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Music Has the Right to Children era

title	The Age of Aquarius
author	The Cosmic Crofter
publication	EHX
date	1998/03/25
issue
pages

The Age of Aquarius is an interview by The Cosmic Crofter originally published online Mar. 1998 on the EHX website.

^[1]

Edinburgh-based Boards of Canada are due to release their debut album "Music Has the Right to Children" for Warp, licensed from Skam in Manchester. The Crofter interviewed them about their past, present and future, and attempted to discover what now lies within their six-sided oyster ...

The duo originally began serious recording at the end of 80's, having spent their early youth playing around on "home hi-fi" and in conventional bands. Various other members have come and gone, but Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin have remained the core of the unit over the last 3 or 4 years. In December of 1997, two other members joined the Hexagon Sun bunker, resulting in the acquisition of some "useful technology". Just who these other members remains a secret, as they "are more interested in the psychological capabilities of sounds and images than their aesthetics. I can't talk about current or previous collaborators because Hexagon Sun doesn't do that".

Having always been interested in art in all its apparitions, the two have continually attempted to combine their beliefs, hopes and fears into an all-encompassing sensual experience, primarily in the fields of music, film, writing and more recently web design, "the official Turquoise Hexagon Sun website will up and running by Easter 1998 with a section on BoC as well as 'THS Scripture' buyable in dead tree format, Music70 BoCumentaries and 'Emephant Diagram', the number cruncher", I am assured that all will become clear.

In terms of other artistic formats, they are keen to point out that the visual and literary side is by no means a colorful backdrop ... "It's not secondary to the music, it's all the same thing. We use video on stage, but it's not for wallpaper, it's got things in it which could damage you". The two collaborate with other artists under the banner "Music70", a name which they have previously used for production copyright, and is now used as the collective term for themselves and like-minded friends, creating art for non-commercial and usually personal consumption.

To witness a BoC live performance confirms their agenda, "We're not interested in ambient filmmaking, we are interested in triggers, embedding and subliminals ... (during a live performance) we like people to pay attention to the messages on the screens". The duo are keen to get the extra-melody points across, but are also able to resign themselves to the fact that for the best part, most BoC followers are simply interested in the skin-deep appearance of the music, and thus the BoC existence has a definite duality. "We hope that the music stands up for itself. You could choose to listen to the melodies on the record and enjoy them purely as melodies, or you could read into the references a bit more and perhaps connect with that, or you could choose to come and see us live and see our thoughts abstracted out on video, and if it works the listener might go 'Yeah this is familiar but I don't know why'. We just see these as forms of communication which can be used to affect the listener in an attractive and maybe even addictive way".

The sharp and sometimes disturbing images can be thought provoking, although in some cases baffling. I challenge them on the point that, along with their sometimes obscure and almost pretentious song titles, they are out to deliberately perplex the perceiver. "There is a story behind every title we use. If a title seems made-up, it's either an equation, an acronym, or a hybrid. Some titles are personal stories, such as 'Everything You Do Is A Balloon', which was a realization made long ago in the forest".

So what could possibly be in a name? "Boards of Canada" is particularly good one, and I was once informed that it was chosen due to its particularly inert and almost meaningless nature. Digging deeper, their childhood exposure to the work of The National Filmboard of Canada reveals a more direct cull.

The influences that spark the creation of the song titles are just as varied as the influences which create the music they produce. Not confined to audio releases, they cite the many facets of the latter half of 20th Century culture, including film, TV and science journals. They claim that taking the positive aspects of a product does not always provide food for their thought, but rather the underlying meaning or cosmetic triviality, "... we are interested in everything that we can re-interpret. I don't want to give you list of names, but you know we could be just as easily captivated by a piece of T.V. theme music, or Eighties' pop, for instance. The enlightened parts in our music are relative to the banal or naive parts". When pushed for particularly prominent players ... "Hundertwasser, Svankmeyer, New Scientist, Robert Anton Wilson, Documentary films and articles, Jamie Nelson, The Archdrude... we are interested in everything!".

As previously stated, BoC's beginnings began, like every proper electronic experimentation combo should, mucking around with tape loops while still at school. Briefly tapping their cap to the "originators", they see thier humble beginnings as the first necessary steps to what they produce today. "... we used to chop up shortwave radio recordings on an ancient portable recorder, and make tunes out of them by punching-in and layering tracks in a crude way. I'm talking about 1981-1982. We still do that now except that we use better equipment. I think it's all been said before about Glass, Reich, Varese, Cage etc. being the originators of techno and ambient music. We prefer to think of anyone who has ever picked up an object and made a new noise with it as an originator".

BoC are the first to admit that the influences that fuel the creation of their tracks are by no means trivial, but prefer to cloak their personal beliefs in more universal and ubiquitous issues. "We read a lot, we pay close attention to what's going on, so you probably have to look at our work pretty closely to pick up on things, and we do try to compose strong emotional melodies ...", the emotion of which is something which I propose to be the serious side of their nature, "... yes we have a melancholy sound, and we do have strong opinions, but we only filter some of them into the music. I don't want to project a political side into the music because the music is in it's own area", states Mike.

The "melancholy" sound which has become a trademark and which may stick like mud over time, does not hamper BoC's enthusiasm for the perfect "song-structure". The roots of their musical career lie in the participation in "normal bands" using "live instruments", which, they claim, may have only increased their combined melodic ear. Marcus confirms the point, "I think you can trigger emotion much more easily with a melody than you can with a rhythm, although it can be done with a rhythm, listen to Jerry Goldsmith or the The Incredible String Band ... I'm personally more interested in melody than sound, although the effectiveness of a Boards of Canada melody probably depends on it's context. And that'll be why we have a reputation for downgrading the sound. ". As with most serious electronic musicians of our time, and probably more believably BoC than others, they claim their current sound is underivative from current styles, "We don't usually listen to contemporary electronic music. Our collections might surprise you. Or alarm you maybe ...", such as? "You're looking for examples? Phil Harris, Devo, Claude Denjean, Walter/Wendy Carlos, Jesus Christ Superstar, DAF, Ween, TV themes, Tomita, MBV, Joni Mitchell ...".

Alarm us or not, the new BoC album to be released on Warp in April, only adds to BoC's mystique as renegades of "the intelligent twisted regions of electronic melody". Having been friends with the people at Warp for some time, they have developed a lasting raport that should hopefully see them good for years to come, "we all go round for tea scones regularly!". Now label buddies with their much loved Autechre et al, BoC see Warp as one of the few labels "bold enough to head away from the overtly 'techno' sound". They cite Skam as another more underground label which shares the same conviction, and funnily enough, these are the two labels which have hosted the BoC name so far. However, their association with Skam will not end with the signing to Warp, "Skam is a hive of new ideas, and there will be a lot of essential music coming from them this year, and we'll be in there, although you probably won't know it's us that you're listening to. The move to Warp was mainly out of respect for the label and it's artists, and friendship".

Boc's confidence can be attributed to the fact that they may now have reached Stage 1 of their long-term plan, and now use the Warp engine to thrust their more abstract and artistic ideas into the public domain. Their use of Super-8mm film and video images during their live performance will obviously be seen to increase and diversify from this point on. The artistic licence has finally been handed over. However, over their long career, the live shows have been few and far between, and one receives the vibe that the whole thing can be particularly tedious. One reason for this may be, from what I have so far gathered from BoC's character, that they are perfectionists in every sense, but still feel they have introduce another edge to the public rendition. Mike explains, "Every time we play live we do it a different way, technically. This is unintentional ... I like to play a familiar tune to the audience, but then make it do something totally new. We just haven't hit upon the best technical method for doing this yet, so for every gig we sit and go 'How are we gonna do it this time?'". Perhaps hitting on that "best technical method" is the reason we do not see BoC headlining many nights? "We do put a lot of work into every gig, and this slows things down. One gig takes a month of preparation, usually involving visuals and programming, and this can only be done when we're not writing. We'll be going out on tour at the end of the year".

Indeed, BoC have only ever played once in their home city, Edinburgh, which was last year when they and Think Tank supported Autechre. I was in attendance, and I put it to them that their sound and general presence was alien to the city as a whole. "We've only played in Edinburgh once so far, so I don't really know what the local Illuminati think of us. I think there is something simmering quietly now in the city, but we're based out in the country ... I'm not aware of an "Edinburgh sound", although there are quite a few threatening noises going on in there. Yeah we keep ourselves out of things a bit, I guess if we had more time we would be more involved. We make brief forays into Edinburgh clubland and then we retreat to cover. ".

So if they rarely venture out into the clubland of The Capital, what do BoC see as a great night out? "Somewhere in the hills, in a huge bonfire, with the beautiful Julian Cope ...".

---

title	Board Clever
author	Richard Hector-Jones
publication	Jockey Slut
date	1998/04
issue	Vol.02 No.13 (April/May 1998)
pages	p.20

"Board Clever" is an interview by Richard Hector-Jones originally published in Jockey Slut magazine Vol. 02 No. 13 (April/May 1998). It was published alongside the featured review of Music Has the Right to Children.

Boards of Canada are breathing new life into the experimental end of electronic music. And you can whistle their tunes...

offers Michael Sandison one half of Scottish electronic pairing Boards Of Canada.

Boards Of Canada are fixed on melody and emotion in music. It's a rare obsession in the world of British electronica but it gives their sound a uniqueness, a ghostly sense of yearning, and a depth of emotion that sets them far outside the pack. Music Has the Right to Children, their debut album, is the product of their fixation; a melancholy mix of rhythms and melodies revealing more shading and character with every listen.

explains fellow Boarder Marcus Eoin.

All of this might lead you to think that's it's an 'oh so serious' album which isn't true. It's simply refreshing to see such a human approach behind the employment of modern musical technology.

continues Michael.

The first record Boards Of Canada released was the self financed and limited hardly any Twoism EP. They sent the record to Autechre's Sean Booth who phoned back the very next day suggesting they mail a copy to Andy Maddock's Manchester based SKAM label. (Autechre release records on SKAM with various other bods under the Gescom guise). The result was Hi Scores, a 12" that brought the pair to a wider audience and paved the way for a follow up 7" Aquarius and now a full length album jointly put out by Warp and SKAM.

It would seem that, with the help of Boards of Canada, Britain's homegrown electronica music scene might finally step out from the shadow of the machine to explore the more emotional and human avenues.

Strange to think something so simple could be so exciting.

Richard Hector-Jones

---

title	A Bunker Full of Memories
author	René Passet
publication	Forcefield
date	1998/04/14
issue
pages

A Bunker Full of Memories is an interview by René Passet originally published online Apr. 1998 on the Forcefield website. ^[2]

'Strong emotional melodies'. That pretty much sums up the essence of what Boards of Canada is about. After various hard-to-get releases on cassettes, Skam Records (and it's enigmatic offshoot Mask) the Scottish duo has just released their debut album Music Has The Right To Children on Warp Records. The first of five on the Sheffield label!

Five albums. That might explain why Mike Sanderson and Marcus Eoin are extremely busy in their Hexagon Studio and reject most interview requests. So many tracks to finish, so little time. But Forcefield managed to enter the bunker which hosts the Hexagon Studio. Via E-mail. Here is what they said.

interview by René Passet, April 1998.

The album Music Has The Right To Children is out now on Warp/Skam, as is their remix of Mira Calix' Sandsings. WAP100 will contain an exclusive track by Boards of Canada, called Orange Romeda. Soon the Turquise Hexagon Sun website will open it's gates.

Check out EHX for a very informing interview Cosmic Crofter had with Boards of Canada. And for the Boards of Canada page.

reviews at Forcefield:

Various - Skampler - CD - Silent/Skam

Various Artists - Mask EP - 12" - Mask

Boards of Canada - High Scores - 12" - Skam

---

title	Two Aesthetes of Electronic Music
author	Ariel Kyrou & Jean-Yves Leloup
publication	Virgin Megaweb
date	1998/06
issue
pages

"Two Aesthetes of Electronic Music" is an interview (in French) by Ariel Kyrou & Jean-Yves Leloup originally published online Jun. 1998 on the Virgin Megaweb website.^[3]

Deux esthètes de l'électronique entre nostalgie de l'enfance et paranoïa du futur

Au cœur du Marais parisien, à deux pas du Musée Picasso, on verrait bien Markus Eion et Michael Sandison comme des étudiants british en goguette culturelle. Ils ont l'air de hippies voyageurs et non de techno freaks, les deux Boards of Canada, avec leur sac à dos, leur sourire mouillé et leur bonnet de laine... On n'imagine pas tenir là les auteurs d'un album électronique de pur cristal, paru sous une double signature on ne peut plus branchée : Skam et Warp, respectivement label pointu de Manchester et mythique maison mère de l'electronica made in Sheffield. Cet album, "Music Has the Right to Children", ressemble à sa pochette. L'image d'une famille ou d'un groupe d'amis, visiblement sur les pierres d'un château en ruine. Image naïve comme les univers du "Manège enchanté" et des "Animaux du Monde". Banale. Heureuse. Mais cette image est noyée de lumière bleu vert, comme sous l'effet d'une soucoupe volante en phase d'atterrissage. Et puis il y a ces visages lisses comme une pierre ponce. Inquiétants. Des faces d'humains zombifiés. Que cachent Michael Sandison et Markus Eion par cette image d'innocence troublée ? Les deux Ecossais - dont nous avons confondu la voix dans l'interview - semblent ne faire qu'un, le premier un peu plus bavard que le second avec son accent à se frapper le lobe de l'oreille...

(rires)

Propos recueillis par Ariel Kyrou et Jean-Yves Leloup

Photo : DR

Two aesthetes of electronic music caught between nostalgia for childhood and paranoia of the future

At the heart of the Marais district of Paris, right next to the Picasso Museum, it would be easy to take Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison for a couple of British Students on a culture spree. The two "Boards of Canada" look more like travelling hippies than techno freaks, with their backpacks, soppy grins, and woolly hats. It's hard to imagine that standing there are the creators of an electronic album of pure crystal, released jointly by two labels that could not be further apart: Skam and Warp; respectively, the cutting-edge Manchester label, and the legendary nerve-centre of "Made in Sheffield" electronica. This album, "Music has the right to children", is much as its cover suggests. The image of a family or a group of friends, standing on the stones of a ruined castle. A naïve image like the world of "The Magic Roundabout" or "Animals of the World". Perfectly ordinary. Cheerful. Except that the image is flooded with a turquoise light, as though caught in the glare of a flying saucer that is coming in to land. And then there are those faces, smooth as pumice stone. Disturbing. The faces of zombified people. What are Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin hiding in this picture of troubled innocence? The two Scots, whose replies we have merged in this interview, seem to act as one; the first a little more talkative than the other, who has a very striking accent.

interview by Ariel Kyrou & Jean-Yves Leloup, June 1998.

---

1. REDIRECT Space Age Bachelor

---

title	Children Have the Right to Film
author	Daniel Chamberlin
publication	URB
date	1999/01
issue	Vol.09 No.63 (Jan/Feb 1999)
pages	p.26

"Children Have the Right to Film" is an interview by Daniel Chamberin originally published Jan. 1999 in Urb magazine Volume 09, Number 63 (Jan/Feb 1999), p.26

Scotland's Boards of Canada (Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin) make downtempo techno out of samples of smiling children and their tripping teachers, melodic lullabies, tones and rhythms as chilly and deep as a summer loch. Much of the atmosphere created in their music springs from an elaborate, far-from-kitschy use of sampled motifs from both television programs and the '70s-era documentaries produced by the National Film Board of Canada (hence the name). Not surprisingly, original video footage has accompanied some of their live sets alongside soundtracks from obscure children's programming.

• Michael Sandison's Top Ten Films

1. Be Glad for the Song Has No End
2. Picnic at Hanging Rock
3. The New Numbers (unknown)
4. Heavenly Creatures
5. Dark Star
6. The Elephant Man
7. Dandelion Seed (unknown)
8. Followers
9. A Man Escaped
10. Revolution (unknown)

• Marcus Eoin's Top Ten Films

1. Papillon
2. Ice Core Drilling (unknown - thought to perhaps be an NFBC film)
3. The Invention of Destruction
4. Zabriskie Point
5. Alice
6. The Andromeda Strain
7. Jesus Christ Superstar
8. Diagram (unknown - may refer to Paul Glabicki's 1978 Diagram Film)
9. Capricorn One
10. The Wizard of Oz

interview by Daniel Chamberlin, February 1999.

---

title	Boards of The Underground
author	Richard Southern
publication	Jockey Slut
date	2000/12
issue	Vol.03 No.11
pages	30-34

"Boards of The Underground" is an interview by Richard Southern originally published Dec. 2000 in Jockey Slut magazine Volume 03, Number 11, pp.30-34

They're the fire-starters, the rustic fire-starters, who've influenced everyone from Air to Radiohead. Boards of Canada invite Richard Southern to their secret den and share with him their bluffer's guide to making the perfect bonfire and why they have little time for Leo Di Caprio.

remembers Boards of Canada's Marcus Eoin. Marcus protests, adding,

This isn't the only fire that Boards of Canada have unwittingly started. Just over two years ago, their debut album Music Has the Right to Children, a muted, un-ostentatious collection of haunting, home-made melodies initially just seemed like one of electric haven Warp's more consistent releases. Then, slowly, word of mouth began to crackle like sparking kindling. Here was a record not only spotters and electronic obsessives could love - a hazily nostalgic record which snuck its way into your head and set up a commune. The album's muttering voices seemed to speak in tongues; rumours of occult dabblings only added to the Boards of Canada enigma. Sales, while impressive for a leftfield release, were a meagre glow compared to the blaze Music Has the Right. caused amongst Boards of Canada's musical peers.

Suddenly, those slo-mo, slightly melancholy synth-loops were everywhere. On Super Furry Animals' Guerilla (see:: "Some Things Come from Nothing"), on Danmass' "Happy Here" on the Sunday Best compilation, on Air's Virgin Suicides; even on the ever trend-tailing Texas' new material. As if that wasn't enough, Boards' influence can also clearly be heard on new albums by both the barometer of all things buzzworthy, Madonna, and Radiohead, whose much puzzled-over Kid A sounds rather closer to Music Has the Right. than it does to the stadium-conquering OK Computer.

confesses Michael Sandison in the rather sterile confines of Warp's new London offices. continues Michael in his precise, (Miss Jean) Brodie-esque brogue. Michael demurs. adds Marcus in his thicker Scots slur. answers Marcus, mystifyingly.

