Revision as of 16:32, 24 March 2025

The BoCset refers to a hypothetical box-set or compilation of unreleased Boards of Canada material. The possibility of such a compilation being released has been discussed on Boards of Canada-related forums since the 2000s, and the band's online representative, MDG, has made a number of statements indicating that such a release has been considered by the band. However, as of 2025, no release of this nature has materialised.

Content

It has been extensively speculated to what material might feature on the BoCset. Material often considered likely to be featured includes:

• Pre-Twoism albums (Catalog 3, Acid Memories, Closes Vol. 1, Play By Numbers, and Hooper Bay)
• Outtakes from the Boards of Canada's main studio albums
• Soundboard recordings of live performances
• Remastered versions of A Few Old Tunes, Old Tunes Vol. 2, and Boc Maxima

Official Statements

• Massive interview with Boards of Canada, August 1998: "I've recently been archiving some very old material, some from the early 80s, when we were about twelve years old or something."

• OOR Interview with Boards of Canada, March 2002: "Rumour has it that Warp bought the rights to the old Music 70 recordings. Is that true? Do you think they will do a 'Mbuki Mvuki/Trainer' in the near future? Mike: Maybe."

• MDG, February 2005: "Warp and BOC have been in talks for a long while about putting out a box set of old tracks from these tapes and others, with new packaging and art, to be released sometime after the forthcoming record."

• Go Mag interview with Boards of Canada, November 2005: "Now, some consolation for the fans: aside from an EP for 2006, Boards of Canada's most ambitious plan for the future is to release a box set with a wide selection of material covering the period 1987 to 1995. "Maybe we will do it with Warp". Yes, please!"

• MDG, September 2007: "The band has been working through these archives for the past two years or so - whenever they've been free, in an effort to place the work into 'chapters'. But it's a huge time-consuming job in itself just to archive it properly and clean it up. (The analogue cassette archive alone took a year or so to work through). It seems there's a good chance that some of the older work (and the side-project work) will now get a release in some form, maybe in installments."

• MDG, August 2008: "At this point, the box set of early material is looking 99% likely to happen. I say that because it hasn't been finally compiled yet. There's a big archive to get through, the obvious tracks that were on various demos and mixtapes given out to friends in the late eighties and early nineties, but also a huge amount of unreleased material that hasn't surfaced so far. There are hundreds of tracks for every year from say 1986 through to 1995, and then for every record BOC have released there are a mountain of tracks that didn't make it onto the record. So the time involved is the only issue from what I understand. There's been regular debate across here about what goes on them and in what order etc. But if you can be patient, these tracks will come out, and a whole lot you won't have heard yet too."

• MDG, August 2008: "the desire is there with the guys to do it, Warp are very keen to do it, so it's been an ongoing process in the background for a while."

• MDG, September 2009: "As for the buried early tapes, as they were, the band don't seem interested in acknowledging them now. This is particularly because they've been working on a new exhaustive collection of their favourite early work, for future release, which would take in parts of many previous compilations including the ones that have previously leaked."

• MDG, February 2013: "Any and all early material by BOC was 100% written by Mike Sandison & Marcus Eoin. There's absolutely no question of "legal" regarding the BOC back-catalogue, and any hold-up with remastering or curating early work has been purely down to the time involved!"

• Mike Sandison, NY Times interview, June 2013: "A couple of years ago we decided to start collating and cataloging all our early recordings, just for ourselves really, to know that we could tidy it all up and hand it on to our kids someday, but there are literally thousands of tracks going way back into the ’80s. It’s a huge task, and this just seemed to eat up time. We’ve been working on new music all the time throughout this, so we have a lot of material to wade through."

Speculation

• On August 1st, 2024, Peter Iain Campbell posted an Instagram story containing part of a studio quality version of ATP-06 (also known as the "children" web loop). Some have speculated that this is a subtle indication of intent to release this track along with other unreleased material, however, there is no solid evidence of this.

• Around August of 2024, all tracks from A Few Old Tunes, Old Tunes Vol. 2, and the Random 35 Tracks Tape were added to YouTube's copyright database on behalf of Warp. Some believe this to be in preparation for an official release of this material, however, it may simply have been done to prevent YouTubers using those tracks as free background music.

• It has been speculated that the Random 35 Tracks Tape was intended to form all or part of a compilation of unreleased material which was shelved after it leaked. This theory contradicts MDG's statements regarding the leak, which described the origin of the tape as a "mystery", and the track selection as "just a mixture". Furthermore, the inclusion of the interludes "Blueberry" and "It's Too Orangey", which were already widely available on Music Has The Right To Children, make it unlikely that the tape was intended as a compilation of unreleased material.

See Also

• Statements from Hexagon Sun
• MDG
• Old Tunes saga

External Links

References