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	== Translated Text ==		== Translated Text ==
	<onlyinclude>		<onlyinclude>
−	{{translation-needed}}	+	'''Note''': translation provided by [https://chat.mistral.ai/chat Le Chat - Mistral AI]
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		+	For three years, we've been waiting for the eagle, [[Boards Of Canada]], to land on our turntables again. On the occasion of the release of ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]'', a burning event this electronic season, the most psychedelic duo in electronica finally agrees to speak openly. Conversation around the fire.
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		+	The moon is red and low on this icy night on a beach somewhere south of [[wikipedia:Scotland|Scotland]], near the [[wikipedia:Pentland Hills|Pentland Hills]]. Yet, like a strange pagan rite, a circle of about twenty people has formed around a large crackling fire that seems to glorify the communion of the elements, the forces of nature with the powers of the spirit. Post-hippie gathering? Magical initiation cult? Clandestine ceremony of the Order of the Solar Temple? None of that, for there is no sorcerer, guru, or other supernatural medium to reach the stars here. Instead, and as the only intermediary, a ghetto blaster. We are in the winter of 2002; [[Boards Of Canada]], four years after the international triumph of their first album, ''[[Music Has the Right to Children|Music Has The Right To Children]]'', summon their childhood friends and celebrate in their own way the end of the recording of ''[[Geogaddi]]'', which will bring them universal critical acclaim.
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		+	{{boc|"I see where you're going with this,"}} laughs [[Michael]], one of the [[BOC|duo]]'s members. {{boc|"But no, this time we didn't do it that way, despite the album being called ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]''. The weather was average that night, so once we put the final touches on it, [[Marcus]] and [[Mike|I]] decided to take the car, turn on the radio, and drive around our studio in the deserted countryside in the middle of the night, at four in the morning."}}
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		+	'''A Special Case'''
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		+	Flashback. When [[Warp]] announced the scheduled release of [[Boards Of Canada]]'s third album at the end of June, forums immediately echoed an unbearable wait for many. Never has so much been said about simple track titles, never has the void been so close to prospective ecstasy, and never has there been so much anxiety that what had just been downloaded was not the sacred new album by the [[BOC|Scottish duo]], but a set of old tunes that some clever folks had cunningly disguised. The fact is that [[Boards Of Canada]] has become a special case in the underground electronic scene in just a few years, a situation that could, however, expand and, by concentric magic, leave the confined fringe of adept circles to gain a global sphere and thus transform into a mainstream phenomenon.
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		+	Secluded in their cold lands, granting only rare [[Interviews|interviews]] and only by email, hardly ever performing live, cited by [[wikipedia:Thom Yorke|Thom Yorke]] himself as the direct inspirations for the masterpiece [[wikipedia:Kid A|Kid A]], acclaimed from their first major release and carried by a growing rumor placing [[Music Has the Right to Children|Music Has The Right To Children]] among the 25 best psychedelic records of all time alongside the [[wikipedia:The Beatles|Beatles]] and [[wikipedia:Pink Floyd|Pink Floyd]], the [[Boards Of Canada]] legend is on the march. So, when [[Warp]] finally confirmed after multiple postponements that [[Michael Sandison]] and [[Marcus Eoin]] agreed to meet us near their home in [[wikipedia:Edinburgh|Edinburgh]], we found ourselves, without hesitation and despite an imminent deadline, on the plane that would finally bring us closer to the greatest enigma, the blackest star in the electronic galaxy.
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		+	'''Totem and Taboo'''
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		+	So here we are in September in the medieval city of [[wikipedia:Edinburgh|Edinburgh]], emerging from the era of knights with its castle defying the mist high on the cliff, its Gothic cathedral, its cobbled streets, and the hills reddened by the wind surrounding it. Beyond romantic considerations, it's ten degrees, freezing rain, and a miserable cardigan for defense: the damned Scottish shower. We then hurried to find, in this inhospitable land, the [[wikipedia:National_Museum_of_Scotland|Royal Museum]] where we had an appointment with the group to finally break the ice in which many felt trapped while listening to their new album (see p. 65) and release the fire that smolders and seems to fragilely radiate its compositions. It is, moreover, very warmly that [[Marcus]] and [[Michael]] welcome us into the [[wikipedia:National_Museum_of_Scotland|museum]]'s enclosure, a luminous white glasshouse where a severe and imposing totem stands, a guarantor of ancestral spirituality. We settle at the foot of the sacred tutelage, and our [[BOC|two artists]] are quick to joke about our pitiful appearance, immediately dispelling the fear of finding ourselves in front of two condescending grizzlies serving us their most polite wooden tongue. On the contrary, they are immediately very concerned about the reception of ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]'' and press us to confess. We explain the divided reception from the editorial team, the hot-and-cold reaction it provoked, a raw reaction.
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		+	{{boc|"It's funny because even when we try to make a warm album like ''[[The Campfire Headphase|this one]]'', it is still perceived as something cold and a bit sinister. I think it's just a reaction to the psychedelic elements of our music, which amplify certain effects, making the whole thing deliberately strange and distant. But that's the very characteristic of the [[Boards Of Canada]] project: capturing the atmosphere of sounds from a very specific period, from the late '70s to the early '80s. For us, it's like a tangent from which we only deviate in form, alternately moving towards more electronic, acoustic, cinematic, or orchestral elements but always remaining in the vicinity of this universe of public educational programs, Super-8 videos, jingles in the form of warnings or naive advertisements. Everything we composed that strayed from this original vibe was never retained and never released."}}
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		+	In summary, the [[BoC]] aesthetic it's the equivalent in France of our "Message à caractère informatif"<ref>{{#widget:YouTube|id=-NzxJGvZzeQ | height=262| width=465}}</ref> and it's really interesting.
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		+	'''Bohemia'''
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		+	First, there is the name, [[Boards Of Canada]], which does not refer to the floating logs on which beavers lounge by the Great Lakes but is inspired by the [[wikipedia:National Film Board of Canada|National Film Board Of Canada]], a film company that broadcast all sorts of animal documentaries and social programs, with that particular grain of the film giving a kind of wash to the image, which can be found on the artwork of most of the duo's releases. This might seem anecdotal and constitute only the matter of a record, but the strength of [[Boards Of Canada]] is to have linked this somewhat blurry and outdated visual universe to a musical identity that, by sampling or reproducing the sound elements that make up the raw auditory material of these videos and coupling them with steel guitars, synthesizers, and drum machines of the era, and children's voices in the background, is charged with strong evocative and nostalgic power. Listen to any [[Discography|BOC record]], and, provided you are in your thirties, you will be transported into this familiar world of bell-bottoms, puffy-collared shirts, tinted glasses, itchy turtlenecks, all bathed in an atmosphere of a slightly bohemian end of utopia.