Secretiveness is congenital to Boards of Canada. These, after all, are people who refuse to reveal the location of the commune they inhabit in the Pentland hills near Edinburgh, who won't give out their phone number or even, for the most part, give interviews. They've chosen Jockey Slut in favour of the covers of a number of major national publications, and, in person, these childhood friends radiate a warmth and amiability that's anything but enigmatic. They finish each other's sentences, listen intently to questions and in contrast to most ego-blinkered musicians even ask questions themselves.

says Marcus, still running with his theme. He pauses. Mike explains, laughing. Marcus adds. says Mike. Slightly embarrassed grins. says Marcus, thoughtfully,
Equally, you don't need a City & Guilds engineering diploma to deduce that the densely atmospheric, otherworldly aspects of the Boards' music is painstakingly achieved. says Mike. says Marcus.
Mike laughs.
Marcus chuckles.
says Michael.
shrugs Marcus. Sequestered away in the Scottish hills, "getting it together in the country", is a way of life for Boards of Canada. Even taking into account childhood sojourns in Canada, they've never known anything different. Hardly listening to contemporary music, keeping away from the back-slapping musical backstage, rarely reading magazines, living in what was once a commune (Mike: "People had kids, or went off travelling. It's down to a hardcore of four or five now") but is now effectively a hill-bound artists' colony - theirs is a deliberately rarefied world. says Mike. continues Marcus. He laughs.
says Mike.

At times, the pair's penchant for privacy can border on the paranoid. They're so concerned about hackers that they've both got completely separate computers for using the net.

says Mike. adds Marcus.

Aware that their bunker mentality may be getting out of hand, the pair have made a conscious effort to get out more recently.

says Michael. Before 'Music...' took off, theirs was a more leisurely isolation, their music simply soundtracks for the Red Moon events they and their friends would organise in the hills near the commune:

These days, they still drive out into the country with their friends, set up camp and make bonfires. Bonfires, you will notice, figure large in the Boards of Canada world. You can almost hear the crackling twigs on many of their cuts.

says Marcus, says Mike,
continues Marcus. grins Mike.

The explanation is that both adverts were done with filmmaker du jour Chris Cunningham, "because he asked us and we respect him". They're not saying, but rather than heralding that Shell advert, could it be that the Boards have their eye on Cunningham's future feature work? It isn't, after all, a big step from imaginary soundtracks to actual films, and it'd be hard to contemplate a more perfect union.

Marcus grins: And no, they didn't get to meet Leo.

The future of music may be uncertain, but Boards of Canada seem very definite about their own future musical direction.

says Mike.
Marcus continues:

THINGS BOARDS OF CANADA LIKE

• The wobble you get on an off-centre record ("We even decide if it's wobbling at 33 or 45 rpm!).
• The little bursts of music you get behind a logo.
• Things that are a little bit out of tune:: "Space Oddity" by David Bowie, "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys, "Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong, and "Tomorrow Never Knows" by the Beatles (Marcus:: "In modern music everything is perfect, rationalised, bland.").
• "The sounds between notes."
• Progressive rock (Mike:: "For at least trying to get somewhere no one's been").
• Kung-fu.
• "Listening in increments."
• Devo, Twins Cocteau and Aphex, Nitzer Ebb, acid folkies, the Incredible String Band, the Wu-Tang Clan. "RZA," it seems, "listens like we do."
• A record Marcus found in America which features a Christian robot that sang songs if you pressed a button in his stomach ("The scary part is that it was very Old Testament, slitting the throats of first born and stuff").
• "Geno" by Dexy's Midnight Runners.
• "The sound when you're at a fairground and you're caught between two different sound systems and they combine to create something new and outlandish."

THINGS BOARDS OF CANADA DON'T LIKE

• Electronic gadgets that don't work (Marcus:: "It makes me sad to see things that have just been thrown away. I'll pick it up and take it back home and try and make it work. I've still got a brown valve television set from the '70s and it works better than my friends' wide screen TVs").
• Meat (in Marcus' case).
• Napster (Marcus:: "It's not the big rich artists who'll suffer, it's the smaller artists. Why should people buy their records when they can download them for free? The issue of choice is illusory. If lots of musicians go out of business, then there's only going to be a smaller number of extremely commercial crap artists to choose from."

BOARDS OF CANADA'S TIPS ON BONFIRES

• Marcus:: "For kindling the best way to ensure it catches is to get loads of pieces more or less the same length and lay them in a grid, then overlay them in a lattice."
• Mike:: "You don't need matches or a lighter. If it's wet or windy they often won't work. But two twigs will. The trick is to tie string to either end of one twig, then you can rub them together faster than your hands ever could."

DISCOGRAPHY

• Acid Memories (Music 70, 1989)
  

Absurdly rare, cassette-only release from the barely teen Boards, then six-strong. Guitars meet electronics in embryonic but recognisably Boards-ian melodicism.

• Play by Numbers (Music 70, 1994)
  

Five-track CD from what was now a trio, boasting a My Bloody Valentine influence in places, shifting further into electronics in others.

• Hooper Bay (Music 70, 1994)
  

Closer still:: the use of kids' voices was a hint of what was to come. People pay small fortunes for copies.

• Twoism (Music 70, 1995)
  

The last record as a trio when everything slipped into focus and pricked up record company ears.

• BOC Maxima (Music 70, 1996)
  

Twenty tracks:: half of which would appear on later EPs and albums; the others remain an impossibly elusive prospect (50 copies only).

• Hi Scores EP (Skam, 1996)
  

Essential for the Eno-esque "Everything You Do is a Balloon" and the spooky electro of "Nlogax".

• Korona (from Mask 100 compilation) (Skam, 1996)
  

Darkness visible:: slurring synths and an uneasy, off-kilter rhythm.

• Untitled (from Mask 200 as Hell Interface) (Skam, 1997)
  

Even darker, harder, faster side of the Boards. "Who are Hell Interface?" they ask.

• Michael Fakesch "Surfaise" (Boards of Canada remix) (Warp, 1997)
  

Spacious, dissonant, slightly disembodied ambience.

• Mira Calix "Sandsings" (Boards of Canada remix) (Warp, 1997)
  

Boards render Warp's press officer's warblings intelligble.

• Jack Dangers "Prime Audio Soup" (Boards of Canada remix) (Play it Again Sam, 1998)

Respectful to the Meat Beat man, this is a curious, slightly gothy hybrid.

• "Aquarius" (seven-inch single) (Skam, 1998)
  

A different version to the one on Music. Sesame Street meets Kraftwerk meets the between-scenes bits from Seinfeld.

• Music Has the Right to Children (Skam/Warp, 1998)
  

Music has The Right to Children claimed not just children but grown adults of shock both sexes.

• Bubbah's Tum "Dirty Great Mable" (III, 1998)
  

Unusually beat-heavy, balanced by their trademark use of kids' voices and big, spooky chords. Their final mix.

• "Orange Romeda" (from We Are Reasonable People compilation) (Warp, 1999)
  

Very much in the Music. vein. Children's voices, bird's wing percussion and yearning, half-heard synth melodies.

• Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit, 1999)
  

Reworks of "Aquarius" and "Olson", plus newie "Happy Cycling".

• In a Beatiful Place Out in the Country EP (Warp, 2000)
  

OK, so it's an EP not an album, and it's not exactly a revolutionary departure, but when familiar ground is this gorgeous, who's complaining?

interview by Richard Southern, December 2000.

---

title	Big Country
author	Steve Nicholls
publication	XLR8R
date	2001/03
issue	47
pages	30-33

"Big Country" is an interview by Steve Nicholls originally published Mar. 2001 in XLR8R magazine Issue 47, pp.30-33.

Music fans around the globe wait patiently for the second full-length release from mysterious Scottish duo Boards of Canada, who turned music on its head with their debut recording's gentle, psychedelic ambience. Fan to the core, England's Steve Nicholls fulfills a dream, travelling north to the group's Scottish hideaway to investigate the source of their sorcery.

I'll never forget the first time, over two years ago, I heard Boards Of Canada's debut album Music Has The Right To Children. Prior to its arrival I was expecting something kind of special, because of the quality of their previous single "Aquarius" and the "Hi Scores" EP, released on the UK guerrilla-tactics electronic label Skam. I clearly remember receiving the album, by then released jointly with Warp Records, and time stopped. I sat and listened to the whole album, overpowered by the myriad kaleidoscopic layers, messages, hallucinations and images it relayed. It was like the tantalisingly elusive parts of a beautiful dream that you struggle to grasp after waking.

Two years later and I finally get to interview Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison, Boards Of Canada. I say finally because I firmly believe that, in Music Has The Right To Children, they made one of the great records of the last decade, and with the advent of a new album in the next few months, there is a distinct possibility that they might repeat the feat. And it's not just me-Eoin and Sandison also freely admit that they are trying to make the perfect record.

says Sandison. adds Eoin.

In some ways, for Boards Of Canada to have disappeared after releasing one album would have suited the image of mysteriousness that has sprung up around them. Partly due to the cut up and addled vocal samples that littered Music Has The Right To Children and instantly initiated talk of subliminal messages, and partly due to the unavoidable feeling that there was something very strange going in their music just beneath the surface, people were fascinated by what they were all about. But the fact that they live in Scotland has far more to do with their lack of involvement in the still remarkably London-centric UK music scene than any kind of Howard Hughes-type elusiveness.

On their new EP, "In A Beautiful Place In The Country," it is gratifying to hear that they have continued to strive for the perfect beat, because Boards Of Canada were an anomaly in the '90s electronica scene into which people tried to fit them, and it's still impossible to fit them into any kind of timeline of electronic music. They admit to liking late '80s and early '90s industrial electronic bands like Front 242, Consolidated and Meat Beat Manifesto, and then the Cocteau Twins and Siouxsie and the Banshees, but that's about as far as they go. As Eoin rightly says,

Eoin's analogy with nature is one that constantly reappears when discussing Boards Of Canada's music. Much has been made of the strangely rural and organic sounds and images they create. In the countryside area surrounding Edinburgh, it is not uncommon to see a double rainbow appearing over the barrenly beautiful countryside, the image a visual analog to much of their music.

Eoin and Sandison fully admit that if they lived in a city it would be detrimental to their work, and you can see how a more structured environment would hem the natural ebb and flow of ideas and sounds that emerged from Music Has The Right To Children. On that album, sounds or loops or melodies would only be heard once in a track, and other tracks frequently only lasted for thirty tantalizing seconds, a simple melodic refrain, a ghostly beat, or a plaintive note, disappearing as quickly as it appeared, taking on the presence of a fleeting memory-a cloud that momentarily takes a recognizable shape, or a captured snowflake that melts on your hand.

says Sandison. recalls Eoin, Sandison says,

It all adds fuel to the fire that there is something mysterious about their music. As sweet, and frankly, listenable as their melodic head music may be on the surface, you can't escape the feeling that still waters run deep, and that there are strong currents running beneath the surface. Indeed, although it's always asking for trouble by drawing the parallel, Boards Of Canada's work has far more in common with something like The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper than anything from the more recent past, as its unerring tunefulness and song craft masquerades and alludes to something far deeper.

Those allusions are there all the way through Music Has The Right To Children, particularly come the last track, "One Important Thought," which warns of the dangers of censorship, and leaves you wondering what you might have just listened to that could ever be censored, so sublime, relaxing and apparently innocent was the music. So you have to listen to it again with new ears. Although Eoin and Sandison are still struggling with the idea that a lot of people are going to hear this new record, unlike many an experimental producer, they want their music to be listenable, to be a pleasurable experience, but one in which, if you choose to delve deeper, the rewards are there to be had.

says Eoin. Sandison joins in.

As well as crediting the listener with intelligence, which, as Eoin later points out, so few electronic "dance" producers do, Boards Of Canada also credit us with an imagination. They leave space in their music for us to project our own ideas, images, and thoughts. Their messages are in there, but they are encrypted allusions hinting at what might lie within. It might explain why they are becoming so popular, because in a way each Boards' track becomes very personal to the individual listener, alluding to different things in different people's lives. I ask them about the often-mentioned nostalgia element in their music-people have constantly remarked how their music vaguely reminds them of something else, and how that differs from being retro.

says Eoin. says Sandison,

And happily, after finally meeting them, Boards Of Canada's music remains as much of an enigma as it always has, because some myths and mysteries you don't really want to be explained away. Later on, Sandison goes on to talk about their music as a spiral or a fractal that gets more detailed the further you go in, and how they have experimented musically by using Fibonacci's Golden Ratio, a fraction close to two thirds that strangely occurs again and again in nature, and has allegedly been used in works of art by Da Vinci, Mozart and many others over the centuries, to space moments in tracks, write melodies and tune frequencies. And all of a sudden a friend's blithe request prior to the interview, to "find out what their magic ingredient is" begins to ring almost eerily true.

Whatever that ingredient may be, at the start of the 21st century, where, culturally and in terms of music, we are being increasingly discouraged from thinking for ourselves, where our attention is directed more than ever, where the gaps for our own imagination grow ever smaller, Boards Of Canada are an anomaly of timeless artistry that should be cherished. As Sandison says:

Geogaddi era

The Colour of The Fire

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title	The Secret Life of Boards of Canada
author	John Mulvey
publication	NME
date	2002/02/23
issue	23 February 2002
pages	24,53

"The Secret Life of Boards of Canada" is an interview by John Mulvey originally published Feb. 23 2002 in NME magazine.

The Secret Life of Boards of Canada

From the Pentland Hills, just south of Edinburgh, it's possible to examine the world at a different angle. Nature becomes reduced to a pattern of hexagons. Melodies sound better in reverse. Bonfires make for better nights out than clubs. And the colour of the universe is, unequivocally, turquoise. This is where Boards Of Canada, Britain's most exceptional and reclusive electronica group, see things from. Or, at least, how they may see things. In comparison, the Aphex Twin is an open book, as straightforward in art and life as Fran Healy. A trawl of the internet for facts about the Boards duo of Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin turns up a proliferation of witchy rumours but precious few hard facts. They record in a disused nuclear bunker, it's suggested. They belong to some defiantly obscure art-collective-cum-cult named Turquoise Hexagon Sun. They fill their music with backwards messages, alternately sinister and playful, that range from invocations to a "horned god" (one old side project was named Hell Interface) to samples of ELO's Jeff Lynne. In the Boards of Canada section of the Warp Records website, alongside cover images and a few scant details about release dates, is a link to a Guardian news story which offers conclusive proof the average colour of the universe is "A greenish hue halfway between aquamarine and turquoise" when all visible light is mixed together.

All very intriguing, of course. But when BOC have made one of the most anxiously anticipated albums in years, hardly satisfying. To date, Sandison and Eoin have made a tremendous amount of music, most of which has neither ever been released or else is long unavailable; their 1996 debut EP for the Skam label, "Twoism", is currently available for a tidy £710 on eBay. For most people, their reputation rests on 'Music Has The Right To Children', the 1998 album that mixed spectral, quasi-ambient melodies and dulled hip-hop beats with the constant chatter of infants, hovering tantalisingly beyond comprehension. Deceptively simplistic, there was something about the way the melodies twisted backwards and forwards around each other, about the tangibly creepy atmosphere that pervaded it, that made for an extraordinary debut. By the time 'In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country' an uncommonly beautiful EP, was released at the end of 2000, the band enjoyed a near-holy status among electronica fans - not to mention artists, plenty of whom had diligently adapted BOC's spooked, rustic kindergarten vibes for themselves. And when the long-promised second album, 'Geogaddi', unexpectedly appeared on release schedules a month ago, the grassroots hype became phenomenal.

Knowing that part of the band's allure is their inaccessibility, Warp embarked on a campaign to make hearing 'Geogaddi' as difficult as possible. Virtually no new music made it onto the internet: download apparently new tracks from Audiogalaxy and you're as likely to discover an ambient fake, four minutes of looped speech samples or an old Brian Eno tune. The track titles, meanwhile, could only be located on HMV's Japanese site. Eventually, 'Geogaddi' was premiered in six churches around the world - in London, New York, Edinburgh, Tokyo, Berlin and Paris. Slides of children playing, of sunsets where the sky is bent into a hexagon, were projected above the altars. Small turquoise hexagons took the place of hymn books.

And then there was the album: 66 minutes and six seconds of music that is both soothing and disorienting, lushly beautiful yet creaky and unnerving. One track, 'Opening The Mouth', sounds like a heavy-breathing call from a banshee. Another, the truly horrible 'The Devil Is In The Details', alternates between the instructions on a relaxation tape and a desperately crying child. There are ghostly organs and distant tablas, warnings of volcanic explosions, an ecstatic vocal about "1969 in the sunshine" and an overall feeling that this heady, saturated music is how My Bloody Valentine might've sounded had they released anything after 1991's 'Loveless'. Honestly, it's that good.

accepts Sandison.

Early February 2002, and Boards Of Canada have consented to a rare interview with NME, on the understanding it runs after the album's release. To preserve their privacy, it's to be conducted by email, but the resulting answers still shed a little light on the world of Sandison and Eoin, without ever completely dismantling their mystique.

To begin, their name derives from the National Film Board Of Canada, whose nature documentaries enraptured the Scottish-born pair when they spent some time living in Calgary as children. writes Sandison. They started making tapes around 1982 or '83, when they were still children. At their Hexagon Sun studio, there's an archive of 20 years of music. admits Eoin, Though the paucity of their released might suggest otherwise, Sandison and Eoin are anything but lazy. writes Eoin, Expectations and pressures from the outside world hardly make an impact, either. reckons Sandison.

One thing Boards Of Canada are emphatic about, for all the talk of bonfires and rural retreats, is that they're not hippies. We ask if they're a psychedelic band, and Marcus replies: "If you mean psychedelic in a scientific way, then, yeah, that's probably fair. But if you mean it in a lifestyle way, you know, hippy-large floppy hat, patchouli oil and colourful trousers way, then nothing could be further from who we are." Further from what, though? Tempt BOC into the open for a few moments and still, you can only make out the faintest of outlines. And ask them, finally, how important mystery and a lack of information is to their music, and they'll prove it by sidestepping the question. "We just try to keep ourselves to ourselves," concludes Marcus Eoin. "The music is what is important." Of course.

interview by by John Mulvery, February 2002.

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title	El Cielo Herido
author	David Broc
publication	Mondo Sonoro
date	2002/03
issue	83
pages	28-29

"El Cielo Herido" is an interview (in Spanish) by David Broc originally published Mar. 2002 in Mondo Sonoro magazine Issue 83, pp.28-29.

El Cielo Herido

Culpables, en parte, de la reconversión musical de Radiohead, Boards of Canada siguen atacando el vacío desde la modernidad, dos conceptos que a día de hoy acostumbran A ir de la mano, pero que en la propuesta del dúo británico halla su definitiva contraposición. “Geogaddi” (Warp/Satélite K, 02), su nuevo disco, araña lágrimas a la contemporaneidad.

Quien abajo firma es consciente que la inmensa mayoría de lectores de Mondo Sonoro habrán fruncido el ceño al ver a Boards Of Canada en la portada de este número de marzo. Unos, por simple desconocimiento de su música. Otros, por conocerla demasiado bien. Y algunos más, estupefactos, por sentir que la revista ha vuelto a traicionar su espíritu rockero con un hijo directo de esa modernidad que tan poco entienden y, en consecuencia, estiman. Pero lo cierto es que en su ya dilatada carrera, Mondo Sonoro nunca ha ejercido de plataforma exclusiva del rock o cualquier otro estilo musical, más bien al contrario. Y lo mismo se le podría decir a ese otro público que, atónito, contempla como la revista que les produce urticaria (ya sabemos que nunca se es suficientemente cool) respalda a uno de sus referentes favoritos. Digamos que la presencia de Boards Of Canada en la portada de marzo responde al mismo criterio que ha empujado a la publicación a situar en sus páginas centrales a Sigur Rós, Mogwai, Nine Inch Nails o Doble V: la búsqueda de emoción infatigable, talento por domesticar y perspectiva de futuro en todos los terrenos franqueables del panorama musical. Y punto.

