves. In that sense, our new album is a direct response to Geogaddi. The whole mood of the record is more uplifting and joyful. We got to a point where we found all the mystery and magic and nonsense that built up around the last record just ridiculous. People suddenly found things in our music that weren't there at all and claimed that all the pieces had a devilish undertone. We are not like that at all. It was one of the themes we wanted to pursue on Geogaddi, but people concluded that we always and everywhere put secret, dark and satanic things in our music. And all of that suddenly became more important than the music itself. With the new record, we wanted to make it simpler again and focus on the music.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': We found that some people who listened to our records, instead of listening to the music, immediately started looking for hidden stuff.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': People are starting to look for it again now, even though there are no hidden messages on the new record. Geogaddi was an experiment that was too successful. We thought that with these secret things, we would do an interesting thing that one or two people would stumble upon when they got into the record. We didn't realize it would create that cult following.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': I think if it wasn't for the Internet, it would have been okay. But because of the internet, this stuff got spread very quickly and got out of hand. For us, some of it was nothing more than a joke between the two of us. Some of that gritty stuff, but we just did it for fun, or to give the tracks more texture. Things like voices that you can understand when you play them backwards are a nod to all the bands that did that kind of thing in the '70s.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': For example, the decision to make the record 66.06 minutes long was made at the last moment. We were bothered by the fact that people often put their CD players on repeat and then the record immediately starts all over again without a break. We really liked the last track on Geogaddi and wanted to avoid that. So we wanted to add some silence to the last track so that there would be a pause before the album starts all over again. When we were thinking about how long the pause should be, Steve Beckett (Warp boss) suggested making the record 66 minutes and 6 seconds long in total, because then everyone would think the devil made the record. And we just laughed.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': People then found stuff that didn't exist. There was writing about palindromes, words that sound exactly alike backwards and forwards. There is actually a palindrome, but people claim there are many more. Others said: if you slow this song down at this point you hear a sound that sounds like a cymbal, but if you play it backwards you hear a child screaming. Yet it's just a cymbal!}}
+'''The Nostalgia Of Storage Media'''
+All three Boards Of Canada albums are characterized by their careful and sometimes obsessive handling of their sound texture. Typical is the artificial aging of the tracks. With numerous effects Mike and Marc Sandison try to give their tracks a fictitious history and make them sound aesthetically like recordings from a certain time. On their debut album, for example, the documentary and animated short films of the National Film Board Of Canada, which regularly won Oscars at the end of the 70s and were also broadcast in Germany, served as a sonic model. Not least because of this adaptation, their music often has a sentimental effect and evokes memories that evaporate even before you can name them concretely. This has nothing to do with retro. Boards Of Canada make music as it can only be created today, but in the post-processing they provide it with a sound that refers to the time of their childhood. {{boc|For us it is a very personal thing, with which we also want to express our sadness about the loss of the ability to perceive, which one has as a child,}} '''Mike Sandison''' explains. {{boc|Sometimes I think our music is strongly tied to this generation. Kids growing up today will probably once think nostalgically of the perfect digital photos and Crazy Frog ringtones of their childhood. I can't relate to that anymore. It's inevitably a different time.}}
+Boards Of Canada belong to a generation that has been significantly shaped by the shift from analog to digital storage media - from Super 8 films to VHS to DVD, from records to cassettes and CDs to Mp3s-leading to a nostalgia for the analog artifacts of their childhood. From yellowed Polaroid family pictures featured on their covers to vinyl crackles and leaking tapes.
+{{boc|'''Mike''': There was a brief period after Music Has The Right To Children when we experimented a lot with computers and sequencers like Logic Audio. But after about a year, we had all kinds of problems with that. The problem for us was that when you have an infinite amount of audio tracks available and no restrictions, you start going crazy. When you have a simple setup like a mono synthesizer and a drum machine, the things you can do with it are limited, but it also makes you more creative.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': It's just more direct. You can get to the point right away.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': You're more likely to make more interesting music with just a few things, because you have to be more inventive. With an unlimited number of audio tracks, you can have anything: a big choir, strings and galloping horses... But the more you use, the more vague your music becomes. I think to some extent the limitations you have define your sound and make it distinct.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': Take the White Stripes, for example: the limitations they put on themselves are what make their sound so special. It's just a guitar, his voice and the drums. I can't imagine a band starting out with a computer coming up with music like that.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': There's just a temptation to use more and more tracks just because they're available.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': Meanwhile, we use Logic Audio more or less like a tape recorder. We've recorded a lot of instruments live and then used the computer about the same way we used the tape recorders when we were kids.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': A lot of times we record stuff and then tinker with it and edit it.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': Actually finishing a song is the hardest part for us.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': Most of the tracks we worked on so meticulously that it took months to finish. For example, the track "84 Pontiac Dream" we originally did three and a half years ago and it's been with us in various guises ever since. We had already finished it about eight times. So you can assume that for every song on the album, there are about a dozen versions that didn't make it. We never work in a linear way, we work on many, many songs in parallel.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': Instead of starting with one song and working on it until it's done, we sit on hundreds of pieces at the same time. And then depending on our mood, we pick different ones. We both have pretty short attention spans.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': We always have enough material for several other albums but while our material is sitting there waiting for us, we eventually get tired of it and move on to something else. So there's plenty of music that probably never gets released.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': That's another manifestation of this schizophrenic problem we have. We're just trying to tackle too many things at once.}}
+{{boc|'''Mike''': Years ago we also did an acoustic version of Music Has The Right To Children, which still exists.}}
+{{boc|'''Marcus''': The reason we haven't released something like that yet is because it might seem like we're constantly dwelling on stuff we've already done.}}
+The interview is over. Through the rainy Scottish autumn afternoon, we head a few more corners to a pizzeria. Mike and Marcus Sandison chat about their plans after the studio marathon of the last months. Just recently, they had to turn down a remix offer from a "very well-known synth-pop group that has a new album coming out soon" due to scheduling issues. Now they're looking forward to spending time with families, snowboarding, visiting Venice, and finally listening to a Four Tet album. Or maybe going on tour after all? There are plans for a four-piece band with Ian Brown's bassist and elaborate video projections, at least. And an offer to collaborate with their old heroes Cocteau Twins. And even solo plans.
+{{boc|'''Mike''': Our next project will be radically different from what we've done before, but we don't want to talk about that right now. We wanted to do a series of albums with Music Has The Right To Children, Geogaddi and Campfire Headphase that you can look back on and see a common thread. I think if you look at these three albums together, you can understand that they form a complete set.}}
 == Scans  ==
 <gallery>
 Image:2005 11 Groove Nov Dec No97 Cover.jpg
+Image:2005 11 Groove Nov Dec No97 pg04.jpg
 Image:2005 11 Groove Nov Dec No97 pg20.jpg
 Image:2005 11 Groove Nov Dec No97 pg21.jpg
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 Image:2005 11 Groove Nov Dec No97 pg24.jpg
 </gallery>
+== Highlights ==
+*
+== External Links ==
+*
 == References  ==