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		+	{{boc|"We spent our childhood in [[wikipedia:Canada|Canada]], and it's really this culture that we were steeped in; we gorged ourselves on it like any child at that age who is a formidable catalyst of the world around them. American road movies, [[wikipedia:Glenn A. Larson|Glenn Larson]]'s TV shows, animations of all kinds... There were only three channels at the time, and everyone who lived on the American continent at that time was fed these programs; it was really mass media, and the next day at school, everyone was talking about what they had seen the night before."}}
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		+	'''Treasure Hunt'''
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		+	It took no more to petrify the unconscious of young [[Mike]] and [[Marcus]] who, upon their return to their native [[wikipedia:Scotland|Scotland]], then teenagers like many others at that age tinkering with audio cassettes, would systematically draw their inspiration from the heart of this portion of spirit frozen somewhere in the ice of Alberta. It was in the early '80s that they began to make films in Super-8 and create their own soundtracks while learning to play all sorts of live instruments, drums, guitar, synthesizer. A collective of musicians emerged from this musical voracity, which would count up to fourteen members, including vocals like a classic formation but with already a clear preference for twilight atmospheres, minimal structures, electronic manipulations, and distortions specific to creating a disturbing and unstable climate. At the end of the '80s, while continuing their video editing, they equipped themselves with a recording studio that they named Hexagon Sun, a "junkshop" in their words, rather than the bunker in which the press, eager for eccentricities, had a little too quickly placed them, a kind of analog museum where samplers rub shoulders with guitars, sequencers with flutes, and the computer with the wind harp.
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		+	{{boc|"We are very attached to old instruments; we are always looking to find them. If you want to sound like 1988, for example, you will have to get the corresponding analog equipment from that period. We never wanted a clean, stereo, phat sound, but rather something that would have been recorded as twenty-five years ago, mono, a bit like James Taylor (Californian singer of the '70s, ed.). That's why we often use old cassette recorders, Tascam 4-tracks. For ''[[The Campfire Headphase|the new album]]'', we wanted this record to be like a lost recording that would be found years later when no one had heard it."}}
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		+	'''The Law of Silence'''
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		+	In parallel with the creation of their studio, they launched their label, [[Music70]], which remains, even today, a platform for visual and sound experimentation. All the old unreleased tracks, often recorded on good old cassettes and that fans snatch up, date from this period between '90 and '95, when the formation really solidified, abandoning the group configuration to devote itself to strictly electronic compositions. Once a trio, [[Boards Of Canada]] finally became the duo we know and released their first self-produced vinyl; it's called ''[[Twoism (release)|Twoism]]'', and it landed in the offices of [[Skam]] in Manchester and in the ears of [https://aepages.org/wiki/Sean_Booth Sean Booth] of [[Autechre]], who called them and signed them on the spot. Immediately afterward came the maxi ''[[Hi Scores (release)|Hi Scores]]'', which, with titles like "[[Turquoise Hexagon Sun]]" or "[[Everything You Do Is A Balloon]]" and their spiral loops, their obsessive melancholy, and their hip-hop rhythm in apposition, slowly installed the [[BOC]] sound in the British electronic psyche.
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		+	{{boc|"We know that we will never have the impact of a rock band; we don't play in that category. We prefer to insinuate ourselves into the heads of listeners. When you make a record, you often want to react against what you hear at the moment. That's what happened with ''[[Music Has the Right to Children|Music Has The Right To Children]]'', which appeared in the midst of the jungle period when techno was becoming harder and harder, and the sounds clearer and cleaner. We then surprised everyone in silence; people didn't expect us to use the elements of drum 'n' bass to make something so slow, almost empty."}}
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		+	It was in 1998 that the first [[BOC]] album was released; it was jointly signed on [[Warp]] and [[Skam]] and finally opened the doors to an international audience for the group. A fragmentation bomb in form and a delayed-action bomb in substance, it caused a strange black butterfly effect, a beat of an eagle in Scotland then stirring a melancholy that ignored borders.
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		+	{{boc|"We don't make noise to be heard; our music is more of a reaction to the constant noise that surrounds us. We would rather be like the opening of a door that lets light in and invites people to step through. It's just an offered space, a ticket to elsewhere, to escape the race of the world and get away. It reminds me of when I was in school; there was a student who was very calm and hardly ever spoke. But when he did, even in the midst of the hubbub, it was with a weak and very calm voice. Everyone then listened to him."}}
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		+	'''Life in Retreat'''
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		+	Time will take care of carving the [[Boards Of Canada]] myth. These two rather [[BOC|peaceful guys]], who never really realized that their music could one day go beyond the tumultuous shores of the North Sea and accompany anything other than their nocturnal parties with friends in the forests or on the beaches, will arouse a curiosity proportional to the care they will take to hide themselves, to detach themselves from the crushing machinery of the music industry. Their reputation will only grow as the success of ''[[Music Has the Right to Children|Music Has The Right To Children]]'' serenely extends beyond the sole electronic territory and as speculations about the personalities of [[Mike]] and [[Marcus]] and their pastoral life run wild.
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		+	{{boc|[[Mike]]: "We have often been taken for new age survivors, sorts of post-hippies composing soft, ethereal, and somewhat mannered music. We don't see ourselves like that at all; we don't make music for the soundtrack of [[wikipedia:The Lord of the Rings|The Lord of the Rings]]. We always underpin it with dark, lugubrious elements; that's the price, I think, for making intelligent music that really touches people. But we don't necessarily link our work to the spiritual or meditation; we see our approach more as something scientific. It would be more of a scientific approach to affect. All the fears linked to existence and developed by religions are just a springboard for us. Our withdrawn life is a way to keep a form of purity, but it is more of an ideal, because we don't really see ourselves like that. We don't live in a bubble; we often go to the city, buy records, travel a lot. [[Marcus]] does snowboarding. We both live on a farm in the countryside, in the middle of nowhere, but we are not hicks. It just allows us to cut all ties with the outside world, to build another world, an imaginary one, where only our work as musicians matters. It's not like I get up in the morning and stay in ecstasy at my window in front of the tree and the stream; it's just the freedom that these conditions provide us. Our music needs that to flourish, but it's not linked to [[wikipedia:Scotland|Scotland]] in particular. We could do the same thing in [[wikipedia:Iceland|Iceland]] or [[wikipedia:Wyoming|Wyoming]]. Just a haven of peace, a corner sheltered ''[[In a Beautiful Place out in the Country (release)|In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country]]''."}}