Boards Of Canada conservan la extraña virtud de conmover a sus seguidores con una ecuación expresiva con pocas probabilidades de traspasar la epidermis. Electrónica invernal, ritmos hip hop, melodías nostálgicas, atmósferas perturbadoras y tradición Warp componen su herencia. A partir de ahí, el dúo inglés se inventa el sonido del desasosiego: esa música herida que las grandes urbes de nuestro día a día evitan sentir como propia. Banda sonora del desconcierto, la distancia y el aliento gris que invaden nuestras ciudades, nuestras vidas, la música de Boards Of Canada contiene la verdad que muchos se niegan a ver o escuchar, y en su función de espejo involuntario recae la tristeza, emoción y ensoñación de las obras que, ahora y mañana, están destinadas a sobrevivirnos. En su aparente abstracción sonora reside otro milagro de la sensibilidad post-moderna. No es contraproducente, pues, comprobar como Radiohead y otros referentes sumidos en crisis creativas han optimizado su reorientación estilística a través de “Music Has The Right To Children”, debut en formato largo (antes llegó un Ep homónimo publicado por Skam) de esta inquietante formación. Su impacto ha respondido a las coordenadas que todos le exigimos al arte: inquietud, aventura, esencia y emoción. “Geogaddi”, segundo disco del dúo británico (dos Ep´s y una peel session se añaden al cómputo global de su legado; todos ellos, salvo “Boards Of Canada”, publicados por Warp), supone, en ese sentido, una de las obras mayúsculas de 2002. No sólo porque en su propuesta cohabiten los aspectos anteriormente citados, sino también porque se trata de un ejercicio sublime que se eleva por encima de su contexto y aspira a la perdurabilidad total. Marcus Eoin y Michael Sandison han invertido cuatro años en la confección de este esperado y ansiado álbum. Un silencio alterado únicamente por “In A Beatiful Place Out In The Country”, un Ep sólido e importante que hizo las veces de aperitivo antes de la definitiva salida al mercado de su deseado regreso discográfico. Y ahora, enmarcados en la vorágine promocional de todo producto, los dos creadores mantienen su fidelidad al hermetismo casi autista. Su renuncia a la concesión de entrevistas telefónicas, nos obliga, así, a la comunicación vía e-mail. Ningún problema: ellos parece más cómodos con el teclado que con el teléfono.

Dividido en dos frentes (por un lado, canciones con introducción, nudo y desenlace, a la vieja usanza; por el otro, breves insertos ambientales que no sólo refuerzan el conjunto, sino que, en ocasiones, funcionan con autonomía propia), este disco no aporta cambios a primera vista dentro del discurso de Boards. Pero es que aquí no se persigue la metamorfosis que, cual impuesto revolucionario, exige la coyuntura y el devenir de la actualidad (¿qué querían: nu school breakz?). Precisamente, el máximo punto de apoyo de este trabajo cabe hallarlo en su funcionamiento interno. Su búsqueda no intenta trascender las leyes del momento, sino las leyes de su propio sonido. Es decir: “Geogaddi” es un valioso paso adelante en la edificación del discurso de Boards Of Canada. Lo mejora, solidifica, envalentona y complementa. Y a partir de ahí, éste se beneficia sobremanera de esa exploración cercana y modesta. Los principales afectados, los ritmos. Cabe detenerse en este elemento, porque un análisis voraz del mismo nos invita al regocijo mayúsculo: los beats de este disco contemplan uno de los trabajos más abrumadores de los últimos meses.

Todo ello, secundado por un cambio de registro en el método de trabajo. Es en la rara percepción que se tiene al escuchar su discurso que uno se tropieza con elementos y miradas añejas. En su proceso de autoconstrucción, la banda enfrenta el toque artesanal y la pulsación orgánica a los patrones esquivos del ordenador y las máquinas. Con esa premisa, ambos absorben sonidos e ideas para llevar a cabo la integración de sus melodías en el armazón rítmico. Más orgánicas, insistimos, y retorcidas que en “Music Has The Right To Children” y su Ep “In a Beautiful Place Out In The Country”, éstas deparan un catálogo emotivo confuso, extrañísimo, casi lisérgico. ¿Trabajo de redescubrimiento y puzzle sensitivo? Para qué preocuparse cuando lo que tenemos aquí, ahora mismo, en el aparato reproductor de cedés, es un salvaje alegato a favor de la emoción pura y desintoxicada. Otro antídoto desesperado contra la sobreestimación de la electrónica como fuente inagotable de lucidez lectiva y progreso creativo sin apego al dictado de la epidermis. Dios sabe que en Boards Of Canada lo único que cuenta es la capacidad de conmoción que su música ejerce en el oyente.

Un punto vital, en todo caso, sobre el que adopta forma una propuesta descorazonadora. Eoin y Sandison se perfilan, disco a disco, como dos nostálgicos crónicos, como dos creadores marchitos por una tristeza incansable que se traduce, sin duda alguna, en cada uno de sus pentagramas. Sin quererlo, quizás, ambos fotografían la calidez del derrumbe, la hambruna de la melancolía. Y eso es, muy probablemente, uno de los aspectos que les distinguen de muchos otros referentes electrónicos que todavía no han optado por sacrificar los imperativos de la psique. Ellos fabrican música infinitamente más humana y cercana que muchas bandas de rock, emocore, pop, folk o techno.

Autor: David Broc

Fotografia: Archivo

Note: Translated by ChatGPT-4o

The Wounded Sky

Partly responsible for Radiohead's musical conversion, Boards of Canada continue to confront the void from modernity, two concepts that today often go hand in hand, but in the British duo's proposal find their definitive opposition. Geogaddi (Warp/Satélite K, 02), their new album, brings tears to contemporaneity.

The undersigned is aware that the vast majority of Mondo Sonoro readers will have frowned upon seeing Boards Of Canada on the cover of this March issue. Some, due to simple ignorance of their music. Others, because they know it all too well. And a few more, astonished, feeling that the magazine has once again betrayed its rock spirit with a direct child of this modernity that they so little understand and, consequently, esteem. But the truth is that in its long career, Mondo Sonoro has never served as an exclusive platform for rock or any other musical style, quite the contrary. And the same could be said to that other audience that, astonished, watches as the magazine that gives them hives (we know one is never cool enough) supports one of their favorite references. Let's say that the presence of Boards Of Canada on the March cover responds to the same criteria that has led the publication to feature Sigur Ró, Mogwai, Nine Inch Nails, or Doble V in its central pages: the tireless search for emotion, talent to be tamed, and a perspective of the future in all the crossable terrains of the musical panorama. And that's it.

Boards Of Canada retain the strange virtue of moving their followers with an expressive equation with little chance of penetrating the epidermis. Winter electronics, hip-hop rhythms, nostalgic melodies, disturbing atmospheres, and Warp tradition compose their heritage. From there, the English duo invents the sound of unease: that wounded music that the great cities of our daily lives avoid feeling as their own. Soundtrack of confusion, distance, and the gray breath that invades our cities, our lives, the music of Boards Of Canada contains the truth that many refuse to see or hear, and in its role as an involuntary mirror lies the sadness, emotion, and reverie of works that, now and tomorrow, are destined to outlive us. In their apparent sonic abstraction resides another miracle of post-modern sensitivity. It is not counterproductive, then, to see how Radiohead and other references immersed in creative crises have optimized their stylistic reorientation through Music Has The Right To Children, the long-format debut (preceded by a self-titled EP released by Skam) of this disturbing formation. Its impact has responded to the coordinates that we all demand of art: restlessness, adventure, essence, and emotion. Geogaddi, the second album by the British duo (two EPs and a Peel session add to the global count of their legacy; all of them, except for Boards Of Canada, published by Warp), represents, in that sense, one of the major works of 2002. Not only because its proposal encompasses the aforementioned aspects but also because it is a sublime exercise that rises above its context and aspires to total endurance. Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison have invested four years in the creation of this eagerly awaited and desired album. A silence altered only by In a Beautiful Place out in the Country, a solid and important EP that served as an appetizer before the definitive release of their long-awaited return to the market. And now, framed in the promotional whirlwind of any product, the two creators maintain their fidelity to almost autistic hermeticism. Their refusal to grant phone interviews forces us, then, to communicate via email. No problem: they seem more comfortable with the keyboard than with the phone.

Author: David Broc

Photography: Archive

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title	Play Twice Before Listening
author	Koen Poolman
publication	OOR
date	2002/03
issue
pages

"Play Twice Before Listening" is an interview by Koen Poolman originally published online Mar. 2002 on the OOR website ^[4]. The abbreviated version (in Dutch) published in the OOR magazine can be found here.

interview by by Koen Poolman, March 2002.

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title	Stoned Immaculate
author	Philip Sherburne
publication	Alternative Press
date	2002/05
issue	Vol. 166
pages

"Stoned Immaculate" by Philip Sherburne was an interview published in Alternative Press magazine Vol. 166 (May 2002).

Four years after their classic debut album, these scottish IDM stars return with a new downtempo masterpiece, Geogaddi

--Philip Sherburne

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title	Country Comfort
author	Alexis Georgopoulos
publication	URB
date	2002/06
issue	Vol.12 No. 94
pages	86-87

"Country Comfort" was an interview by Alexis Georgopoulos originally published June 2002 in URB magazine Volume 12 Number 94.

Country Comfort

Rural shut-ins Boards of Canada fit nightmares, rainbows and David Koresh into the melodic mathematics of their beautiful new album.

If Boards of Canada's songs could, they would come to life. Children would appear dressed in striped T-shirts and corduroys, shaggy hair framing their fresh faces, grass stains on their knees. The sun would beam down rippling rays of golden white and kaleidoscopic pastels. And honey laughter would careen off the sky's canopy, quivering with he rush of playground love and infinite possibility. Alas, lest you think this a spotless utopia, someone would be hidden in the bushes watching. And not with the best of intentions.

Back after four years holed up in a remote bunker in rural Scotland, Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison are following up 2000's In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country EP with the psychedelic diorama that is Geogaddi. Like nearly all the releases that have preceded it, Geogaddi is less a collection of songs than a world unto itself, unfurling in sheaths of warbling analog synth melodies and tripped-out Sugar Hill-meets-Autechre beats. It's the aural equivalent of sitting on your analyst's couch, rummaging through a past you're still trying to make sense of.

Loathing publicity and its trappings, the reclusive duo decided on doing minimal promotion for Geogaddi. What follows is one of the very few interviews to follow the album's release.

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title	Northern Exposure
author	Ken Micallef
publication	Remix
date	2002/07
issue	Vol. 4 No. 7
pages	22-30

"Northern Exposure" is an interview by Ken Micallef originally published July 2002 in Remix magazine Vol. 04 No. 07.

Exploring Uncharted Analog Frontiers With Boards of Canada

By Ken Micallef * Photos By Peter Iain Campbell

Although Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison - the duo known as Boards of Canada - allegedly live in a commune on the northern coast of Scotland, near Edinburgh (not the Great White North as their name suggests), their music is neither pastoral nor hippie-dippy-like. Instead, their odd combination of ambient electro and downtempo experimentalism is about as warm and fuzzy as a horror-porno B-movie soundtrack.

Boards of Canada's debut album, the oddly titled Music Has the Right to Children (Matador, 1998), was a mini-revolution in ambient electronic music, a travelogue of spiraling space loops and woozy melodies that introduced the post-Nevermind generation to the Brian Eno-esque joys of chilling out. BoC's sophomore effort, Geogaddi (Warp, 2002), is even more stripped-down and beautiful than its predecessor, featuring simple circular rhythms, eerie melodies and unusual samples that create an airless, ethereal ultraworld. An overwhelming feeling of darkened, almost dangerous sentimentality permeates Geogaddi's surreal atmosphere, like a child recalling a nightmare to another small friend. Perhaps this is music for the inner child who everyone has left behind.

Many of Geogaddi's songs use spoken-word samples to embellish their bizarre moods, such as the sexually heated female voice that repeatedly counts from one to 10 in "Gyroscope." Naked Gun actor Leslie Nielsen speaks of "when lava flows underwater" in "Dandelion," and from there, the album grows more involved and detailed, with all manner of deranged children and computer voices mumbling over hopscotch hip-hop and cranky trip-hop.

says Eoin about Geogaddi.
adds Sandison. Although Sandison notes that they generally tried to accomplish this sound without simply sampling old TV recordings, a few notable exceptions made their way to the final recording. Trainspotters will enjoy ferreting out various actors' voices or bits of '70s television-show and commercial dialog, which, according to BoC, could originate anywhere from ill-fated actor Robert Blake's Baretta to The Rockford Files to the horror-movie schlockfest, Final Victim.

Eoin and Sandison learned to play various musical instruments when they were children. Sandison formed a band and began making experimental tracks with old synths, drums and tape decks in 1980, when he was only nine years old. Influenced by television documentaries and soundtracks, particularly those by the National Film Board of Canada, Sandison named his band Boards of Canada. When Eoin became the band's bassist in 1986, Boards of Canada were mixing real instruments with computer effects and found sounds from radio and television broadcasts. Sandison dabbled with Super 8 home-movie visuals for the band early on, and by the late '80s, BoC were making full-length films accompanied by their own soundtracks.

BoC's first official release was Twoism (1995) on their own Music 70 label, followed by the 1996 Hi Scores EP on the Skam label. Gigs at the UK's Phoenix Festival and opening for Autechre brought the group to the attention of Warp Records, which signed Boards of Canada in 1998. BoC's first Warp release, Music Has the Right to Children, was met with overwhelming critical and popular acclaim, scooping up several Top 20 spots in 1998 year-end polls in UK music publications such as DJ Magazine, Jockey Slut, Muzik, NME and The Wire.

Since releasing Music Has the Right to Children, Boards of Canada have remained conspicuously out of action. They performed only a small handful of live performances, including a John Peel Session for the BBC's Radio 1, and released the 4-track EP In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country in 2000. Eoin and Sandison spent most of the past four years recording Geogaddi, which, incidentally, is exactly 66 minutes and six seconds long. Like its predecessor, Geogaddi is garnering rave reviews from critics, showing skeptics that BoC's early success was not a fluke.
The incredibly elusive duo stepped away briefly from the soothing hum of the analog machines in their studio to give some insight into the thought process behind Boards of Canada's strange, beautiful music.

Interview by Ken Micallef, July 2002.

The Campfire Headphase era

title	The Downtempo Duo
author	Heiko Hoffmann
publication	Pitchfork
date	2005/09/26
issue
pages

"The Downtempo Duo" is an interview by Heiko Hoffmann originally published online Sept. 2005 on Pitchfork.com. ^[5]

The Downtempo Duo

With their Warp albums Music Has the Right to Children and Geogaddi, Boards of Canada have become one of the most well-loved and critically revered contemporary artists without releasing singles, videos, or even going on tour. At the same time their sound of electronic psychedelia has been copied so often as to make the duo wonder what to do next. In this interview, which took place at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland, Mike and Marcus Sandison speak for the first time about their backgrounds, obsessive reactions to Geogaddi, and their upcoming new album The Campfire Headphase.

Recorder is switched off. Mike asks Marcus if it's ok to talk about it. Marcus says yes. Mike checks if the recorder is off and explains that they are in fact brothers, but have concealed that as they didn't want to provoke comparisons to Orbital, the electronic duo of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll, when they started to release records in the mid-90s. Recorder is switched on again.

interview by Heiko Hoffmann, September 2005.

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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^[6] in Trax magazine Number 88 pp.32-37.

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?"

This article needs to be translated. If you can provide a translation, please update this article!

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title	Splendid Isolation
author	Neil Davenport
publication	Metro
date	2005/10/12
issue	12 Oct 2005
pages	p.23

"Splendid Isolation" was an interview by Neil Davenport originally published in the October 12 2005 edition of Metro freesheet newspaper p.23

Tune in to the other-worldly sound of Boards Of Canada

Musicians often boast they're removed from the hub and froth of media-piloted trends. Yet few do so with as much conviction as Scots duo Boards Of Canada. Located in the rural Scottish Highlands, brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin (they are both called Sandison but Marcus uses his middle name) firmly believe that separation from civilization is mandatory.

explains Marcus,

The ends fully justify the means. Since breaking through in 1998 with their landmark full-length debut, Music Has The Right To Children, Boards Of Canada have taken analogue electronica on a solar expedition. Sparse yet eerily expansive keyboard signatures sound cut loose from the Earth's gravity, yet the effect is altogether more human and emotional than that description might suggest. After 2002's dense and symmetrical samples on Geogaddi, new album The Campfire Headphase is a deliberate return to the weird evocations of grainy Super-8s and Sesame Street heard on Music Has The Right To Children. Even the sleeve looks similar.

says Mike,

Yet The Campfire Headphase isn't the sound of the duo standing thematically or musically still. continues Mike.

The American references are appropriate. As children, the brothers obsessed over American TV programmes such as The Six Million Dollar Man and dystopian sci-fi films The Andromeda Strain, Logan's Run and Silent Running. Such wonky soundtracks helped map out the Boards' wobbly, fluttering sound.

Despite precocious geekiness, their formative years still included a conventional stint as a 'proper' guitar band. And if Mike and Marcus are going 'full circle', it's fitting that they've dusted down their guitars for this album. says Mike. Yet the guitars are only incidental - it's still the Boards' unmistakable brand of analogue psychedelia and it still sounds stretched and warped, magical and other-worldly. How do they do it? says Mike. '

In 2005, no one comes close to replicating or bettering the Boards' imperfect purity. Electronica as a genre may have ceased to be exciting or beguiling years ago, but can The Campfire Headphase kick-start a fresh reappraisal? Don't expect to get any answers from Mike and Marcus. says Mike firmly,

Somehow, you kind of believe him.

Brothers' gonna work it out...

Neil Davenport

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title	Cross Out the Inappropriate
author	Kristoff Tilkin
publication	Humo
date	2005-10-18
issue	3398
pages	190-191

"Cross Out the Inappropriate" (original text in Dutch) by Kristoff Tilkin

• Humo 3398, 18 Oct 2005, pp. 190-191
• ISSN: 0771-8179

This article needs to be transcribed. If you can provide a transcription, please update this article!

BOARDS OF CANADA - cross out the inappropriate

'Today’s youth has no respect anymore for A) Music, B) Acne, and C) Yesterday’s youth'

With their new album Campfire, Boards of Canada – the Scottish electronic duo Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison – bid farewell to the cult status they achieved after Music Has The Right To Children and foremost Geogaddi. On Campfire, we didn’t hear any layered, discomforting ambient littered with obscure references, but instead ten surprisingly straightforward sounding tracks full of weathered easy listening, and the melancholy of bruised Fisher Price-toys.