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		+	'''A Musical Equation'''
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		+	With a keen sense of irony, [[BOC]] released this maxi in 2000. In the midst of millennial paranoia, they had the vocoder recite the words of [[wikipedia:David Koresh|David Koresh]], of the [[wikipedia:Branch Davidians|Branch Davidian sect]], and the track "[[Amo Bishop Roden]]" was taken from the name of one of the members of this same sect, 86 of whose members committed suicide following the FBI assault in 1993 in Waco, Texas. They would not stop there with the release in 2002 of ''[[Geogaddi]]'', where for the first time they moved away from their visual universe to explore the cryptic relationships between nature and science, the unconscious and mathematics, creation and geometry, which they wrap in a vague religious iconography. The tracklist darkens with titles like "[[Music Is Math]]", "[[Alpha And Omega]]", "[[Gyroscope]]", and stretches into a mute sigh up to a fateful duration: 66 min 6 sec.
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		+	{{boc|"What we've been trying to do since ''[[Geogaddi]]'' is to bleach the sounds. On ''[[Music has the Right to Children|Music Has The Right To Children]]'', the sound elements were clearly identifiable; they often recurred, and the material of the tracks was identified with these recurring components. It has now become much more difficult to recognize the instruments we use because we have retouched and worked on them so much, combined them with other sounds or instruments that resemble them that they are very far from their original sound. It's more blurred, and that's what we wanted to convey, this troubled impression with a very deconstructed construction, short and destabilizing pieces that would figure as a slow descent into abstract thoughts and the dark depths of the soul. Writing a song is as much about writing the spaces between the words. We write for the hollow moments of life, those that facilitate the return to oneself, that welcome sadness. It's not morbid because it often allows us to free ourselves from it, and it stands the test of time better. You see, I was listening to [[wikipedia:The Polyphonic Spree|The Polyphonic Spree]] recently; it immediately seduced me, but after several listens, this overload of joyful feelings ended up getting the better of me. I have never tired of a [[wikipedia:Joy Division|Joy Division]] album."}}
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		+	'''Ascending Logic'''
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		+	Since their beginnings, [[Boards Of Canada]] have traced a perpendicular to our real world on which they stand as if in zero gravity and which is their best vantage point on the world, their "[[Magic Window]]" that they close on themselves to begin a whirling dance whose steps only they know and which guides them "always deeper into (their) sound, right up against the framework that supports it." ''[[Geogaddi]]'', by exploring the dark side of reminiscence, had chilled many fans and journalists, yet it remains to this day their masterpiece as composers, the record where their universe, in the absence of light, most anxiously unfolded in the basements of consciousness. If the title "[[The Devil Is In The Details]]" could sum up the philosophy that irrigated Geogaddi, then "[[Constants Are Changing]]" would be the one that works in depth on ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]'', a more engaging, less tortured album that, by taking up their ingredients and restoring them under a soft light, could well constitute an ideal entry point to the world of Boards for those who discover them. For the others, after three years of long waiting, they will discover, provided they enter the immobile temporality of the record, another facet of the duo, more direct, more stripped-down, more American.
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		+	{{boc|"We moved our studios last year; that's why the recording took so long. We had a complete album in February 2004, but when we listened to it in our new premises, it no longer suited our tastes. So we destroyed everything and took a new direction. Off to San Francisco in a convertible for a psychedelic trip. The challenge was to reproduce our aesthetic but with live instruments like the guitar, which is very prominent. We wanted this album to be like the acoustic counterpart of ''[[Music Has the Right to Children|Music Has The Right To Children]]'', to work more simultaneously, to return to something simpler, more positive, to a more pop format. That's why the voices have disappeared; the record was already pop enough in itself, and we didn't want our sound to always be associated with the same components, to fall into a mechanism where we would feel like we were mimicking ourselves. Here, the tracks keep a repetitive aspect but develop, grow, follow an ascending movement in restraint to reach a peak where all the elements are then released: drum rolls, violins... We are not used to hearing that in electronics, where the tracks go up and down constantly or follow a horizontal line. In any case, it was a new way of working for us, a new way of doing electronics. I hope we succeeded."}}
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		+	'''Farewell Fire'''
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		+	It is now up to you to judge, but know that ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]'' will not reveal itself immediately and will peacefully extend its web in your mind with each successive listen. While technology increasingly shapes our daily lives, while the rhythm of our organisms accelerates without brakes, while the world down here is but an immense valley of tears, [[Boards Of Canada]] returns to a form of ingenuity, slows down the pace to the point of freezing time, opens a door to the clouds to escape the gray cities. There, where one can simply warm up, among friends, around this campfire that they invite us to light like them on that icy evening when they huddled together so that it would never go out.
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		+	{{boc|"The title of the album is like the mystical projection of a mental experience that one can have at such moments,"}} they finally confess to us in the form of an enigma. {{boc|"This idea of diving into a mind and thinking of the album as an introspective road trip that would end with this track "[[Farewell Fire]]", a farewell fire that would figure the exit to the outside and celebrate a great communion with things and the universe."}}
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		+	We will never know what they were eating during their little impromptu gatherings, but what was clear as we left them was the warmth and simplicity with which they had welcomed us and the flame in their eyes, assuring us that the story was far from over. There, in that hearth, burned softly the sacred fire of [[Boards Of Canada]], at the foot of that totem that scrutinized us mysteriously. On its plaque, in epigraph, this three-thousand-year-old saying of the obscure [[wikipedia:Heraclitus|Heraclitus]]: "Who will escape the fire that does not lie down?"
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	</onlyinclude>		</onlyinclude>
−
	== Scans ==		== Scans ==
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	== Highlights ==		== Highlights ==
	*		*
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		+	== See Also ==
		+	* ''[[The Campfire Headphase]]''
	== External Links ==		== External Links ==
−	*	+	* https://www.traxmag.com

---

Latest revision as of 12:18, 26 March 2025

title	La Part du Feu
author	Frank Bedos
publication	Trax
date	2005/10
issue	88
pages	32-37

La Part du Feu was an interview (in French) by Frank Bedos originally published October 03 2005^[1] in Trax magazine Number 88 pp.32-37.

Original Text[edit]

Trois ans qu'on attendait que l'aigle Boards Of Canada se pose à nouveau sur nos platines. À l'occasion de la sortie de The Campfire Headphase, événement brûlant de cette rentrée électronique, le duo le plus psychédélique de l'électronica accepte enfin de parler à visage découvert. Conversation autour du feu.

La lune est rouge et basse en cette nuit glaciale sur une plage quelque part au sud de l'Écosse, aux abords des Pentland Hills. Pourtant, comme dans un étrange rite païen, un cercle d'une vingtaine de personnes s'est formé autour d'un large feu crépitant qui semble glorifier la communion des éléments, les forces de la nature avec les puissances de l'esprit. Rassemblement post-hippie? Culte d'initiation magique? Cérémonie clandestine du Temple Solaire? Rien de tout cela, car point de sorcier, gourou ou autre médium surnaturel pour atteindre les étoiles ici. A la place et pour tout intermédiaire, un ghettoblaster. Nous sommes en hiver 2002, Boards Of Canada, quatre ans après le sacre international de Music Has The Right To Children, leur premier album, convoquent leurs amis d'enfance et célèbrent leur façon la fin de l'enregistrement de Geogaddi, qui leur apportera une reconnaissance critique universelle. rigole Michael l'un des membres du duo.

Un cas à part

Retour en arrière. Quand Warp a annoncé la sortie programmée du troisième album de Boards Of Canada, à la fin du mois de juin, immédiatement des tas de forums se sont fait l'écho d'une attente insupportable pour beaucoup. On n'a jamais autant glosé sur de simples titres de tracks, jamais frôlé d'aussi près la pâmoison vide et prospective, et jamais ensuite tant angoissé l'idée que ce que l'on venait de télécharger n'était pas le sacro-saint nouvel album du duo écossais, mais un ensemble de few old tunes que quelques malins avaient sournoisement maquillés. C'est que Boards Of Canada est devenu en quelques années un cas part dans le milieu de l'électronique underground, une situation qui pourrait cependant s'élargir et, par une magie concentrique, quitter la lisière confinée des cercles d'adeptes pour gagner une sphère à l'échelle du globe et se transfigurer ainsi en phénomène mainstream.