According to the legend, Eoin and Sandison are unworldly hermits living in a Scottish rural community, but the lads we drink cappuccino with right now in the incredibly hip student quarters of Glasgow are dead normal guys in their thirties who – just like us – grew up during the late seventies and early eighties. Read: too young for the first punk wave, drenched with dry new-wave melancholy, heavily brainwashed by trashy American televison series. If you’re still in doubt: Having watched all ‘The A-Team’ episodes creates a bond.

The fifth chord 

Stinking druids 

Note: Thanks to hGc for the translation.

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title	Above Board!
author	Gal Detourn
publication	Playlouder
date	2005/10/20
issue
pages

"Above Board!" is a 2005 interview by Gal Detourn. It originally appeared in Playlouder ltd.a.

Above Board!

Like Autechre, Warp's Boards of Canada have slowly built a reputation for quality and innovation within the electronica sphere, which, with their reluctance to become public personalities, has created an enigmatic persona. Hence, the minute details of their lives have not been documented. What we can tell you however, is that Marcus and Michael are brothers, they hail from Scotland, and their latest opus - 'The Campfire Headphase' - is one of the most beautiful, bittersweet slices of electronica you're likely to hear. Marcus and Michael have found an uncanny way of investing the most futuristic production techniques, with a warm glow of nostalgia. Here's how they see it...

interview by by Gal Detourn, October 2005.

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title	Sweet and Sour Melodies Wander Around between Positive and Celebrative Sounds and Swaying Sadness
author	Masaaki Hara
publication	Vibe-Net
date	2005
issue
pages

"Sweet and Sour Melodies Wander Around between Positive and Celebrative Sounds and Swaying Sadness" is a 2005 interview by Masaaki Hara. It originally appeared in Vibe-Net.

Sweet and Sour Melodies Wander Around between Positive and Celebrative Sounds and Swaying Sadness

Boards of Canada released their 3rd full album The Campfire Headphase. Containing a full of unchanged finest melancholy in this release, it is described by themselves as “a normal pop album that has been exposed under the sun for 20 years”. What’s the truth in it? I interviewed them about the background of the album including the production process.

interview by Masaaki Hara, October 2005.
(translated by Naoko Ross ^[7])

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title	Stirred Up The Ashes
author	Heiko Hoffmann
publication	Earplug
date	2005/10/26
issue	54
pages

"Stirred Up The Ashes" was an interview by Heiko Hoffmann originally published on the twice-monthly email magazine Earplug^[8] Issue 54^[9].

Groove magazine's Heiko Hoffmann speaks to Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada, aka Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin, about how they stirred up the ashes of their own influence to create their new album, The Campfire Headphase.

interview by by Heiko Hoffmann, October 2005.

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title	Two for the No-Show
author	Will Hodgkinson
publication	The Times
date	2005/10/28
issue
pages

"Two for the No-Show" by Will Hodgkinson, The Times, 28 Oct 2005.

Boards of Canada are so publicity shy they make Dylan look like Robbie. Will hodgkinson gets an exclusive, reclusive interview.

A fog of myth surrounds Boards of Canada. For the past decade the Scottish duo have been making beautiful instrumental music that has won them fans such as, Björk, Beck, Johnny Marr and Radiohead. Albums such as Music Has The Right To Children (1998) and Geogaddi (2002) are evocative, deliberately imperfect electronic portraits that are both elegant and threatening.

But Boards of Canada hardly ever play live, rarely grant interviews, and generally take at least three years to make a record. They don't like having their photograph taken. A visit to their website will reveal nothing more than the cover art for their latest album, The Campfire Headphase. The exist purely on the strength of their music.

A few facts emerged over the years. Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison (left and right in our picture) met as children in the late Seventies, and were inspired by American television shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man and educational programmes from the film Board of Canada to start making music. After stints in school bands they began to work solely together, saving their pocket money to buy exotic musical instruments and spending all their free time in their self-built studio. It's only recently that they revealed that they are in fact brothers. They live in the countryside near Edinburgh, but not even their record company is quite sure where.

As I wait in the Edinburgh Film House café I'm almost expecting two versions of the Emperor from Star Wars to appear, beams shooting from their fingers. But two slightly scruffy, good-looking, resoundingly normal men in their mid-thirties walk in.

"We really don't care about image," says Marcus, pointing out the obvious. "We decided that if the music is good enough we'd just put the records out and not bother with anything else."

"Instrumental music is evocative. As soon as you attach a face to it, you tie it down," adds Mike.

Ever since they started experimenting with tape machines as children the two have been obsessed with creating the perfect sound, which explains why tit takes them so long to complete an album. Over the three-and-a-half years it took them to make The Campfire Headphase they recorded more than 400 tracks, working by themselves six or seven days a week. Don't they fear losing touch with reality?

"We aim to switch everthing off at six o'clock now," says Mike, who has been forced to change his working methods since he became a father in 2004. "For Geogaddi we worked until 4am every day and it was hellish, so we're trying to lighten up a bit for the good of our health and our family lives."

"The problem is that we're control freaks," adds Marcus. "People think of us as a couple Scottish stoners who sit around and bang out a record every few years when we can be bothered. The opposite is true."

They are, by their own admission, almost impossible to work with. Their record label, Warp, regularly receives requests from famous artists to have Boards of Canada provide remixes, to which they almost always give a civil refusal. "It got to the point where I told Warp to turn down all requests for remixes unless they were from God or Beck'" says Marcus. "Beck called a few months later."

The fact that their music is mostly electronic is largely a result of their inability to work collaboratibely. "When I was in school bands," says Mike, "I would create a minimalist electronic track, and then some guy would want to ruin it with a guitar solo."

"The only way we could be a traditional four-piece band," muses Marcus, "is if we cloned ourselves. Then the bassit wouldn't complain about only playing one note every eight bars."

It becomes apparent that Boards of Canada have a vision so singular that it puts them at odds with pretty much everything else going on in the modern world.

The Campfire Headphase has a timeless quality in its blend of melody and dissonnance, and despite being made mostly on traditional instruments it sounds so much more rich and imaginative than most contemporary pop music.

As they talk about their favourite films - the psychedelic surf movie Crystal Voyager, Antonioni's panoramic Zabriskie Point'' - Mike and Marcus come across as commited to their art and curious about life. "If all goes according to plan, everything we've done so far will be just one stage in our development," Mike says, "Boards of Canada is the tip of the iceberg."

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title	Protect and Survive
author	Rob Young
publication	The Wire
date	2005/10
issue	260
pages	40-47

"Protect and Survive" was a face to face interview by Rob Young in The Wire, 2005-10, issue 260, pages 40-47. ISSN: 0952-0686

In a rare face to face interview at their Scottish retreat, Boards of Canada breakin their self-imposed isolation to scotch the myths that have coalesced around them. With the release of their third album in seven years, they explain the reasons for the artificial ageing and geometric twists to which they subject their music, and reflect on being part of the 'analogue-to-digital' generation. Words: Rob Young. Photography: Leon Chew

The Bass Rock is barely visible in the late summer heat-mist, lying about three miles off the deserted coast near North Berwick. The crag rises 350 feet out of the turquoise sea, and faintly visible against its sheer cliff sides is a white lighthouse. A millenium and a half before the light was et on the rock at the beginning of the last century, a Lindisfarne monk, St Baldred of Bass, lived a hermit's existence alone on the island, shuttered in a rain-lashed cell to confront alone his god and, doubtless, his demons too. Today gannets are the island's sole visitors, as well as the occasional tourist boats ploughing through the surf to visity the martyr's chapel. As I crunch along the Ravensheugh Sands with Boards Of Canada's Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, the guano-stained Rock takes on a mythical hue: the distance and the sea mist cause it to almost melt into thin air, the wraith of a giant white molar on the horizon. There's a Moby-Dick quality to it -- you could spend a lifetime staring at it but it would remain eternally out of reach. "When I was a kid, about five or six years old," Mike Sandison is saying, " a relative of mine had one of those tacky ceramic owls on their mantelpiece, and it had multifaceted diamante eyes. I as totally obsessed with those sparkly glass eyes, for ages. I felt like looking into them was like looking sideways though everything, right through time. That's what we're trying to do with our music."

When you think about Boards Of Canada, the idea of hermits is never too far away. For the best part of a decade and a half now they have dwelt in what appears to be -- to a London/urban-centric media, anyway -- an isolated wilderness in Scotland (in fact, they've always lived within a half-hour's drive of the capital city Edinburgh, not in the Highlands, as is often reported). Their Interviews have invariably been conducted by email. Since their wistful, queasily nostalgia-soaked electronic music began to appear in the mid-90s, they have only done a handful of face to face interviews, none of those on home turf. Careful managers of their own public image, even today their homes and studio are out of bounds, but they do willingly and generously drive us all over the stretch of coast an countryside that's close to the place they call home. Until recently they live in the Pentland Hills, south west of Edinburgh; without much fanfare they have moved eastwards since then, into the flatter terrain of East Lothian. "We're not far away from where we were before," explains Sandison, "we relocated, but we're trying to let that slip by without anyone knowing about it, because we felt that if we made a big deal of it, it would start that whole thing again about the geography being more important than the music." "I always got this feeling that people were saying, 'because they were surrounded by the Pentland Hills, this is why their music sounds this way'," sighs Eoin. "And I don't really like that, because it's almost like saying, 'you're just like anyone else, and it's just because you happen to be there'. That's unfair -- it's not giving you credit for actually just doing music the way you want it to be." For better or worse, the Boards' 'secrecy' has endowed them with enigmatic status; the relative media silence has opened a space in which fans can speculate, mythmake, invent and interpret to their hearts' content -- much of which happens in chatrooms and message boards, thankfully well out of harm's way. But the pair certainly monitor these discussions and while they don't take part in them, they do seem somewhat confounded by the kind of rumours that have got out. As Eoin says, "if there's no apparent facts or information about you, then what happens is stuff just floods in to fill that gap, and very often it's basically a flood of bullshit that fills in your silhouette. And we've really suffered from that."

It's not as if these two aren't well travelled. Sandison once lived in London for a couple of years; they've lived in Edinburgh itself and, when they decide to take a break from their recording (and each other) to spend time with their partners, they're off travelling on the other side of the world -- Sandison mentions recent trips to France, Australia and New Zealand (where he's thinking of moving), while Eoin's considering a new life in Hong Kong with his Chinese girlfriend. Those are decisions still to be made, as their current live/work set-up is working well for them. "This whole project has come about with us living on the outskirts of Edinburgh," he says, "and for the last two decades we've been working on it from here, and we've had no reason to want to relocate to the city or to the south or anything, it's as simple as that. In fact, we actually find to some extend this so-called hermetic bubble that we live in is actually making it a lot easier for us to do our thing and not feel any urge to make it DJ friendly, or make it work for a certain social or club environment."

Meeting these two objects of so much speculation, it's refreshing to discover they'er not the dysfunctional electronic droids you might expect. They're actually a deal more open, articulate and opinionated than many other musicians of their generations, and don't appear terribly secretive. A kung fu manual is prominently stuffed in ther back seat pocket of Eoin's car, and Sandison rabbits away as we motor through the Scottish countryside, eulogising about being a parent and at one point asking his wife to text him a photo of his baby daughter at the dinner table so that he can show us. They've broken cover to talk about The Campfire Headphase, the latest in their very occasional series of records, and only their third album since Music Has The Right To Children (1998) and Geogaddi (2002). As they're at pains to point out, the long gaps between releases aren't because they're lazy or aloof, it's because of the perfectionism of theircraft. Six months of 2005 alone were spent on post-producing the album to get idea-germs into a state they call finished. "There are textures in what we try to do," explains Eoin, "which borrow from certain sounds or eras - even in visual things that we do as well, artwork - to trigger somthing, almost a cascade. It's like a memory that someone has - even though it's artificial, they never even had the memory; it's just you're ageing a song. And then people feel, is that something familiar I knew from yers ago?"

There's always been a warm, woody hue to BOC's music, but the dominant flavour has been synthesized on Campfire, guitars have taken over: steel strings, rippling chords and plucked notes dappled with reverb. "Chromakey Dreamcoat" ends with a blend of hillbilly steel and keyboard swirls not unlike the original BBC Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy theme - a typically BOC reference to the organic science fiction of the 1970s they love so much. The duo's clunkily satisfying rhythms - often played on a kit by Sandison - and analogue drum machines still govern the downtempo flow, but it's geared down to a pace Sandison describes as "that 70s truckstop diner feel". "Satellite Anthem Icarus" is especially gorgeous, a scudding oceanic cruise, riding on the sound of waves crashing on a beach, a woman's muffled voice and electronic tropical peeps. "On this album it's interesting," says Sandison, "because we are really overtly playing riffs on guitars, and although we've aged it and made it more like it's been recorded 25 years ago or something, with each track that we've used the guitars on, we've put things in it which are impossible on a 1970s record. Sometimes we'll construct an entire song out of samples that we'll make, so we'll maybe take instruments and play parts or play notes and we'll make entire spans of notes out of sounds we really like, and then play them in ways that the original instrument couldn't have played. You could take a span of lots of notes on the guitar, and then you would play chords on that guitar by hitting them all at once, in a way that a real guitar could never be played. And then of course we would do a lot of other things to the guitar to really tweak it and make it sound very, very gnarly and damaged." The two of them spend most of their time together doing the spadework that yields the raw produce for their music, creating sounds with what they describe as a collection of 200 instruments - not only synths, but flutes, stringed instruments, guitars, exotic percussion - sampling them, twisting them like sugar candy, and the thing that makes them Boards Of Canada pieces more than anything else: artificially aging them. The songwriting is one thing, but the process of transforming the melodic ideas into the finished product is what takes time. Tunes can wait around several years in a demo state before undergoing the duo's deliberate degradation technique. "One thing we tried to do," pursues Eoin, "and we're trying to do more of, is a sense that you're hearing a piece of music that comes through the wringer a bit - it's definitely not coming literally. It's not just a guy standing in front of you with the latest keyboard workstation. There's a sense that you're listening to sa tune, but how many times has that been copied from tape to tape to tape... by the time it's reached you it's crumbled, it's turned into powder. "You hera about monks in the Middles ages using a pin to create a Bible or a piece of art, and they'll do it for 40 years in the dark underneath a monastery," he continues, " and they'll be blind by the time they've finished. And some people really appreciate art like that, because there's something really tragic about it. It's almost like it's more beautiful than any other art, because instead of it being someone comfortably painting something in a day, there's something absolutely tragic and destroyed about it. So I always think you can still go further up the run from 'beautiful music', and that's beautiful music that seems to come out of some tragedy or brokenness. It becomes even more beautiful, the shards if the sound coming through are even more vibrant and affecting."

From the start, circumstances forced them to invent their own universe. Both born around 1970, they've been friends since they were toddlers, when their parents relocated to Canada to take up jobs in the construction industry. There, they were exposed to public education films on nature, science and the Earth, often narrated by Leslie Nielsen, made by the National Film Board of Canada. When they were around 13 years of age and living back in a bleak harbour town in the north of Scotland, they began "bullying" their friends into making experimental films with a Super-8 camera. "We'd say, 'This is waht you're going to do, because the other options are playing the Space Invaders machine down at the chip shop or breakin windows on phone boxes'," sandison says. To fit their pocket money budgets, the films involved time lapse, stop motion and 'sound to light' techniques. "We'd seen a lot of Norman McLaren animations while growing up," explains Eoin. At the same time Sandison, later joined by Eoin, began making music in various indie rock configurations. From the early 90s, university studies and unrewarding jobs were interleaved with more esoteric activities in the company of a large group of friends, artists, photographers, graphic designers and musicians, collectively known as Hexagon Sun. Their parties outgrew their homes in the Pentland Hills, spilling out into the woods. "It totally enhanced the experience," recalls Eoin. "Once you take it to an isolated, outdoor location, away from organisation, there's a sense of freedom that kicks in. It's sexier and less inhibited than an indoor event. You can have 50 or 100 people hanging out around fires, some rare music echoing around... the sound of two melodies clashing over one another, or maybe a melody to your left but a voice talking to your right, off through the trees. Doppler-shifting and filtering because of the wind or the random shapes around you. It creates a giddy, surreal sound that doesn't normally exist on records." In these unique outdoor communions, al arge part of Boards of Canada's sound aesthetic was forged. In 1996, after privately circulating cassette compilations of tracks they had been recording, Sandison and Eoin sent tapes to other labels including Skam in Manchester. Autechre's Sean Booth picked up on it immediately, and Skam released several BOC tracks before Warp swung into action and issued Music Has The Right To Children in 1998, with the distinctive treated cover image of a family Polaroid holiday snapshot with all the faces wiped blank. Geogaddi, appearing four years later, was decked with hexagonal, kaleidoscopic prisms that became something of a calling card. "I guess you could get a better idea of what these things symbolise by reading Aldous Huxley's The Doors Of Perception," says Eoin when I ask him about the significance of those shapes. "Also, I've always had an interest in the yamabushi of ancient Japan, the 'mountain men'. They used symbols as a way of having a willpower that would always outlive any challenge. They used repetitive hand symbols or drawn characters to create a neutral place they could visit mentally whenever they faced hardship. For us, "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" always returns us to a zone where we can throw off the baggage and begin again."

Somewhere up in the Highlands, they tell me, lies a valley that's the last remaining site in the UK where radio signals, microwaves and mobile phone signals can't reach. An Eden such as this, free of the harmful of the harmful effects of technology and sheltered from penetration by foreign chatter, sounds like the kind of place Boards Of Canada's music could happily live. A place where you might be able to start to observe the world directly, anew, unmediated by outside influence. In such places you can build your ark, rescue yourself from being dragged along with the flood. Most of the music they love and admire is made by folk who have built their own bubble, where the music lives in its own epoch, its own specially crafted box. The "Victorian fairly lights" and "looking-glass world" of fellow Scots The Cocteau Twins are one; Devo, inventors of their own theatrical universe and whose early songs they admire because they sound like advertising jingles for washing powder, are another. They are currently enthusing about William Basinski's Disintergration Loops ("Funny enough, when we first heard that, we thought, 'We've got tapes like that ourselves' ") and Stevie Wonder's rapturous mid-70s funk - "that bit in "Living For The City" where there's the descending chords, and it'S all transposing all the way down, and it's just going chromatically all down the scale... I recognise something there where it feels like he's trying to translate something that is otherworldly, that's not about the mundane," explains Sandison. "There's usually a visual element in the tracks we write," he continues, "and it probably comes from an obsession with film and TV. When yyou're a kid, a three second long animation with rainbows morphing into A-Bomb blasts can be massively affecting and influential. I think you see these things more vividly when you're younger, but as an adult your brain starts to filter out it considers irrevelant background noise. The downside is that you become desensitised to a lot of things and that leads you to not really feel much at all." Boards Of Canada's music is awash with sadness at the loss of a child's vivid perception. It struggles constantly to regain that enhanced sensation of encountering the world afresh, while planting a nostalgia for the sounds and images of the particular time in which they grew up. They are addressing their own specific generation - you might call them the analogue-to-digital transfer generation - whose formative years straddled huge changes in geopolitics (the Cold War and its nuclea threat which hung over 80s teens had evaporated by the time they left college), domestic and ocomputer technology (typing in the 80s became word processing in the 90s), and the nature and role of the media. Hence their music's slathering with textual referents, deliberated sonic aides memoires that are almost recognisable but remain just out of memory's reach. "We could only exist in the short pocket of time when music has made the transition form analogue to digital," agrees Sandison. "There's this little moment where there's enough nostalgia attached to the former recording media and the faults that it had, that certain people will get it, and understand what we're doing. If there's sadness in the way we use memory," he goes on, "it's because the time you're focusing on has gone forever. I guess it's a theme we play on a lot, that bittersweet thing where you face up to the fact that certain chapters of you life are just Polaroids now."