Reclus dans leurs terres froides, n’accordant que de rares interviews et seulement par e-mails, ne se produisant pour ainsi dire jamais en live, cites par Thom Yorke lui-même comme les inspirateurs directs du chef-d’œuvre Kid A, acclamés dès leur première réalisation grand format et portés par une rumeur grandissante installant Music Has The Right To Children parmi les 25 meilleurs disques psychédéliques de tous les temps au milieu des Beatles et des Pink Floyd, la légende Boards Of Canada est en marche. Aussi, quand Warp nous a confirmé après de multiples ajournements que Michael Sandison et Marcus Eoin acceptaient finalement de nous rencontrer près de chez eux Edimbourg, nous nous retrouvions ni une ni deux et malgré une date de bouclage imminente dans l'avion qui allait enfin nous rapprocher de la plus grande énigme, l'astre le plus noir de la galaxie électronique.

Totem et tabou

Nous voilà donc en ce mois de septembre dans la cité médiévale d'Edimbourg, surgie de l'époque des chevaliers avec son château fort défiant la brume haut sur la falaise, sa cathédrale gothique, ses ruelles pavées et les collines roussies par le vent la ceinturant. Hors considérations romantiques, c'est dix degrés, pluie glaçante et un misérable jacquard pour toute défense : la foutue douche écossaise. On s'empresse alors de trouver dans cette contrée inamicale le Royal Museum où nous avons rendez-vous avec le groupe afin justement de faire craquer la glace dans laquelle beaucoup se sont sentis prisonniers à l'écoute de leur nouvel album (cf. p 65), et libérer le feu qui couve et semble fragilement irradier ses compositions. C'est d'ailleurs très chaleureusement que Marcus et Michael nous accueillent dans l'enceinte du musée, une lumineuse verrière blanche où trône un immense et sévère totem, garant d'une spiritualité ancestrale. On s'installe au pied de la tutelle sacrée et nos deux artistes ont tôt fait de plaisanter sur notre piteuse apparence, chassant immédiatement la crainte de nous retrouver en face de deux grizzlys condescendant à nous servir leur plus polie langue de bois. Au contraire, ils sont d'emblée très soucieux de la réception de The Campfire Headphase et nous pressent de passer aux aveux. On leur explique l'accueil divisé de la rédaction, le chaud-froid qu'il a provoqué, réaction à vif. En gros et pour faire vite, l'esthétique BOC (pour les intimes). C’est l'équivalent en France de notre Message à caractère informatif et c'est vraiment très intéressant.

La bohème

D'abord, il y a ce nom, Boards Of Canada, qui ne sont pas les troncs flottants sur lesquels se prélassent les castors aux abords des Grands Lacs mais qui est inspire de la National Film Board Of Canada, société cinématographique qui diffusait toutes sortes de documentaires animaliers et de programmes sociaux, avec ce grain très particulier de la pellicule donnant une sorte de lavis a l'image et que l'on retrouve sur l'artwork de la plupart des réalisations du duo. Cela pourrait paraitre anecdotique et ne constituer que la matière d'un disque, mais la force de Boards Of Canada est d'avoir relie cet univers visuel un peu flou et désuet une identité musicale qui, en reprenant ou samplant les éléments sonores faisant la matière auditive brute de ces vidéos et en les couplant des steel guitars, des synthétiseurs et des boites à rythmes d'époque, et des voix d'enfants en arrière-plan, se charge d’une forte puissance évocatrice et nostalgique. Écoutez n'importe quel disque de BOC et, pour peu que vous soyez trentenaire, vous voilà transporté dans ce monde si familier de pattes d'éph’, chemises col pelle tarte, lunettes fumées, sous-pulls qui grattent, le tout nimbé d'une atmosphère fin d'utopie un peu bohème.

Chasse au trésor

Il n'en faudra pas plus pour pétrifier l'inconscient des jeunes Mike et Marcus qui, à leur retour dans leur Écosse natale, alors adolescents s'amusant comme beaucoup d'autres à cet âge à tripatouiller des cassettes audio, puiseront systématiquement leur inspiration au cœur de cette portion d'esprit gelée quelque part dans les glaces de l'Alberta. C'est au début des 80s qu'ils commencent à monter des films en Super-8 et réaliser leurs propres soundtracks tout en apprenant à jouer toutes sortes d'instruments live, batterie, guitare, synthétiseur. Un collectif de musiciens nait de cette boulimie musicale qui comptera jusqu'à quatorze membres, incluant des vocaux comme une formation classique mats avec déjà une nette préférence pour les atmosphères crépusculaires, les structures minimales les manipulations électroniques et les distorsions propres à installer un climat dérangeant et instable. À la fin des 80’s tout en poursuivant leurs montages vidéo, ils se dotent d'un studio d'enregistrement qu'ils baptisent Hexagon Sun, un "junkshop" selon leurs mots, plutôt que le bunker dans lequel la presse, avide d'excentricités, les a un peu vite rangés, une sorte de musée analogique où les samplers côtoient les guitares, les séquenceurs les flûtes, l'ordinateur la harpe éolienne.