The faded turquoise and yellow packaging of The Campfire Headphase contains a gallery of Polaroid photos they've collected over the years, family snapshots digitally mildewed and rotted with similar artificial ageing techniques they use for their music. The idea, they tell me, is to create the feeling that you've just found all these pictues in someone else's old house and that the people shown in the pictures are al dead. As an aural analogy, they describe the degrading processo ntheir sound as introducing a "toxic, poisonous" element. Sandison articulates the fascination with the imperfect: "Even when we sound like we're being conventional, there's always something in it which is kind of dark, that's doing the bittersweet thing. Sometimes we deliberately construct songs to be pretty conventional sounding, and then we abuse them, we throw something in that's kind of a spike. "If you ever see these American makeover programmes where they get ordinary looking people and they give them these regulation whiter-than-white teeth and veneers and all that, quite often I find the finished product really sinister, because they've got these really symmetrical faces, with perfect teeth and everything, make-up and the hair. If you actually compare the before-and-after pictures, the person you could imagine being friends with is the one with squint teeth and everything and the gnarly face. And it's the same sort of thing with music and other art. If there's something a bit rough about it, it feels more personal to you, like something that belonged to you on a cassette tape that you've been cherishing for years, rather than something digital and perfect and straight. The drop-outs, the flutter on the tape and everything, you get used to where it happens." Eoin: "I think it's a reaction to mundanity. Britain, for example, is a safe place to live, and a lot of people in the rest of the world come here to live because it's better than were they are, the grass is green here than it is there. But when you've lived here for a long time, you can start to feel a crushing mundanity, you need strange things to bring you out of it, otherwise you start feeling like a corpse." Sandison elaborates, "I think we try to make music that's more like normal music that's head through a damaged mind, so you're hearing it diagonally..." Boards Of Canada's eccendtric orbits, their unstable tones and disorientating sonic additives are all carefully calculated effects. In conversation they'll often talk about chords coming in at weird angles and diagonals, zapping melodic expectations. As one of Geogaddi's song titles reminds us, "The Devil Is In The Details": their mastery of numbers and geometry has its own part to play in the Confucian confusion.

"You can use rules or set theory to dictate timings and note intervals", expands Sandison about their composition strategies. "For instance, you can imagine your melody to run vertically instead of horizontally, so that you're thinking of a vertical spiral, running on the spot. There's a thing you can calculate for plants called divergence, which is a ratio of complete turns of spiral leaf positions relative to the number of leaves in that spiral. In plants, this usually gives a Fibonacci number, which is pretty uncanny, but it's basically a natural law that's trying to create optimum distribution of leaf positions, to stop leaves from obsucring each other in sunlight. You can apply a similar idea to a vertical spiral of music, to calculate optimal temporal event positions in a pattern or texture. It doesn't always make for easy listening though," he adds, laughing.

Time to puncture a few myths about Boards Of Canada. "The kind of thing that gets up my nose is when people describe us as 'approaching New Age' or soemthing like that," moans Sandison. "To me that's completly missing the point. If we do something that remotely sounds a bit like that, it's because we're actually doing it deliberately, we're doing almost as a pisstake." Google Boards Of Canada and you'll soon find fans with plenty of time on their hands, identifying all manner of psychedelic Easter eggs in the music: reversed samples and tapes, aural palindromes (sentences like "I've been gone about a week" that sound like the same when played forwards or in reverse) buried phrases that hint at paganism ("You Could eel The Sky" contains the words "a god with hooves"). Titles like "Music Is Math", "A Is To B As B Is To C", and "The Smallest Weird Number" (the number 70, which they adopted for the name of their own label/production company, Music70) imply numerological sorcery; musical structures arranged, tuned and sequenced at root level according to mathematical equations such as the Fibonacci sequence and Golden Ratio. Someone's even found that the toal playing time of Geogaddi is 66:06, and it's total hard drive space when ripped to MP3 is 666 megabytes, etc. All of which leads to speculation that they are involved in in some kind of cultish activity - a belief that gathered pace with the release of their 2000 EP In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country, which contained overt references to David Koresh's Branch Davidian community and its annihilation by the US military in 1993 during the Waco siege. "Not in the slightest," counters Sandison when I ask him for a definitive answer on their 'cult' status. "We're just purely coming at what we do from the angle at being interested in subjects. You get a lot of painters or film directors who are complete atheists who'll make films all about religion, or Christianity, not because they're obsessed with the subjects or they're actually evangelists, but just purely because it's something they're interested in for that project. It's exactly the same with us - we'll hit on some of these things, but at the end of the day we're just totally ordinary people that just happen to be making music." And why the particular focus on Waco? "We take a great interest in the spectrum of everything, religions and cults, anything connected to that," says Eoin. Because they are a break from the norm. So when you see something like that, a group of people doing their own thing, going away and living together like that... it's the fascination with that, and a sense of injustice..." "And the outrage at what happened," interjects Sandison. "I'm not a religious person," Eoin continues, "but what I felt seeing what happened there was asense of outrage - they're devoutly religious people, but what happened to them - were they just singled out because of this, and attacked? The victor always writes history, and the only history we know of David Koresh and those people is what's been written about by reference to things like what the FBI were investigating afterwards." "Which was why," Sandison swings back to the record in hand, "we thought we'd make a record that on the surface feels really sweet and very spacious and it'll be titled In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country, but what were these people doing in a beautiful place out in the country? They were getting shot and burned.. [Laughs] It's a typical thing that we would do..." Eoin: "Even when you go away and have that existence, something still chases you there, still follows you home. And that's the impression I get off that story." With every retreat form the world comes the need to protect and survive. Eoin once described a complicated solar alarm system he had installed in his house. Neighbourhood watch scheme broken down, has it? "No, it's just paranoia," he laughs. "No, when you've got things like master tapes going back to 1984, and irreplaceable musical equipment, honestly, you're gonna be paranoid. It's not really to do with past experiences, it's a kind of precautionary attitude, a Red Dawn attitude..."

And so we take our leave of these hermits, as they sit and wait for someone to put knobs back on digital TVs to change the colour and contrast (newer technologies not necessarily being better than old); leave them to their fervent belief that they can inoculate their music with the mould of hte past, warding off the viral spread of mediocrity. "We're not even remotely religious people," repeats Sandison, "but I understand what that is about when you're trying to channel something that's more about the cogs behind the workings of the universe, and it feels like sometimes everything you're looking at is a simulation that's based on a much more geometric background. And a lot of the time, this machine that we are seeing, the world as it is, is so smooth and predictable, that even art has become really predictable. It's all following rues and patterns that have already been set by somebody who programmed it. But if you really stand back and look away from it, the potential's there for art and music to go into absolutely bizarre territories where everything is utterly fresh and weird and new. The challenge is to imagine: how about just stop where we are, and let's just for a minute try and backtrack a way up here, and imagine what would happened if, in 1982, music had taken this other branch on this side, and where would it be now, and what would it be sounding like now?" "The Campfire Headphase is released this month on Warp.'

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title	The Last Secret of Pop
author	Koen Poolman
publication	OOR
date	2005/11
issue	10
pages

"The Last Secret of Pop" (original text in Dutch) by Koen Poolman. ISSN 0921-1616

Invloeden

Laptopmuzikanten hebben het maar makkelijk: ze weten precies wat ze willen en hoe ze het gaan doen. Mike en Marcus worden heen en weer geslingerd tussen gitaar en computer, tussen akoestische en elektronische muziek, tussen oud en nieuw, tussen folk en avant-garde. Op hun nieuwe cd The Campfire Headphase' versmelten melancholische gitaren met chroomkleurige beats en synths. 'We voelen duidelijk de behoefte om belde wegen in te slaan,' bekent Mike. 'Iedere dag ligt ons hart ergens anders.' Hun invloeden lopen uiteen van klassieke muziek tot hiphop en van psych-folk uit de jaren zestig en zeventig tot de rare maatsoorten van de native Americans, de indianen. Ze zijn allebei klassiek geschoold op de piano en spelen gitaar. Mike is de beste drummer van de twee, Marcus' eerste instrument in een band was basgitaar. Tijdens de twee uur dat we met hen spraken, tekenden we de volgende namen op: Julian Cope, Bob Dylan, Pixies, Cocteau Twins, Phil Spector, Wim Wenders, HR Giger, The Polyphonic Spree, Sufjan Stevens, The Incredible String Band, Butterscotch Rum, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, John Denver, Joy Division, The New Scientist (tijdschrift), Zabriskie Point, Jeroen Bosch, Aphex Twin, Autechre, My Bloody Valentine, Talk Talk, Stevie Wonder, Radiohead, Bibio, Fennesz, Alias, Boom Bip, cLOUDDEAD, Odd Nosdam, William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops I-IV, 'Maar,', voegde Mike er op een gegeven moment aan toen, 'ik kan hier een lijst van veertig namen geven en dan nog heb je niet één procent van de mensen die ons geïnspireerd hebben.' Waar ze beslist niet naar luisteren: folktronica, technopuristen en 'al die honderen Autechre-klonen zonder ideeën van zichzelf.'

door Koen Poolman

Laten we bij het eind beginnen: de Radiohead-vraag. Zonder Boards of Canada's Music Has The Right To Children (1998) had Kid A (2000) heel anders geklonken luidt de mare. Mike en Marcus aarzelen. 'Dat zou ik niet durven zeggen.' 'Dat is niet eerlijk ten opzichte van hen'. 'Alsof ze anders geen geweldige plaat hadden gemaakt.' 'Misschien hebben ze wel goed naar Aphex Twin en Autechre geluisterd.' Nee, dat succes willen ze niet claimen. Dat Thom Yorke een bewonderaar is van hun warme, broeierige elektronica, is genoeg. Kid A en Amnesiac vinden ze mooie platen. Ook U2 schijnt fan te zijn. Dat laat ze dan weer koud. De roem ze gestolen worden. Feit is dat Music Has The Right To Children en opvolger Geogaddi (2002) -- beide met 200.000 verkochte cd's Aphex Twin en Nightmares On Wax de bestsellers in de experimentele Warp-catalogus -- talloze bands en producers hebben geïnspireerd.

Het zijn van die platen die jarenlang meegaan en steeds beter worden. Ze logenstraffen het cliché van elektronische muziek als kille, cleane, mechanische, sciencefiction-achtige muziek voor de wereld van morgen. Hier is een groep die haar best doet haar geluid zo ouderwets, gamme en zelfs 'beschadigd' mogelijk te maken, die zich liever haar onbezorgde jeugd herinnert dan droomt van een leven tussen robots, die gitaren, fluiten, windorgels, drums, percussie, analoge synthesizers en aftandse taperecorders verkiest boven de nieuwste software, die voortdurend in folky sferen lijkten te verkeren, die verplicht tot luistere en die de perfectie afzweert. Menselijke muziek is niet ongenaakbaar. Geen kloppende pulse, maar een brok in de keel. Een lichte hapering. Een traan. En dan: een huivering. Je hoort dingen die je eerst niet hoorde. Stemmen, boodschappen, hallucinaties. Wie in de caleidoscopische wereld van Boards of Canada duikt, ontdekt sporen van occultisme, religieuze cults, spionagenetten, numerologie, mathematische concepten... Ze zitten verstopt in titels, artwork, samples, de lengte van de tracks, her aantal tracks, in talloze achterwaarts afgespeelde stemmen, zelfs in heuse audio palindromen: zinnetjes die voor- en achterwaarts afgespeeld identiek zijn. "The Devil Is In The Details" heette een van de nummers van Geogaddi. De cd telde 23 tracks (een mystiek getal voor occultisten), duurde 66 minuten en 6 seconden en was 666 Mb groot. Bijrollen: David Koresh, leider van de Branch Davidians-sekte in Waco, en Pan, de 'god with hooves', heidense god der weiden en bossen. Eerst zie je ze niet, dan lijken ze opeens overal te zitten. De magie van Boards of Canada - opererend vanuit een afgelegen woongemeenschap in de bossen van de Schotse Pentland Hills, onder Edinburgh, waar ze hun eigen studio hebben - kreeg langzaam een zwart randje. En al die jaren weigerden ze naar buiten te treden. Ze deden slechts een handvol interviews over de e-mail en stonden, na hun stille entree met Music Has The Right To Children, drie keer op een podium. Een enigma.

Nu hebben ze dan eindelijk ingestemd met een face to face interview. Eén per land, twee uur lang. Ze hebben een hoop uit te leggen. Over hun nieuwe album The Campfire Headphase bijvoorbeeld, maar ook over de wilde verhalen die het mysterie Boards of Canada zijn gaan omgeven. Ze willen bewijzen dat ze 'ordinary blokes' zijn en geen 'magiërs die mensenoffers brengen op een bergtop.' De mythe heeft een loopje met ze genomen, beseft Mike. 'Als je zolang uit de media wegblijft, gaan de mensen vanzelf de gaten in je verhaal opvullen.' Mike is Michael Sandison, 34 jaar, vader van een dochtertje van één. Hij oogt vermoeid. Lijdt aan slapeloosheld en depressies. Draagt een zwarte een zwarte trui, spijkerboek en gympen. Baardje van een week. Onopvallend. Marcus Eoin (32) is knapper, sportiever ook. Hij blijkt een fervent snowboarder. Getrimd baardje, het haar met gel in model gehouden. De ring om zijn vinger zegt dat hij vorig jaar getrouwd is. Op zijn T-shirt prijken de namen van weirdo-rappers Boom Bip en Dose One. Mike is een vlotte prater. Marcus is iets bedachtzamer, geeft uitleg bij Mike's verhaal. 'Het grootste misverstand,' gaat Mike verder waar hij begonnen is, 'is onze humor. Veel mensen missen onze ironie. Ze nemen alles wat wij doen veel te letterlijk.' Ze zijn, zegt hij bijna veronschuldigend, gewoon geïnteresseerd in oude culturen, religieuze uitspattingen, wetenschappelijke vraagstukken, alles wat afwijkt van de norm. Meer moeten we er niet achter zoeken. En nee, ze zijn beslist geen 'failed techno band', zoals ze wel eens lezen op internetfora van IDM-diehards. Ze hebben nooit intelligent dance music willen maken. 'Eigenlijk zijn we nooit geïnteresseerd geweest in dancemuziek, techno, of wat dan ook. Die wereld staat heel ver van de onze af. Van kinds of aan hebben we ieder instrument opgepakt dat voor het grijpen lag en er een hoop herrie meegemaakt. Wij zijn geen technokids.'

Enter: The Campfire Headphase. Weer zo'n ongepoetste juweel met intieme synths, beats en, voor het eerst, gitaarloops die, goed tegen het licht gehouden, langzaam begint te glinsteren, Met het licht reflecteert ook het beeld van een klassieke roadtrip door het oude Amerika, kriskras door de tijd. Titels als "Dayvan Cowboy, "'84 Pontiac Dream" en "Ataronchronon" (een oude indianenstam) verraden iets van de bedoeling. 'De basis,' legt Mike uit, 'is een fantasie, een mind trip. Je zit ergens in een kamp in het bos, spaced out rond het kampvuur. Het is donker, je bent alleen, je sluit de ogen en je fantaseert over het Amerika van de achttiende eeuw. Je verliest je tijdsbesef. Uren worden dagen, weken. Er gebeuren vreemde dingen, onverklaarbare dingen, sprongen in de tijd, transformaties, een beetje surrealistisch, zonder dat je het als zodanig ervaart.

Twoism (1995, reissue 2002) In eigen beheer uitgebracht debuut (oplage: 200). Acht nummers vol vreemde, dromerige, ambienteske, iet valse elektronica. Alsof het gat van de lp net naast het midden zat. Invloeden van Aphex Twin en Autechre zijn nog duidelijk hoorbaar. Via die laatsten belandde de lp bij het Skam-label uit Manchester. Zeven jaar later werd de lp, die inmiddels 500 euro op eBay opbracht, heruitgebracht, als enige van alle eigenbeheer-lp's en cassettes tot nu toe. Het duo speelt met het idee om ook Boc Maxima (1996) nog eens fatsoenlijk uit te brengen. Tot nut toe blijft de kluis met Music 70-demo's hermetisch gesloten. Hi Scores (1996) Mini-lp voor Skam. De eerste zes nummers die normaal verkrijgbaar waren. Dromerige elektronica, abstracte Autechre-beats en electro. Classics: "Everything You Do Is A Balloon", waarvan de melodie in een droom to Marcus kwam, en Turquoise Hexagon Sun (later ook op MHTRTC). 

Music Has The Right To Children (1998) Debuut voor Warp. Bij verschijnen nauwelijks opgemerkt, nu een klassieker bunnen de elektronische muziek en het vertrekpunt voor subgenres als indietronica en folktronica. De plaat met de kinderstemmetjes. Ze praten en tellen wat op en af, voor- en achteruit. Mellow beats, nostalgische synths, psychedelische en intieme, soms folky sferen, hemelse melodieën. De mooiste: "Roygbiv" (2:28) en "Olson" (1:24), van die typische BOC-miniatuurtjes die de gaten tussen de 'echte' nummers vullen en eigenlijk hun voorkeur genieten. Het zijn synthesizermelodieën die je aan het eind van een tv-serie zou kunnen horen, als de titelrol in beeld verschijnt. Chill-out-hit: "Aquarius". Zilj: 'Een plaat voor in de openlucht, op een koude, zonnige dag.' 

In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country (2000) 'Come and live with us... in a religious community in a beautiful place out in the country.' Een uitnodiging van DAvid Koresh en zijn Branch Davidians-sekte in Waco. Naast de titeltrack verwijst ook "Amo Bishop Roden" naar de sekte; het is de naam van een afvallig sektelid. Haar beeltenis prijkt op de achterkant van de cd, Koresh's oog priemt binnenin. Classic: "Kid For Today". Maar de hele EP (4 tracks, 24 minuten) is briljant. 