La loi du silence

Parallèlement à la création de leur studio, ils lancent leur label, Music70, qui demeurera, même aujourd'hui, une plate-forme d'expérimentation visuelle et sonore. Tous les vieux morceaux inédits, souvent enregistrés sur de bonnes vieilles cassettes et que les fans s'arrachent, datent de cette période allant de 90 à 95, où la formation se sédimente vraiment, abandonnant la configuration de groupe pour se consacrer à des compositions strictement électroniques. Un temps trio, Boards Of Canada devient finalement le duo que nous connaissons et sortent leur premier vinyle autoproduit, il s'appelle Twoism et il va atterrir dans les bureaux de Skam à Manchester et dans les oreilles de Sean Booth d'Autechre, qui les appelle et les signe sur le champ. Suivra immédiatement après le maxi "Hi Score" qui, avec des titres comme "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" ou "Everything You Do Is A Balloon" et leurs boucles en spirale, leur mélancolie obsédante, leur rythmique hip hop en apposition, installeront lentement le son BOC dans la psyché électronique britannique. C'est en 1998 que sort le premier album de BOC, il est signé conjointement sur Warp et Skam et ouvre enfin au groupe les portes d'une audience Internationale. Bombe à fragmentation dans sa forme, à retardement dans le fond, il provoquera un étrange effet papillon noir, un battement d'aigle en Écosse remuant alors une mélancolie ignorant les frontières.

La vie en retrait

Le temps va se charger de sculpter le mythe Boards Of Canada. Ces deux gars plutôt peace, qui n'ont jamais vraiment réalisé que leur musique pouvait un jour dépasser les rivages tumultueux de la Mer du Nord et accompagner autre chose que leurs fêtes nocturnes entre potes dans les forêts ou sur les plages, vont susciter une curiosité proportionnelle au soin qu'ils prendront à se dissimuler, se détacher des rouages écrasants de l'industrie musicale. Leur réputation ne cessera de grandir à mesure que le succès de Music Has The Right To Children s'étendra sereinement au-delà du seul territoire électronique et que les spéculations quant aux personnalités de Mike et Marcus et de leur vie pastorale iront bon train. Juste un havre de paix, un coin à l'abri "ln A Beautiful Place Out ln The Country".

Une équation musicale

Avec un sens appuyé de l'ironie, BOC sort ce maxi en 2000. En pleine parano millénariste, les voilà qui font réciter au vocoder des paroles de David Koresh, de la secte des Davidiens, et que le track "Amo Bishop Roden" est tiré du nom d'un des membres de cette même secte dont 86 membres se suicidèrent suite à l'assaut donné par le FBI en 1993 à Waco au Texas. Ils ne s'arrêteront pas en si bon chemin avec la sortie en 2002 de Geogaddi, où pour la première fois ils s'éloigneront de leur univers visuel pour explorer les relations cryptiques entre la nature et la science, l'inconscient et les mathématiques, la création et la géométrie, qu'ils emballent dans une vague iconographie religieuse. Le tracklisting s'obscurcit de titres comme "Music Is Math", "Alpha & Omega", "Gyroscope", et s'étire en un soupir muet jusqu'à une durée fatidique : 66 min 6 sec.

Logique ascensionnelle

Depuis leurs débuts, les Boards Of Canada ont tracé une perpendiculaire à notre monde réel sur laquelle ils se tiennent comme en apesanteur et qui est leur meilleur point de vue sur le monde, leur "Magic Window" qu'ils ferment sur eux-mêmes pour entamer une danse giratoire dont ils sont les seuls à connaitre les pas et qui les guide "toujours plus profondément à l'intérieur de (leur) son, tout contre l'ossature qui le soutient". Geogaddi, en explorant la face ténébreuse de la réminiscence, avait refroidi nombre de fans et de journalistes, c'est pourtant à ce jour leur chef-d'œuvre en tant que compositeurs, le disque où leur univers, en l'absence de lumière, s'est le plus anxieusement déployé dans les souterrains de la conscience. Si le titre "The Devil Is ln The Details" pouvait résumer la philosophie qui irriguait Geogaddi, alors "Constants Are Changinq" serait celui qui travaille en profondeur The Campfire Headphase, album plus engageant, moins torturé qui, en reprenant leurs ingrédients et les restituant sous une lumière tamisée, pourrait bien constituer pour ceux qui les découvrent une porte d'entrée idéale au monde des Boards. Pour les autres, après trois ans de longue attente, ils découvriront, pour peu qu'ils rentrent dans la temporalité immobile du disque, une autre facette du duo, plus directe, plus dépouillée, plus américaine.

Feu d’adieu

A vous seuls maintenant d'en juger, mais sachez que The Campfire Headphase ne se dévoilera pas d'emblée et qu'il étendra paisiblement sa toile dans votre esprit au fil des écoutes successives. Alors que la technologie façonne toujours plus notre quotidien, que le rythme de nos organismes s'accélère sans frein, que le monde ici-bas n'est qu'une immense vallée de larmes, Boards Of Canada revient à une forme d'ingénuité, ralentit la cadence jusqu'à figer le temps, ouvre une porte vers les nuages pour fuir les grises cités. Là où l'on peut se réchauffer simplement, entre amis, autour de ce feu de camp qu'ils nous invitent à allumer comme eux en cette soirée glacée lorsqu'ils se resserraient pour qu'il ne s'éteigne jamais. Nous ne saurons jamais ce qu'ils mangeaient lors de leurs petites réunions improvisées, mais ce qui était évident en les quittant, c'était cette chaleur et cette simplicité avec lesquelles ils nous avaient accueilli et cette flamme dans leurs yeux, nous assurant que l'histoire n'était pas près de prendre fin. Là, dans cet âtre brûlait doucement feu sacré de Boards Of Canada, au pied de ce totem qui nous scrutait mystérieusement. Sur sa fiche en épigraphe, cette parole trois fois millénaire de l'obscur Héraclite : "Qui se dérobera au feu qui ne se couche pas?"