Geogaddi (2002) Inktzwarte plaat. Duister, sinister, bijna duivels. Maar toch ook weer heel melodieus en organisch. Barstensvol geheime boodschappen, verwijzingen, mathematische concepten en getallensymboliek.  "Music Is Math" vergondigen ze aan het begin. In "1969" duiken de Branch Davidians weer op. Het nummer duurt 4:19. Op 19 april 1993 voltrok zich de slachtpartij in Waco. Achter elk detail schuilt een betekenis, zo lijkt het. Wie zijn platen graag achterstevoren draait, heeft aan Geogaddi een goede. "You Could Feel the Sky" hoor je ineens 'a god with hooves'; in "A Is To B As B Is To C" openbaren zich zowaar audio palindromen: 'all you love we' wordt 'we love you all' en 'I've been gone about a week' blijft exact hetzelfde! Vreemde, verontrustende plaat, "Gyroscope" kwam tot Marcus in een nachtmerrie, en dat is het: een nachtmerrie. Zij: 'Een claustrofobische trip door een wereld vol duisternis en paranoia met aan het eind een sprankje hoop.' Een journalist: 'Muziek als een spiraal of een fractal die gedetailleerder wordt naarmate je er dieper ingaat.' Het is de cd die de Schotten voor het eerst brede erkenning oplevert en ook in OOR tot een van de beste tien cd's van dat jaar gekozen wordt. Hitje: 1969. 

The Campfire Headphase (2005) De nieuwe. Hij stelt niet teleur. 'een echte Boards Of Canada-plaat' vinden ze zelf, met elementen van Twoism en MHTRTC en subtiel ingebrachte gitaarloops. Gedroomde roadtrip door het oude Amerika. Van minder donker dan Geogaddi. De good trip na de bad trip. Nog nooit klonken ze zo opgewekt als in Peacock Tail, hun 'Stevie Wonder-nummer' (Marcus). Pas op voor de slottrits: een zware depressie ligt op de loer. 

Het is een droom, je ben écht die cowboy. Totdat de muziek ineens overgaat, zoals in "'84 Pontiac Dream". Je ontwaakt, je hoort stemmem om je heen, de regen komt met bakken uit de hemel, je zit ergens in Central Park in de verte hoor je iemand op een akoestische gitaar spelen en je weet bij God niet hoe je hier gekomen bent.' Marcus: 'Complete chaos, een wereld zonder logica, dat idee. Ken je de film Zabrieskie Point? Voor mij heeft deze plaat dezelfde sfeer. Het is een krankzinnige roadmovie. Er gebeurt van alles wat niet logisch is, je probeert er een lijn in te ontdekken, een verklaring te vinden, maar aan het eind van de film weet je nog steeds niet wat je er nu eigenlijk gebeurd is.' Mike: 'De centrale vraag is: hoeveel van deze voltrok zich in een hallucinatie? Wie wel eens een psychedelische ervaring heeft gehad, weet dat zoiets niet letterlijk na te vertellen is, het verandert ieder moment.' "Sherbet Head", zo'n miniatuurtje waarvan Boards of Canada er meer heeft, en vaak hele mooie, verwoordt de psychedelische ervaring misschien nog wel het best: een hoofd vol sorbetijs. Daas, wauws. Een beetje duizelig. Lichte tinteling. Was de inktzwarte voorganger Geogaddi een bad trip, The Campfire Headphase is zijn tegenhanger; de good trip.

Geogaddi eindigde met "Corsair", 'het licht aan het einde van de tunnel'; aan het einde van de good trip wacht een downer. De laatste drie tracks gaan diep, héél diep. Marcus: 'Daardoor blijft het langer hangen.' Mike: 'Ik zou nooit iets kunnen maken dat helemaal optimistisch is.' Vooral het afsluitende Farewell Fire, een pastorale orgeldrone, grijpt naar de keel. Ze willen niet zeggen voor wie het geschreven is, maar het kan alleen maar een dierbare geweest zijn die os overleden. Mike vertelt: "Farewell Fire" is Marcus op keyboards, meer niet. Hij heeft het in één nachtelijke sessie gemaakt. Er zitten momenten in dat het hapert en het echt voelt als iemand die van verdriet niet meer in staat is om goed te spelen. Dat kun je met geprogrammeerde muziek nooit bereiken. Ook al is het een elektronisch stuk, het klinkt heel menselijk, hartverscheurend. Het moment dat het even stopt, is alsof er naar adem gehapt moet worden, als een stem die even zwijgt.' Marcus: 'Veel mensen die elektronische muziek maken gaan ervan uit dat die steriel en mechanisch moet zijn... en futuristisch [cynisch lachje]. Dat is heel eenvoudig, het enige wat je hoeft te doen is de apparatuur aan te zetten. De kunst is om die synthetische klanken een emotie mee te geven, alsof het een stem is.' Een synthlijn, licht Mike toe, wordt geschreven alsof het een zanglijn is, een zanglijn die bijna vals is. 'De beste zangers hebben een beperkte stem. Zo'n stem als van Bob Dylan, zo nasaal, beven, nooit helemaal zuiver, is verre van compleet, maar zit barstensvol karakter. Als je een sessiezanger zou vragen een van zijn songs te zingen, dan zou het technisch perfect zijn, maar zielloos, zonder leven. Dat is precies wat wij onszelf steeds voorhouden: het mag niet perfect zijn. We stoppen er met opzet fouten en beschadigde geluiden in om de muziek te laten ademen.'

Wie voor het eerst een plaat van Boards of Canada hoort, zal zich verbazen over het 'zingende' geluid op de achtergrond, alsof de opnameband niet helemaal strak liep. Dat is precies wat er aan de hand is. Het duo zweert bij het geluid van oude cassettebandjes die niet meer zo goed afspelen, waarvan het geluid af en toe wegvalt, of is afgevlakt, die to langzaam gaan, of juist net iets te snel. Het geeft de opname een magisch tintje, vinden ze. Het voert hen terug naar de tijd dat ze zelf nog bandjes draaiden, naar hun verloren jeugd. Debuut-lp Twoism (1995) klonk als een mispersing, alsof het gat niet precies in het midden zat. "Slow This Bird Down", op de nieuwe cd, heeft dit ook. De 'zingende gitaar' in "Chromakey Dreamcoat" is opgenomen op het strand met de verrotste taperecorder die Marcus kon vinden. Hij heeft ook een digitale. Gebruikt ie zelden. De moldie van "Julie And Candy" (op Geogaddi) werd opgenomen met een paar fluiten en vervolgens eindeloos heen en weer gestuurd tussen de ingebouwde microfoons van twee tapedecks totdat er niets meer dan een luide, mistige galm, een soort misthoorn, overbleef. Veel, bijna alles, wat je op hun platen hoort, komt van een fluit, een gitaar, een piano, een percussie-instrument, een windorgel of een ander exotisch instrument, maar de geluiden worden dermate lang 'behandeld' dat ze zelden als dusdanig herkenbaar zijn. Het lijken allemaal synthesizergeluiden. Hoe langer je een geluid bewerkt, hoe synthetischer het klinkt, legt Marcus uit. Hun synthesizers zijn trouwens ook vintage: oude analoge modellen met knarsende en krakende geluiden.

Noem hun werkwijze nooit nostalgisch; Marcus heeft er een hekel aan. Retro, nog zo'n woord. Te gemakkelijk, vindt hij. 'Wij refereren aan iets uit het verleden, iets tragisch of iets moois dat verloren is gegaan, we proberen dat terug te halen, maar daar stoppen we niet, we proberen het verder te brengen, ons voor te stellen wat ervan geworden zou zijn als het nog steeds zou bestaan. We kopiëren het verleden niet, we herschrijven het, we negeren de loop die de geschiedenis heeft genomen. We gaan terug naar een bepaald moment in tijd en plaats en slaan dan een alternatieve weg in. We zeggen tegen elkaar: Make it 1978 and then take it somewhere. Hoe had de muziek van nu geklonken als we toen met z'n allen die andere weg waren ingeslagen? Een soort parallelle wereld.' Mike: 'Alsof de nineties nooit hebben plaatsgevonden, zoiets. Waar zouden de wereld en de muziek zijn als we die tijd hadden overslagen?' De nineties, voor de goed orde, staan met hun schreeuwerige MTV-cultuur, hun ongebreidelde hedonisme en alsmaar verdergaande globalisatie voor alles wat fout is volgens het teruggetrokken levende duo. Ze geloven heilig in een 'sideways culture'. Marcus: 'De meeste mensen nemen de wereld zoals zij is, ze staan nooit stil bij de vraag hoe de wereld er had kunnen uitzien als we niet met z'n allen door een tunnel waren gegaan. Als je kijkt naar de huidige staat van de muziek en je beschouwt de wortels van die muziek, dan wordt die weg automatisch gezien als de enige die de muziek had kunnen afleggen. Niemand realiseert zich dat die aanname bepalend is voor wat ze doen. Ze volgen gewoon dat pad. Zie het als een gang ledereen staat middenin de gang, de uitgang lonkt. Ze beschouwen de situatie en wéten: we móeten aan het eind van de gang zien te komen. Wat wij proberen te doen is ons voor te stellen dat er naast die gang nóg een gang is en dat je die gang wellicht via een geheime doorgang kunt bereiken.'

Mike toont zich een groot bewonderaar van [wikipedia:Jeroen Bosch|Jeroen Bosch] (1450-1516), de diepreligieuze schilder wiens werk stilistisch noch thematisch aansloot bij stromingen uit zijn tijd. In tegenstelling tot het serene werk van zijn tijdgenoten ging het fantastische werk van Bosch over angst, afschuw en rampspoed. 'Zijn werk zat vol vreemde, spookachtige elementen,' doceert hij, 'elementen waarvoor geen verklaring was. Het waren fantasieën. Zijn werk was surrealistisch voordat het surrealisme was uitgevonden. Zijn verbeelding was de doorgang naar een andere wereld. Er zitten elementen in zijn werk die er niet zouden moeten zitten, inconsequenties, en juist die maken zijn werk zo sterk, zo aangrijpend.' Hij trekt een parallel met Music Has The Right To Children, waarop naïeve kinderstemmetjes botsen met atonale geluiden, chroomkleurige beats en dissonante melodieën. 'Die kinderstemmetjes brengen je van je stuk, ze horen niet thuis in zulke duistere muziek. Je wéét het gewoon niet. Maar het grijpt je wel aan.' 'Als je schilderijen zou maken van wat er volgens ons op onze platen gebeurt,' zegt Mike, en hij verontschuldigt zich bij voorbaat voor de pretentie die in deze uitspraak besloten ligt, 'dan zouden dat hele surrealistische werken worden. Er zou niks van kloppen. En toch zou je het niet hoeven uitleggen.' Marcus: 'Als je het moet uitleggen, is het geen kunst meer.'

Tuig een plaat op met verborgen boodschappen over God en Satan en stervelingen die geloven dat zij afgezant van een van beiden zijn, en je eindigt met een altaar. Zo noemt Marcus het vorige album Geogaddi, een altaar. Hij zegt het lichtelijk smalend. Op Internet circuleren de wildste theorieën en analyses over de inmiddels drie jaaroude plaat. Over David Koresh en zijn Branch Davidians, aan wie het nummer "1969" en de ep In a Beautiful Place out in the Country zouden zijn gewijd (klopt). Over de adaptatie van de gulden snede en bijzondere cijferreeksen zoals de Fibonacci-reeks in notenschema's en songstructuren (klopt). Over links naar het werk van Berthol Brecht (onzin). Over samples van uitzendingen van spionagediensten in de Koude Oorlog (klopt). Over satanisme (onzin). Over audio palindromen ('de techniek staat voor niks').

Orbital? De makers van Chime, Belfast en Halcyon + On + On waren ook broers. Op het donkere podium droegen ze van die karakteristieke mijnwerkerslampjes, waarmee ze hun sequencers en samplers uitlichtten. Hun eerste platen waren oké, vinden Mike en Marcus, maar om nu ais tweed Orbital door het leven te moeten gaan... nee. Dus verzwegen ze toen ze bij Warp tekenden hun familieband. Tien jaar lang verstopte Marcus zich achter zijn tweede voornaam, Eoin. Mike: 'Op alle Orbital-platen stond: written by Hartnoll & Hartnoll. Dat vonden we zo suf.' Ze wilden anoniem door het leven gaan en geen verhalen over 'de muzikale familie Sandison'. Ze hebben nog twee broers; die maken ook muziek. De één woont in Australië, de ander in Londen. Mike en Marcus wonen in een kleineleefgemeenschap in de Schotse Pentland Hills, onder Edinburgh. Hun kinderjaren brachten ze door in Londen en Calgary. Daar zagen ze op tv de natuurdocumentaires van The National Film Board of Canada. Vandaar. Overigens dreigt ook Mike te gaan uitvliegen. Zijn vriendin had een baan bij een designbureau in Auckland, Nieuw-Zeeland en wil graag terug. Mike twijfelt. Boards Of Canada zou een breedbandband moeten worden, terwijl het jammen zo essentieel is voor hun muziek. Er loopt altijd een taperecorder mee in de studio. Maar voor alles is een oplossing, zegt Marcus stellig. 'Ik zeg altijd: laat je niet door mij weerhouden, doe het! We doen dit al zolang als ik me kan herinneren [Mike sinds 1980, Marcus sinds 1986] en het is nooit een reden geweest om onze dromen niet na te jagen. Als ik zou denken dat ik ergens anders een gelukkiger leven kan opbouwen, dan zou ik me niet laten weehouden door de muziek. Daarom heb ik tegen Mike gezegd: ik wil er niet tussenkomen. Als jij het echt wilt, dan beschouw ik het niet als het einde, nee, dan beschouw ik het als een nieuwe uitdaging.' Uitdagingen genoeg, voorlopig. Ze hebben plannen voor soloprojecten. Ze zijn in onderhandeling over een soundtrack van een grote film. Ze zijn alweer aan een nieuwe Boards Of Canada-plaat begonnen (ze hebben nog een contract voor drie albums bij Warp). Mike: 'De volgende plaat zal voor iedereen als een shock komen. Dit verwacht niemand van ons.' En er zijn zowaar plannen voor wat liveshows met band in het voorjaar. Maar dat gerucht ging drie jaar geleden ook. Sindsdien zwegen ze. 

Over de albumtitel, die zoiets als De Woeste Aarde zou betekenen (stilzwijgen). Dat laatste laten ze graag open. Er moet nog wel iets te raden overblijven. Al die 'dingetjes', zoals Mike ze noemt, plaatsen de instrumentale muziek in een context, ze brengen een lijn aan, een concept, zo je wilt. 'Zolang je bij concept maar niet denkt aan een plaat over de regels van het schaakspel.' Op Geogaddi waren de 'dingetjes' ontsproten uit de donkerste krochten van hun ziel, op al hun andere platen kun je ze herleiden tot een verlangen naar hun jeugd - het Leitmotiv in dit verhaal. De verloren jeugd, de tijd dat gevoel dat iedere adolescent langzaam kwijtraakt. 'Als ik depressief ben, en ik heb een lange geschiedenis van depressies,' bekent Mike, 'dan zoek ik altijd troost in mijn kinderjaren. Die weemoed is altijd aanwezig in onze muziek.' Eén ding wil hij nog over Geogaddi kwijt: 'Het was een project, It's its own thing. Een claustrofobische trip door een wereld vol paranoia en duisternis. Veel mensen verwarren de plaat met de mens. Wij zijn geen doemdenkers.' 'Vergeet niet,' zegt hij even later, 'dat we in de studio zaten toen 9/11 gebeurde. De laatste vijf maanden van Geogaddi vielen samen met de nasleep van 9/11. Het was een angstige tijd, het voelde alsof we terugkeerden naar de Koude Oorlog. Opeens bekroop me weer de angst die ik als kind al gevoeld had voor de atoombom. Ik denk dat iedereen van onze generatie dat gevoel wel kent. We ontkwamen er niet aan, het drukte ons gemoed. De toon werd steeds beklemmender. De sfeer, de samples, het heeft er allemaal mee te maken.' 'Bovendien,' gaat hij verder, 'ging ik zelf door een moeilijke periode. Het was een klotejaar.'

'Nu, vier jaar later,' neemt Marcus het over, 'lijkt die dreiging van 9/11 permanent geworden. De wereld lijkt permanent veranderd, blijvend onveiliger. Meer chaos en duisternis en paranoia. Als je dat dag in dag uit ervaart, ga je je vanzelf afvragen: hoe kunnen we hieraan ontsnappen? Hoe kunnen we die realiteit vergeten?' Mike: 'In plaats van mee te gaan in de psychose kun je ook een uitvlucht zoeken.' Toeval of niet, in dezelfde periode luisterde hij graag naar de eerste plaat van positivo's The Polyphonic Spree. 'Ik dacht: ik wil ook weer iets hoopvols maken' En zo werd het idee voor The Campfire Headphase Geboren: ze zouden teruggaan naar de tijd dat hun muziek nog simpel escapisme was. Terug naar Twoism, het debuut met zijn gekke zingende geluid. 'Twoism is waarschijnlijk de minst politieke plaat die we gemaakt hebben. Het is muziek om bij weg te dromen. Ook al is je leven klote en haat je je werk, als je de plaat opzet en je laat meevoeren door de melodieën, vergeet je al je ellende. Dat hebben we nu ook wee proberen te creëren: een luchtbel waarin je kunt opstijgen en wegzweven. Weg van alles. De nieuwe plaat heeft geen geheime agenda. Het enige wat hij zegt is: fuck all this stuff, zet het nieuws uit, zeg die klotebaan op, maak dat je wegkomt uit de stad, neem de tijd om eens terug te denken aan gelukkiger tijden. ledereen heeft wel een jaar in zijn hoofd, de beste zomer van zijn leven. Dat is ons doel: we bieden je een venster naar de beste zomer van je leven.' Marcus: 'Zie het als een hulpmiddel. Een tijdmachine. Een privétijdmachine. Onze muziek werkt niet in de openbare ruimte, zij spreekt tot één luisteraar tegelijk. Het is muziek om in je eentje naar te luisteren. Om in weg te kruipen. We bieden je een veilige haven.' Mike: 'A place to go.' Dan realiseert Mike ineens iets: 'Nu ik er zo over nadenk, dit is iets wat wij als vanzelfsprekend beschouwen, zozeer zelfs dat we ons niet kunnen voorstellen dat er mensen zijn die iets anders zouden willen bereiken met hun muziek. Maar veel mensen die urban muziek maken, of dat nu r&b of iets anders is, die denken precies het tegenovergestelde. Ze zeggen bijna: wat we ook doen, het moet wel van deze wereld zijn, het moet het hier en nu representeren, het mag niet te veel afwijken. Het moet geschikt zijn om in Gap gedraaid te worden. Muziek is voor mij een escape from Gap. Als ik een kledingwinkel binnenloop, denk ik al gauw: fucking hell, ik zou wel iemand iets kunnen aandoen, ik moet hier zo snel mogelijk weer weg terug naar mijn fantasiewereld.'

Terug naar de bossen van de Pentland Hills. Terug naar zijn vriendin en zijn dochtertje. En terug naar zijn broer. Want na enig aandringen willen ze het wel toegeven: Mike Sandison en Marcus Eoin zijn broers. Eoin - speek uit: lan - is Marcus' tweede voornaam. Ze hebben het tien jaar lang geheimgehouden. Het doet er niet toe, vinden ze. Het verhaal is de muziek, niet de mensen. De mythe vervaagt, de muziek blijft. Niemand kent ze, niemand heeft ze ooit zien optreden, niemand heeft ooit een advertentie of een videoclip of een tv-optreden van ze gezien (die bestaan niet), niemand weet wat ze precies denken, maar 200.000 eenzame zielen herkennen hun stille verdriet. Hun verlangen baarde de mooiste muziek van de laatste tien jaar. Vraag het maar aan Thom Yorke.

Boards of Canada article, OOR, October 2005.

Influences

Laptop musicians have got it easy: They know exactly what they want and how to go and do it. Mike & Marcus drift to and fro between guitar and computer, acoustic and electronic, between old and new, folk and avant-garde. On their new lp The Campfire Headphase, they fuse melancholic guitars with chrome coloured beats and synths. "We clearly feel the need to go in both directions", confesses Mike. "Every day, our hearts are somewhere else." Their influences diverge from classical to hip-hop, and from the psychedelic folk of the 60's & 70's, to curious Native American rhythmic measures. They're both classically trained pianists and can play guitar. Out of the two, Mike is the better drummer, while Marcus's first instrument was playing bass in a band. During the two hours speaking to them, the following names were jotted: Julian Cope, Bob Dylan, The Pixies, Cocteau Twins, Phil Spector, Wim Wenders, H.R. Giger, The Polyphonic Spree, Sufjan Stephens, The Incredible String Band, Butterscotch Rum, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, John Denver, Joy Division, The New Scientist (magazine), Zabriskie Point, Hieronymus Bosch, Aphex Twin, Autechre, My Bloody Valentine, Talk Talk, Stevie Wonder, Radiohead, Bibio, Fennesz, Alias, Boom Bip, cLOUDDEAD, Odd Nasdam, William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops I-IV. "But", Mike adds at a certain moment, "I can give you a list of 40 names, and you still won't even have 1 percent of the people who have influenced us." What is certain is that they're not listening to 'folktronica', Techno purists and "all the hundreds of unoriginal Autechre clones who've got no ideas for themselves."

Interview

They've never talked with a Dutch journalist. In any case, they don't talk at all. Performed since their entry in 1998 an average of once every three years. Keeping that same tempo with their albums. They live and work, self-contained in the woods of the Scottish Pentland Hills. Boards of Canada: Music's last mystery. They've just added another chapter to their myth, The Campfire Headphase. Koen Poolman travelled to Scotland to meet his heroes...

By Koen Poolman

Let's begin at the end: The Radiohead question. Without Boards of Canada's Music Has The Right To Children [MHTRTC] (1998), Kid A (2000) would have sounded completely different, according to reports. Mike and Marcus hesitate - "I'd never dare say that", "as if they haven't made other fantastic albums", "maybe they'd been listening to Aphex and Autechre." No, that success they refuse to claim. That Thom Yorke is an admirer of their warm, brooding electronica is enough. They think that Kid A and Amnesiac are beautiful records. However, U2 also appear to be fans. That leaves them cold. They couldn't care less about fame. Fact is, MHTRTC and its follow-up Geogaddi - both sold more than 200,000 copies - after Aphex Twin and Nightmares On Wax, the best-sellers in Warp's experimental catalogue - countless bands and producers have been inspired.

It's that their records get better as time goes by. They belie the cliché of electronic music being cold, unemotional, mechanical, 80's science-fiction movie music for tomorrow's world. Here is a band who do their best to make their sound antique, rickety, damaged even, preferring memories of a carefree youth rather than dreaming of a life amongst robots. Guitars, flutes, aeolian harps, drums, percussion, analogue synths and portable tape-recorders chosen above the newest software. A continuous association of folky atmospheres which demands your attention and renounces perfection. Human music that is not inaccessible. No beating pulse, rather a lump in the throat. A slight falter. A tear.

And then: A shiver. You hear things you didn't notice at first. Voices, messages, hallucinations. Whoever dives into the psychedelic world of Boards of Canada, discovers traces of occultism, religious cults, spies, numerology, mathematical concepts... These are hidden in titles, artwork, samples, the length of tracks, the total number of tracks, in numerous backward-masked voices, even indeed in audio palindromes, sentences which played backwards or forwards that sound identical. "The Devil Is In The Details" is the name of one of the tracks from Geogaddi. The lp lists 23 tracks (an enigmatic number for occultists), is 66 minutes 6 seconds in duration and 666 megabytes in size. It co-stars David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians in Waco, and Pan, "the God with hooves", Pagan God of woods and meadows, responsible for striking sudden fear in lonely travellers. At first you don't see them and then all of a sudden they seem to be everywhere. The magic Boards of Canada - operating out of a remote commune in the heart of the Scottish Pentland Hills, just south of Edinburgh, where they have their own studio - take it slow on the dark periphery. In all these years refusing to step outside. They've done only a handful of interviews, over e-mail, and after their entry with Music Has The Right To Children, stood three times on the stage.

An enigma.

Now they've finally agreed to do a face-to-face interview. One per country, 2 hours long. They hope to clear something up, about their new lp The Campfire Headphase, for example, but also of the wild tales of the mysterious BoC given about them. They want it known that they are 'ordinary blokes', not "mages bringing sacrificial offerings to the mountaintop." The myth had a bit to do with themselves, realises Mike. "If you keep out of the media so long, people begin to fill in the gaps themselves."

Mike is Michael Sandison, 34 years old, father of a one year old daughter. Visibly tired. Suffers sleeplessness and depression. Wearing a black jumper, jeans and trainees. A week's growth. Inconspicuous. Marcus Eion (32) is smarter, sportier also. Neatly trimmed beard, gelled hair. Evidently a keen snow-boarder. The ring on his finger tells us he was married last year. His t-shirt flashing the names or weirdo rappers Boom Bip and Dose One. Mike talks smoothly and easily, Marcus is more circumspect, giving explanations to Mike's story.

"The greatest misunderstanding", says Mike where he left off, "is of our humour. Most people miss the irony. They take everything we say literally." Almost apologetic, he says they're just interested in old cultures, religious excesses, scientific problems, everything that deviates from the norm. We shouldn't be looking for more than that. And no, they are resolutely no 'failed techno band' that you see much of on IDM-nerd internet forums. They've never wanted to make 'Intelligent Dance Music', "actually we've never been interested in dance music, techno or whatever. The world exists in a far off place from us. Since kids, all we've ever wanted to do is to make as much a racket as possible with every instrument that fell in front of us. We're not technokids."

Enter The Campfire Headphase. Another unpolished gem, with intimate synths and beats, and for the first time, guitar loops, which, held up to the light look good and slowly begin to sparkle. The light also reflects the image of a classic road-trip through the old America, criss-crossing time. Titles such as "Dayvan Cowboy", "'84 Pontiac Dream" and "Ataronchronon" (an old Native tribe) betrays something of the intention.

"The basis", explains Mike, "is a fantasy, a mind trip. You're sitting in the woods, spaced out around the camp-fire. It's dark and you're alone. You shut your eyes and fantasise over 18th century America. You loose sense of time. Hours become days, weeks. Strange things happen, inexplicable things. Leaps in time, transformations, a bit surrealistic, something that you haven't experienced before. It's a dream, you're a genuine cowboy. Till the music merges and changes, such as in '84 Pontiac Dream. You wake up, you can hear voices behind you, the heavens come crashing down, and you're in Central Park, someone playing acoustic guitar in the distance, and God only knows how you got here."

Marcus: "Utter chaos, a world without logic, that sort of idea. Do you know the film Zabriskie Point (Antonioni, 1970)? If you ask me, this record's captured the same atmosphere. It's a crazy road movie. Everything that happens has no logic, you try to discover a line, to find an explanation, and yet at the end of the film, you still don't know exactly what happened." Mike: "The central question is: How many of these experiences are real? Have we found real places? How many were part of a hallucination? Someone who's had a psychedelic experience knows very well, that some things can't be literally described, it changes each moment."

"Sherbet Head", one of the often beautiful vignettes BoC are so fond of, perhaps best describes the psychedelic experience: A head full of sorbet. A bit dizzying. Slight tingles. If the pitch-black predecessor Geogaddi was a bad trip, The Campfire Headphase is its counterpart: The good trip.

Geogaddi ended with "Corsair", 'the light at the end of the tunnel'; at the end of the good trip awaits a downer. The last 3 tracks are deep, very deep. Marcus: "Therefore it hangs longer." Mike: "I can't make anything that's completely optimistic." Especially the closing "Farewell Fire", a pastoral organ drone, catches you in the throat. They won't tell me who it was written for, but it can only be for a departed beloved.

Mike relates: ""Farewell Fire" is Marcus on keyboards, nothing more. He made it one night during a session. There are faltering moments and it really sounds like someone who, because of grief, isn't in a good state to go on playing. That's something you could never reach with programming. Although it's an electronic piece, it sounds very human and heart rending. Just at the moment it stops, it's like a faltering breath, like a voice that's just fell silent." Marcus: "Many people who make electronic music insist that it has to be sterile and mechanical... and futuristic" (laughter). "That's very simple. All you have to do is turn on the equipment. The art is giving synthetic sounds emotion. As if it's a voice."

A synth-line, Mike lets known, is written just like a vocal phrase. A vocal phrase that's almost forged. "The best singers have a limited voice. A voice like Bob Dylan, so nasal, trembling, not altogether clear, far from complete, yet brimming with character. If you ask a session musician to sing you one of their songs, it's technically perfect but soulless, without life. That is precisely our principle: It must not be perfect. We include intentional mistakes and damaged sound in order to let the music breathe."

Whoever hears a BoC record for the first time is amazed by the 'singing' sound in the background, as if the cassette wasn't shut properly. That's precisely what's going on. The duo swear by the sound of old tape-recorders that don't play so well anymore, where the sound drops out now and again, or is off-level, goes to slow, or just a bit too fast. They find it gives their recordings a magical tinge. It takes them back to the time when they made cassettes themselves, to their lost youth. Their debut lp Twoism sounds like a mispress, as though it was off-center. "Slow The Bird Down" from their new album has this quality as well. The 'singing' guitar in "Chromokey Dreamcoat" was recorded on a beach with the most fucked-up tape-recorder Marcus could find. He's also got a digital one. Seldom uses it. The melody from "Julie and Candy" was recorded with a pair of flutes, continuously bounced between the built-in microphones of two tape recorders, until little more than a sound, a foggy reverberation, a kind of siren, survives.

Nearly everything you hear on one of their records, comes from a flute, a guitar, a piano, a percussion instrument, an aeolian harp, or some other exotic instrument, yet the sounds are so carefully treated that they are seldom recognisable. The more you play with a sound, the more synthetic it becomes, explains Mike. Their synths are also faithfully vintage: Old analogue models with crunchy and crackling sound.

Never call their work nostalgic; Marcus dislikes it. 'Retro' is such a word. It's too easy, he finds. "We refer to things from the past, something tragic or beautiful that's lost, we try to bring it back. But it doesn't stop there: We try to go further, to suppose what would happen if that time still existed. We don't imitate the past, we rewrite it, changing the course history has taken. We go back to a certain place and time and tread an alternative way back in. We'll say: Make it 1977 and then take it somewhere. How would the music have sounded now, if, back then, we had beat a different path? A sort of parallel world." Mike: "As if the 90's had never happened, or something. Where would the world, the music be, if we'd skipped time?"

The 90's, with it's loud MTV culture, its unbridled hedonism, and its furthering globalisation, stand for everything that's wrong for the retiring duo.

They sacredly believe in a 'sideways culture'. Marcus: "Most people take the world as it is, they don't ever ask how the world exists, as if they're all going through a tunnel. If you look at the current state of music and you consider its roots, then the way to go is automatically seen as the only way the music could have been put down. Nobody realises that it's that presumption that determines what they do, they just follow that path. Look at it like a corridor. Everyone stands in the middle, making eyes for the exit. They consider the situation and know: We must come to the end of the corridor. What we try to do, is put another corridor next to it, one that you can perhaps reach via a secret entrance."

Mike shows himself to be an admirer of Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516), the deeply religious painter whose work carries the style and themes of his day. In contrast to the serene work of his peers, Bosch's fantastic work is about angst, horror and adversity. "His work is full of strange, spooky elements." Mike explains, "elements that don't have any explanation. They were fantasies. His work was surrealistic before surrealism was invented. His paintings were the passage to another world. There are elements in his work that shouldn't be there, inconsistencies, which rightly, make the work so strong, so stirring." He makes a parallel with MHTRTC, where naive children’s voices clash with atonal sound, chrome coloured beats and dissonant melodies. "The children’s voices brings it out. They make a big impression, they don't seem at home in such cryptic music. You don't know why they're there, they just are. They suggest innocence, but also danger. You just don't know what it is. Yet it somehow grips you."

"If you should make paintings about what happens on one of our records," says Mike, and he apologises himself in advance for the pretentiousness in the next statement, "then it should be a completely surrealistic work. Nothing should make sense. Everything's made up. And it should be something you don't have to explain."

Marcus: "If you have to explain it, then it's not art."

Rig a record up with hidden messages about God and Satan and mortals who feel that they are an ambassador of both, you wind up with an altar. That's what Marcus calls the previous album Geogaddi, an altar. He says, a bit with scorn. On the internet circulate the wildest theories and analysis about the three year old record. About David Koresh and his Branch Davidians, who, on the track "1969" and the ep In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country are consecrated (correct). Over the use of 'the Golden Section' and other unusual number sequences such as the Fibonacci-series in musical arrangements and song structures (correct). About links with the work of Bertholt Brecht (nonsense). About samples taken from spy-agencies during the cold war (correct). About Satanism (nonsense). About audio palindromes ("with technique, anything is possible.") Over the album title having something to do with signifying the desertification of the planet (quiet). They leave that last one open. There must be something left to puzzle over.

All the 'little things', as Mike calls them, place the instrumental music in context, a thread through it, a concept if you like. "As long as you think of it as a concept, not as you would over the rules of a game of chess."

On Geogaddi stood 'little things' originating from the darkest caverns of their souls. On their other records, you can hear the desire for the simplicity of their youth. The leitmotiv in this story. Lost youth, the time when life was simple and you were just happy, that's what they are looking for. The warmth. Innocence. That feeling that every adolescent slowly loses. "If I'm depressed... and I've got a long history of depression", Mike lets on, "then I always look for comfort in my childhood years. That sadness is always present in our music."

One thing he wants to dispel about Geogaddi: "It was a project. It's its own thing. A claustrophobic trip through a world full of paranoia and darkness. Some people confuse the record with us. We're no doom merchants."

"Don't forget," he says just after, "we were in the studio when 9/11 happened. The last five months recording Geogaddi were spent in the aftermath of 9/11. It was an anxious time and it felt like we were going back to the cold war. Again, I was reminded of the anxiety I had felt as a child about the nuclear bomb. I think everyone from our generation knows that feeling very well. We couldn't get rid of it, it affected our mood. The tone got more oppressive. The atmosphere, the samples... It's got everything to do with it." "Besides", going further, "I was going through a difficult period. It was a fucked-up year."

"Now, four years later", Marcus takes over, "It seems the threat of 9/11 has become permanent. The world has been permanently changed, permanent danger. More chaos and darkness and paranoia. If you experience that day in day out, you have to ask yourself: How can we escape this? How can we forget about reality?" Mike: "Instead of going insane you can look for a way out." Accident or not, at the time Mike was listening a lot to the first lp from positivos The Polyphonic Spree. "I thought: I want to make something hopeful again."

And so, the idea for The Campfire Headphase was born: They wanted to go back to the time when making music was for them simply an escape. Back to Twoism, their debut lp, with its maddening singing sound. "Twoism is probably the least political record we've made. It's music to dream to. If your life's shit and you hate your job, you put on a record, the melodies move you, you can forget everything. That's what we've tried to recreate again. An air bubble in which you can rise and fly off. Away from everything. The new record's got no hidden agenda. The only thing it says is 'fuck all this stuff', switch off the news, fuck the job off, get out of the city and take the time to go back and think about happier times. Everybody has a year in their head, the best summer of their lives."

Marcus: "See it as a remedy. A time-machine. A private time-machine. Our work doesn't work in public places, it speaks at once to the listener. It's music to listen to on your own. Somewhere to creep off. We offer you a safe haven."

Mike: "A place to go."

Then Mike suddenly realises: "Now, if I think about it, this is something that we consider a matter of course, so much so that we can't imagine that there are other people who should want to achieve something different with their music. Yet many of the producers making urban, and now R&B, or whatever, they think precisely the opposite. What they almost say is: What we're doing, it must represent here and now, it mustn't deviate too much. It has to be suitable to be played in Gap. Music for me, is an escape from Gap. If I wander into a clothes shop, I swiftly think: fucking hell, somebody should do something about this, I've got to get away from here as fast as possible, back to my fantasy-world."

Back to the woods of the Pentland Hills. Back to his girlfriend and daughter. And back to his brother. Only after urging, they add: Mike Sandison and Marcus Eion are brothers. Eion - pronounced Ian - is Marcus's middle name. They've kept it secret for 10 years. They think it's not important. The story is the music, not the people. The myth fades, the music remains.

Nobody knows them, nobody's ever seen them perform, nobody has ever seen an advert or a video or TV performance by them (they don't exist), nobody knows precisely what they think, yet 200,000 solitary souls identify with their quiet sadness. Their longing has borne the most beautiful music of the last ten years. Just ask Thom Yorke.

appendix

Orbital?

The producers of Chime, Belfast and Halcyon + On + On were also brothers. On the dark stage they wore their characteristic miner's lamps to light up their samplers and sequencers. The first lp's were OK, find Mike and Marcus, but now, to go through life as the second Orbital... no. Therefore they kept silent when Warp signed their family band. For 10 years, Marcus hid himself behind his middle name, Eion. Mike: "On all their records is written: by Hartnoll & Hartnoll. We find it nerdy." They wanted to keep on living anonymously and to avoid stories over the 'musical family Sandison'. They've got two other brothers, also musicians. One of them lives in Australia, the other in London. Mike and Marcus live in a small commune in the woods of the Scottish Pentland Hills, just beneath Edinburgh. They were brought up in London and Calgary. There they saw nature documentaries by the National Film Board of Canada on TV. From there... For that matter, Mike is also threatening to fly off, his girlfriend had a job in a design bureau in Auckland, New Zealand, and would like to go back. Mike has doubts. BoC may have to become a broad-band band while jamming is so essential for their music. A tape recorder is always running in the studio. Yet for everything there is a solution, says Marcus positively. "I'm always saying: Don't let me hold you back, do it! We've done this for as long as I can remember (Mike since 1980, Marcus since 1986) and it's never been a reason for us not to reach our dreams. If I should think that there was something else that could make life happier, then I wouldn't be restrained by the music. That's why I've said to Mike: I don't want it to come between us. If that's really what you want, don't consider it the end, think of it as a new challenge." For the time being, enough challenges. They've got plans for projects of their own. They're in negotiations for a soundtrack to a big film. They've already begun a new lp (they have a contract for another three albums with Warp). Mike: "The next album shall come as a shock to everyone. Nobody will expect this from us." And there really are plans for some live performances with a band in the new year. But that rumour went around three years ago as well. They've kept silent since.