Translated Text[edit]

Note: translation provided by Le Chat - Mistral AI

For three years, we've been waiting for the eagle, Boards Of Canada, to land on our turntables again. On the occasion of the release of The Campfire Headphase, a burning event this electronic season, the most psychedelic duo in electronica finally agrees to speak openly. Conversation around the fire.

The moon is red and low on this icy night on a beach somewhere south of Scotland, near the Pentland Hills. Yet, like a strange pagan rite, a circle of about twenty people has formed around a large crackling fire that seems to glorify the communion of the elements, the forces of nature with the powers of the spirit. Post-hippie gathering? Magical initiation cult? Clandestine ceremony of the Order of the Solar Temple? None of that, for there is no sorcerer, guru, or other supernatural medium to reach the stars here. Instead, and as the only intermediary, a ghetto blaster. We are in the winter of 2002; Boards Of Canada, four years after the international triumph of their first album, Music Has The Right To Children, summon their childhood friends and celebrate in their own way the end of the recording of Geogaddi, which will bring them universal critical acclaim.

laughs Michael, one of the duo's members.

A Special Case

Flashback. When Warp announced the scheduled release of Boards Of Canada's third album at the end of June, forums immediately echoed an unbearable wait for many. Never has so much been said about simple track titles, never has the void been so close to prospective ecstasy, and never has there been so much anxiety that what had just been downloaded was not the sacred new album by the Scottish duo, but a set of old tunes that some clever folks had cunningly disguised. The fact is that Boards Of Canada has become a special case in the underground electronic scene in just a few years, a situation that could, however, expand and, by concentric magic, leave the confined fringe of adept circles to gain a global sphere and thus transform into a mainstream phenomenon.

Secluded in their cold lands, granting only rare interviews and only by email, hardly ever performing live, cited by Thom Yorke himself as the direct inspirations for the masterpiece Kid A, acclaimed from their first major release and carried by a growing rumor placing Music Has The Right To Children among the 25 best psychedelic records of all time alongside the Beatles and Pink Floyd, the Boards Of Canada legend is on the march. So, when Warp finally confirmed after multiple postponements that Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin agreed to meet us near their home in Edinburgh, we found ourselves, without hesitation and despite an imminent deadline, on the plane that would finally bring us closer to the greatest enigma, the blackest star in the electronic galaxy.

Totem and Taboo

So here we are in September in the medieval city of Edinburgh, emerging from the era of knights with its castle defying the mist high on the cliff, its Gothic cathedral, its cobbled streets, and the hills reddened by the wind surrounding it. Beyond romantic considerations, it's ten degrees, freezing rain, and a miserable cardigan for defense: the damned Scottish shower. We then hurried to find, in this inhospitable land, the Royal Museum where we had an appointment with the group to finally break the ice in which many felt trapped while listening to their new album (see p. 65) and release the fire that smolders and seems to fragilely radiate its compositions. It is, moreover, very warmly that Marcus and Michael welcome us into the museum's enclosure, a luminous white glasshouse where a severe and imposing totem stands, a guarantor of ancestral spirituality. We settle at the foot of the sacred tutelage, and our two artists are quick to joke about our pitiful appearance, immediately dispelling the fear of finding ourselves in front of two condescending grizzlies serving us their most polite wooden tongue. On the contrary, they are immediately very concerned about the reception of The Campfire Headphase and press us to confess. We explain the divided reception from the editorial team, the hot-and-cold reaction it provoked, a raw reaction.

In summary, the BoC aesthetic it's the equivalent in France of our "Message à caractère informatif"^[2] and it's really interesting.

Bohemia

First, there is the name, Boards Of Canada, which does not refer to the floating logs on which beavers lounge by the Great Lakes but is inspired by the National Film Board Of Canada, a film company that broadcast all sorts of animal documentaries and social programs, with that particular grain of the film giving a kind of wash to the image, which can be found on the artwork of most of the duo's releases. This might seem anecdotal and constitute only the matter of a record, but the strength of Boards Of Canada is to have linked this somewhat blurry and outdated visual universe to a musical identity that, by sampling or reproducing the sound elements that make up the raw auditory material of these videos and coupling them with steel guitars, synthesizers, and drum machines of the era, and children's voices in the background, is charged with strong evocative and nostalgic power. Listen to any BOC record, and, provided you are in your thirties, you will be transported into this familiar world of bell-bottoms, puffy-collared shirts, tinted glasses, itchy turtlenecks, all bathed in an atmosphere of a slightly bohemian end of utopia.