TWOISM (1995, REISSUE 2002)

Brought out themselves (200 copies). Eight tunes full of strange, dreamy ambience, somewhat deceptive electronica. It's as if the record plays off-center. Influences of Aphex and Autechre are clearly hearable. Via the latter, their lp ended up with the Skam label from Manchester. Seven years later, which in the meantime was fetching 500 Euro on ebay, was re-released, the only one of their privately managed lp's and cassettes so far. They've played with the idea of Boc Maxima (1996) having a decent release. Up to now, the closet with the Music 70 demos has remained hermetically sealed.

HI SCORES (1996)

Mini lp for Skam. The first six tunes normally available. Dreamy electronica, abstract Autechre-like beats and electro. Classics: "Everything You Do Is A Balloon", the melody from which came to Marcus in a dream, and "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" (also on MHTRTC).

MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN (1998)

Debut for Warp. Appeared scarcely without a remark, now seen as a classic in the world of electronica, and the starting point for sub-genres such as indietronica and folktronica. The record with the children’s voices. They talk and count on and off, backwards and forwards. Mellow beats, nostalgic synths, psychedelic and intimate, some folky moods, heavenly melodies. The most beautiful: "ROYGBIV" (2:28) and "Olson" (1:24), one of the typical BoC vignettes that fill in the gaps between the 'real' tunes and the real preferred enjoyment. Synthesizer music that you can hear at the end of a TV program, just as the titles disappear from the screen. Chill-out-hit: "Aquarius". Them: "A record for outdoors on a cold, sunny day."

IN A BEAUTIFUL PLACE OUT IN THE COUNTRY (2000)

"Come out and live with a religious community in a beautiful place out in the country." An invitation from David Koresh and his Branch Davidians sect in Waco. Next to the title track, "Amo Bishop Roden" also refers to the sect; it is the name of one of the members who perished. Her portrait is shown on the back of the record, Koresh's can also be seen inside. Classic: "Kid For Today". The whole ep (4 tracks, 24 minutes) is brilliant.

GEOGADDI (2002)

A pitch-black record. Dark, sinister, almost devilish. Yet very melodic and organic. Brimming with secret messages, references, mathematical concepts, gematria. "Music Is Math" announces the beginning. "1969" plunges right back into the Branch Davidians. The track's duration is 4:19. It was on April 19th 1993 that the slaughter in Waco took place. After each message hides an explanation, it seems. Anyone who plays the record backwards will be rewarded. In "You Could Feel The Sky" you suddenly hear 'a god with hooves'; in "A Is To B As B Is To C" they reveal a real audio palindrome: 'all you love we' becomes 'we love you all' and 'I've been gone about a week' stays exactly the same! Strange, disturbing record. "Gyroscope" came to Marcus in a nightmare and that is exactly what it is: An actual nightmare. Them: "A claustrophobic trip through a world full of darkness and paranoia, but at the end, a glimmer of hope." A journalist: "Music just like a spiral or a fractal, becoming more detailed according to the deeper you go in." It is the album that first yielded wide recognition for the Scots, and also in OOR, chosen as one of the best 10 releases of the year. Hit: "1969".

THE CAMPFIRE HEADPHASE (2005)

The new record. It doesn't disappoint. 'A genuine Boards of Canada lp', they think themselves, with elements of Twoism and including subtle guitar loops. Dreamt road-trip through the old America. A lot less darker than Geogaddi. Never have sounded so cheerful, as on "Peacock Tail", their 'Stevie Wonder' tune' (Marcus). Be careful of the last tunes: A heavy depression awaits.

by Koen Poolman, OOR.

translation: liverlipslightentertainment, n© 2006.

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title	We Are The (Folk) Robots
author	Fabio Cagnetti
publication	LOSINGTODAY
date	2005/11
issue	08
pages	33-35

"We Are The (Folk) Robots" was an interview (In Italian) by Fabio Cagnetti originally published Nov. 2005 in LOSINGTODAY Magazine Issue 08. The English version of the interview appeared on losingtoday.com 2005-11-14.

This article needs to be transcribed. If you can provide a transcription, please update this article!

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20081025105615/http://www.losingtoday.com/features.php?review_id=490

interview by by Fabio Cagnetti, November 2005.

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title	Emotional Abuse
author	Erin Hutton
publication	Remix
date	2005/12
issue	Vol 07 No 12
pages	pg26 pg28 pg30

"Emotional Abuse" was an interview by Erin Hutton in Remix magazine, Vol 07 No 12, 2005-12.

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title	Peering Out from Behind the Curtain
author	Steve Marchese
publication	RE:UP
date	2006/01
issue	Manual 09
pages	28-31

"Peering Out from Behind the Curtain" was an interview by Steve Marchese that appeared in RE:UP magazine, Manual 09, around January 2006. Photos within the article are credited to Peter Iain Campbell.

Edinburgh has a hangover. The normal din of this bustling university city remains eerily suppressed by a combination of the preceding night's partying and a cold front quickly descending from the North. The streets are empty save some churchgoers and a stray dog. An old man in a faded suit hands lunch menus to nobody. The museum set up as a meeting point with Boards of Canada--brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin-- is still closed and won't open to the public for at least another hour. I am sitting in the middle of an unfamiliar place, waiting to meet two virtually faceless musicians with whom I have yet to directly speak. Could this scene be completly engineered or am I thinking too much into it? Yet for some reason, I know there couldn't be a more perfect start to a day highlighted by a sit-down with Boards of Canada.

The development of mystery and rumor is certainly nothing new to contemporary music. Stories of Paul McCartney's death surfaced after the Beatles released their thirteenth record. In 1989, nearly 15 years after the formation of Judas Priest, the metal band was put on trial (and eventually exonerated) after a double suicide allegedly caused by hidden messages like "try suicide" and "do it, do it" on the record Stained Cross. And although testaments to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon functioning as a second, synchronizing soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz started surfacing online in 1994, rumors of this pairing can be traced all the way back to 1979.

What Differentiates Boards of Canada from the rest of this smallish pantheon of mythologized artists, however, is the speed by which the duo have been able to invent and disseminate such intrigue. Much of it has to do with a pious and enthusiastic fan base, but in just a short time (over the release of only 3 full-length LPs) rumors--and some truths--have spread far and wide about the duo's religious proclivities, their use of embedded messages in tracks (sometimes known as backmasking) and secret tracks made anonymously for major pop stars.

Most of the speculation gained momentum due to the pair's reluctance to do face-to-face interviews. But now that they've surfaced in promotion of their new LP, The Campfire Headphase, it seems a lot of the conjecture has been systematically addressed in intervies online and recent features in European magazines The Wire and Groove. Even a fleeting peek behind the curtain shows them not to be the circuit-obsessed techno Bedouins protrayed by the media- but rather, a pair of well-adjusted, hugely likeable brothers who do not only finish each other's sentences, but who have also applied an admirable do-it-yourself philosophy to their unique pursuit of artistic perfection.

"There's never been a coordinated plan to engineer a blockade around who and what we are," says Mike Sandison, easing back into a chair at the coffee house where we finally decided to meet. "We wanted to make music that stood out on its own as an entity inside its own bubble. In the early stages we kind of felt like if we were going to out in magazines an start posing for photographs we'd spoil that."

And while the pair have managed to maintain an easy pastoral obscurity that is suprisingly only 40 minutes outside of Edinburgh by car, their music has gained increasing popularity worldwide- making it more difficult to stay hidden in the periphery of the limelight. "One of the worst things we've found is that by being kind of absent, people have a tendency to fill in the gaps." says Marcus Eoin Sandison (Eoin being his middle name, the two have recently revealed that they are in fact brothers). "When there's a hole, people will just make things up, it isn't so much that we're trying to be secretive. We just don't feel an eed to sell ourselves. As far as we're concerned it's not part of what we do. People write about us like we're these mountain hermits who just won't talk to anybody and we [wonder]; Where did that come from? We never said that to anyone."

People think of us as being one way," continues Mike. "We'd like to go out on tour in spandex and breathe fire but we just can't do that because we're supposed to be something else entirely," he jokes, duckin out of the sunlight that just surfaced through the quickly dissolving clouds. However, with a long day of interviews ahead it seems Sandison won't be able to get out of the light just yet. With the release of The Campfire Headphase, Boards of Canada have agreed to be willing participants in their largest press push in quite some time, prompting many to wonder, why now? "Isolation can get negative at times," continues Mike, "because you start to feel like you're being arrogant or that we're doing it because we hate people os much. But it's not like that at all, It's more about the fact that we don't want to ruin the art by making our lives more important than the music. Because our lives are just like that of any other artist: we're just trying to create something special."

In a way it seems like the self-sequestered twosome have enthusiastically embraced the chance to finally speak out, exploding from topic to topic like barges of fireworks wired together with small lengths of fuse. In mood, tone and content, a conversation with Boards of Canada barely echoes the consistency that governs their recordings. Instead it jumps from random subjects like Ted Nugent, Noriega (the dictator, not the MC), and an internet free lifestyle to Jerry Lewis films and trans-Atlantic politics with an effortless flow that defies the misinformed online reports of a disdain aimed at journalists. What captures my attention almost immediately is not how articulate the two are--I expected that considering the intricate language and presentation of their music--but how approachable and open they seem to almost any inquiry. A list of talking points I had prepared the night before is totally disregarded as the conversation steers itself amost invisibly toward one of the biggest questions that will be asked all day: Why haven't they played live in over 3 years?

Opening up a long stretch of conversation on the subject, Mike takes the lead "We've been under a lot of pressure to play of course," he confirms. "One of the things that comes through from the big boss man Warp Records is offers from festivals. Usually our respons to that is that we would be more comfortable playing a small venue that would suit what we do. Our live show as it was had ah eavy reliance on visuals--we were using video projections and monitors--and secretly over the last 3 years since we last played a gig we've started to develop a different show. We expanded the band and have friends who are part of the potential group if we go out on the road again. And we do intend to go out and play again but at the moment what we want to do is at odds with the offers coming in to play alongside bands like Foo Fighters and people like that."

Marcus, the quieter but by no means less passionate of the two, finishes Mike's thought and addresses more specifically what it is about Boards of Canada's sound that makes the prospect of a live show do tricky. "You've got to know the limitations of the music that you make. I always think of our music as being a lot more like headphone music, a brain music that you can drift into," he says. "So the idea of playing on a stage where you may be coming on just before a massive set by The Chemical Brothers doesn't sound like it would work. Earlier on though, when we were in transition from working with Skam to working with Warp, we did a couple of gigs that were label showcases with Warp artists. We have massive respect for guys like Squarepusher and Aphex Twin but we found ourselves doing shows with these guys and they were so full-on electronic and really full of energy. It wasn't really what we wanted to do at the time."

Finishing Marcus' thought, Mike chimes in for one last comment, the thought of which will certainly become fan-boy fodder for neo-prog and electronica lovers the world over. "It might have suited us better to be put on a bill beside Tortoise or somebody like that. And you never know, we still could end up doing it one day."

Talk of the new record conveniently follows, revolving around the idea for Boards of Canada that is perhaps their most important reord to date. In so many ways The Campfire Headphase marks a musical evolution for the brothers, but what makes it a truly compellin listen is its adherence to the band's emerging modus opreandi: To move forward--both technologically and philosophically--while maintaining a strong connection to the past. This time, in palce of the numerological Easter eggs and hidden Branch Daviddian references, Boards of Canada have enmeshed their music within the trappings of live instrumentation, placing them squarely in the middle of an intersection with infinite roads trailing outward. "A little part [of using the guitars] on the new album is to open up the scope for what we want to do in the future," comments Mike. "There's kind of a destiny for where the music is going to go but we haven't managed to do it yet. Maybe the new record will kind of open the door for future options."

"It doesn't necessarily mean the next album will be a Deep Purple record," adds Marcus jokingly. The brothers have an unexpectedly wry sense of humor that comes as a pleasant surprise given the melancholy and often ominous tones of their music. "We could go and make a record that's really electronic but we know now that we've got a platform to go in any direction we want. We're trying to make sure that people don't define us purely as an electronic band."

Being defined by labels or pidgeonholed to a particular scene or genre are two things that both Sandison brothers agree are detrimental to their music making. "We don't buy into anything," declares Marcus. "When there's something that we're really into we still try to have some objectivity about it."

"We're sort of cultural nomads," supports Mike. "I don't see us in part of a group - social or musical." Their publicly released records all bear an undeniable trademark of textured ambience and reworked hip-hop breaks and-like it or not-the winning combination has led to considerable praise by electronic music fans. But privately, hidden away in their private studio (which is rumored to house hundreds of rare and irreplaceable instruments), are thousands of tracks of organic, acoustic and experimental music that they hope to one day release under various pseudonyms. It's just one of a number of examples during the conversation that show both brother's love of simple, organic instrumentation.

Mike elaborates, "People may be surprised to hear that of the demos that get sent to us, we truly love the ones that are really homemade, sort of crap and unfinished. The ones that are rough around the edges. The demos that are really slick electronica-type things are the ones that get listened to once and put on the shelves."

"The thing with electronic music these days," says Marcus, "is that so much of it nowadays can be really good but it's so studio-based. So the moment you try and take it out, it's either played back form the laptop or a mess for someone who isn't able to play it live. The laptop performance thing has never been something that's appealed to us."

Continuing on the live element, Mike tells a story that will certainly add to an increase in message board chatter, "I think it's commetable that people are creating software to do that because at least it's better than someone turning up to a show and pressing play on a .wav file. We know a guy who is a very high profile electronic producer in Britain - very famous in some electronic circles - and he played a show in Glasgow one time and he told us that he had just played a cassette and stood on stage pretending to press buttons. And he thought it was funny. We were laughing but also horrified at the same time."

The mixture of humor, honesty, passion and creativity is something revealed only by meeting these two self-confessed reclusive artists in person. Instead, all most of us have to objectively evaluate about Boards of Canada is their music. It's a scenario the brothers have worked very hard to cultivate. Most importantly, however, and perhaps the chief reason they've surfaced for this brief set of interviews--besides dispelling myths of course--is to reveal that they are musicians with purpose and that music is but one way for them to achieve that purpose. "If you had to vaguely approximate a purpose behind our music," summarizes Marcus, "for me it would be like we are soundtracking the alternative place you might be right now. You wouldn't be dead but you'd just be in a different world; everything would be quite alien, so you'd wonder what would the music be like. What would you be hearing?" He continues, "I think perhaps the theme of what we're doing is instead of looking forward we are looking backward to the positivity that you might have had as a child. And we want to take it as a fuel and be inspired by it. I think of myself as the kind of person that even when I'm 80 I'll still be listening to weird music and playing computer games. I don't want to be the kind of person that gives up on youth." It's a sentiment shared by both brothers and, I'm sure, by most of the enthusiastic fans who hope to be listening to the "weird" music of Boards of Canada far into their eighties as well.

Boards of Canada on...

• Spirituality

Marcus: You have to allow some spiritual element when making music. But we don't mean that in any kind of mumbo jumbo faux religious way, because some people have misquoted us and made us sound like a couple of magicians or something. A lot of musicians don't seem to have that spiritual element because they are just working when they make music. Like they have another agenda and are doing it for other reasons. But the most interesting musicians seem to be the ones that are tying to go somewhere else with their music. A bit like he whole escapist or science fiction fantasy thing, it's the ones that look at music and think: how could things be different?

• Fan expectations

Mike: When you are signed to a label like Warp, you know that there's an audience of people out there buying [your music]. You can try to ignore it and try to imagine there's no one listening but there is always a feeling in the back of your mind that you have certain things to live up to regarding production standards. You wouldn't be able to get away with putting out an album with an 18-minute long ambient track in the middle of all pop and soul tracks. That's the kind of thing we do on our old tapes. We wouldn't have gotten shit aobut it and we would have just done it. It wouldn't have mattered. But now we have these considerations because we're putting out records that force use to think aobut the average person who buys them.

• Living in Canada

Marcus: At the particular age we were at when we lived in Canada you are more likely to notice the differences between where you come from and where you're visiting. The things that out like TV and music, the way people dress are the things that you carry with you when you leave that place. I thik it's been imprinted on us. For us, it was a very specific time--1979 to 1980 North American media culture--that left like a ghostly shadow that sort of stuck to us. We came away form there with a memory of the palce that was nostalgic to the extent that we've been trying to get back there ever since. Not geographically, but more like a feeling. By making music that makes you travel to that place.

• Fatherhood

Mike: Now I find that a lot of the depression about losing my childhood has gone by the wayside because I'm able to go back there with my little daughter. Kids do a lot of interesting things that you kind of vaguely remember doing yourself but have shutoff as an adult. You start to realize that life doesn't have to be about being completly conscious of the universe's problems. It can be really fulfilling if you just concentrate on a little microscopic version of life that a child sees. As a parent you have no choice but to occasionally lose yourself in a child's world like The Jungle Book of something. It's a bit like what we do with our music. It's like saying to yourself that just for this hour I'm gonna switch off all the crap in the world and lose myself in an alternative world. Like a good book or something. It's kind of how we see what we do with our records. Although it's becoming increasingly difficult the older we get. It's much harder to not put our political beliefs into the music.

• Stevie Wonder

Marcus: I know it sounds strange to say it but I've always thought of Stevie Wonder as an electronic artist. A lot of his bass line were done on synths. He's done project albums like The Secret Life of Plants that are all synthesizers, all done with keyboards. You wouldn't describe him as rock and it's too lazy to describe him as R&B or soul. To me, it's electronic but it's absolutely organic. Here you have incredible singing, incredible tunes, and amazing use of keyboards. Sometimes I step back and think aobut the sound of Stevie in the '70s and it shoes just how different electronic music can be.

• Remixing Beck

Mike: We were already huge fans of Beck's music and friends with the guys form Anticon. Dose and I are big penpals. I think Beck's producers asked the Anticon guys if they had a contact for us and the next thing we know we get a letter asking us to do [this remix of] Beck's. We said that we'd love to hear the track first and see what it's like and I said to Marcus at one stage that if this track is really slow and empty we'll do it. Marcus: I actually told Warp six months earlier to don't call us about remixes unless it's Beck or God.

Note: Original scans of the magazine article were provided by Twoism user nlogax and updated by user Csch

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1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/19991109112959/www.ednet.co.uk/~ehx/inter/boc1.htm
2. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20010305221908/http://www.forcefield.org/boc.html
3. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/19990221024531/http://www.virgin.fr/virgin/html/megactu/interview/boards.html
4. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20020328062626/http://www.oor.nl/OorNL/custom/Boards.htm
5. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20051102115340/http://pitchforkmedia.com/interviews/b/boards-of-canada-05/
6. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20051025001714/http://www.journaux.fr:80/revue.php?id=84112
7. ↑ https://www.twoism.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=61512
8. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20030801083515/http://www.earplug.cc:80/
9. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20060813154238/http://www.earplug.cc:80/mailer/issue54/feature/index.html