Treasure Hunt

It took no more to petrify the unconscious of young Mike and Marcus who, upon their return to their native Scotland, then teenagers like many others at that age tinkering with audio cassettes, would systematically draw their inspiration from the heart of this portion of spirit frozen somewhere in the ice of Alberta. It was in the early '80s that they began to make films in Super-8 and create their own soundtracks while learning to play all sorts of live instruments, drums, guitar, synthesizer. A collective of musicians emerged from this musical voracity, which would count up to fourteen members, including vocals like a classic formation but with already a clear preference for twilight atmospheres, minimal structures, electronic manipulations, and distortions specific to creating a disturbing and unstable climate. At the end of the '80s, while continuing their video editing, they equipped themselves with a recording studio that they named Hexagon Sun, a "junkshop" in their words, rather than the bunker in which the press, eager for eccentricities, had a little too quickly placed them, a kind of analog museum where samplers rub shoulders with guitars, sequencers with flutes, and the computer with the wind harp.

The Law of Silence

In parallel with the creation of their studio, they launched their label, Music70, which remains, even today, a platform for visual and sound experimentation. All the old unreleased tracks, often recorded on good old cassettes and that fans snatch up, date from this period between '90 and '95, when the formation really solidified, abandoning the group configuration to devote itself to strictly electronic compositions. Once a trio, Boards Of Canada finally became the duo we know and released their first self-produced vinyl; it's called Twoism, and it landed in the offices of Skam in Manchester and in the ears of Sean Booth of Autechre, who called them and signed them on the spot. Immediately afterward came the maxi Hi Scores, which, with titles like "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" or "Everything You Do Is A Balloon" and their spiral loops, their obsessive melancholy, and their hip-hop rhythm in apposition, slowly installed the BOC sound in the British electronic psyche.

It was in 1998 that the first BOC album was released; it was jointly signed on Warp and Skam and finally opened the doors to an international audience for the group. A fragmentation bomb in form and a delayed-action bomb in substance, it caused a strange black butterfly effect, a beat of an eagle in Scotland then stirring a melancholy that ignored borders.

Life in Retreat

Time will take care of carving the Boards Of Canada myth. These two rather peaceful guys, who never really realized that their music could one day go beyond the tumultuous shores of the North Sea and accompany anything other than their nocturnal parties with friends in the forests or on the beaches, will arouse a curiosity proportional to the care they will take to hide themselves, to detach themselves from the crushing machinery of the music industry. Their reputation will only grow as the success of Music Has The Right To Children serenely extends beyond the sole electronic territory and as speculations about the personalities of Mike and Marcus and their pastoral life run wild.

A Musical Equation

With a keen sense of irony, BOC released this maxi in 2000. In the midst of millennial paranoia, they had the vocoder recite the words of David Koresh, of the Branch Davidian sect, and the track "Amo Bishop Roden" was taken from the name of one of the members of this same sect, 86 of whose members committed suicide following the FBI assault in 1993 in Waco, Texas. They would not stop there with the release in 2002 of Geogaddi, where for the first time they moved away from their visual universe to explore the cryptic relationships between nature and science, the unconscious and mathematics, creation and geometry, which they wrap in a vague religious iconography. The tracklist darkens with titles like "Music Is Math", "Alpha And Omega", "Gyroscope", and stretches into a mute sigh up to a fateful duration: 66 min 6 sec.

Ascending Logic

Since their beginnings, Boards Of Canada have traced a perpendicular to our real world on which they stand as if in zero gravity and which is their best vantage point on the world, their "Magic Window" that they close on themselves to begin a whirling dance whose steps only they know and which guides them "always deeper into (their) sound, right up against the framework that supports it." Geogaddi, by exploring the dark side of reminiscence, had chilled many fans and journalists, yet it remains to this day their masterpiece as composers, the record where their universe, in the absence of light, most anxiously unfolded in the basements of consciousness. If the title "The Devil Is In The Details" could sum up the philosophy that irrigated Geogaddi, then "Constants Are Changing" would be the one that works in depth on The Campfire Headphase, a more engaging, less tortured album that, by taking up their ingredients and restoring them under a soft light, could well constitute an ideal entry point to the world of Boards for those who discover them. For the others, after three years of long waiting, they will discover, provided they enter the immobile temporality of the record, another facet of the duo, more direct, more stripped-down, more American.

Farewell Fire

It is now up to you to judge, but know that The Campfire Headphase will not reveal itself immediately and will peacefully extend its web in your mind with each successive listen. While technology increasingly shapes our daily lives, while the rhythm of our organisms accelerates without brakes, while the world down here is but an immense valley of tears, Boards Of Canada returns to a form of ingenuity, slows down the pace to the point of freezing time, opens a door to the clouds to escape the gray cities. There, where one can simply warm up, among friends, around this campfire that they invite us to light like them on that icy evening when they huddled together so that it would never go out.

they finally confess to us in the form of an enigma.

We will never know what they were eating during their little impromptu gatherings, but what was clear as we left them was the warmth and simplicity with which they had welcomed us and the flame in their eyes, assuring us that the story was far from over. There, in that hearth, burned softly the sacred fire of Boards Of Canada, at the foot of that totem that scrutinized us mysteriously. On its plaque, in epigraph, this three-thousand-year-old saying of the obscure Heraclitus: "Who will escape the fire that does not lie down?"

Scans[edit]

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Highlights[edit]

See Also[edit]

• The Campfire Headphase

External Links[edit]

• https://www.traxmag.com

References[edit]

1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20051025001714/http://www.journaux.fr:80/revue.php?id=84112
2. ↑