Revision as of 03:54, 17 September 2007

Boards of Canada are a Scottish electronic music group. At present, the band composes the brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin Sandison, although there have been as many as twelve members at one point.

The Sandison brothers were both born in Scotland, but moved to Canada at an early age. It's arguable that without this move, Boards of Canada would not exist; the sense of displacement and nostalgia in the music that seems to be mentioned in every review, and obviously the band's namesake, the National Film Board of Canada all seem to hark back to a period in the late seventies and early eighties when there were psychedelic videos on Sesame Street, and a cold war was looming.

At present, the duo live in Scotland again, working out of the Hexagon Sun Studio.

Family relation

Before their 2005 interview with Pitchfork, Michael and Marcus were seen as just two friends with a mutual appreciation for music and the art of music creation. They had often talked about their youth together, creating ramshackle musical projects with buddies and by themselves and how they met at a young age. However, during an interview (see above) with Pitchfork Media, they revealed that they both are infact brothers. The reason behind hiding this fact was that they did not want to be seen as just another brotherly-owned electronic band. An example of this was Orbital, another influential electronic band powered by Paul and Phil Hartnoll.

In light of their brotherhood, it has often been assumed that Eoin is Marcus's middle name and that his full name should be "Marcus Eoin Sandison". However, this is purely conjecture; there is no known evidence supporting it. It is not unknown for two brothers to have different last names; for example, they may be half-brothers, each with a different father and hence a different family name.

Regardless of whether "Marcus Eoin Sandison" is his full name, he has consistently used the name "Marcus Eoin" on all known Boards of Canada releases, including the Trans Canada Highway EP that was issued well after the Pitchfork interview was published.

Recording history, commercially known work

Boards of Canada's commercially known and full-length discography begins with their smash-hit album Music Has the Right to Children. Being dubbed one of the greatest creations in electronic music history, Music Has the Right to Children introduced many to Boards of Canada and left awful big shoes for the duo to fill for their next album. During the time between Music Has the Right to Children and In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country, there was an EP named Peel Session. It was a recording of the broadcast on BBC Radio 1 on July 21, 1998 and was released on It was released on January 11, 1999. Two years after their first full-length album was released, they shipped out In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country. In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country was a four track EP that first made mention of the mysterious Branch Davidian group that Boards of Canada are so fond of remarking upon in their songs and albums. Two of its songs have to do with the group. The duos next release, on February 18, 2002, was the fascinating Geogaddi. Geogaddi's stellar kaleidoscopic art work laviously coats the album cover on all of the versions but its truely magnificent on the triple vinyl set. Within the gatefold package is three sleeves with an array of hexagonally-styled artwork with different images each side. Many would agree that this is what twelve inches of free space is really for.

Interestingly Geogaddi was not a fan favorite from the beginning. With many still hung onto Music Has the Right to Children, reviews looked down on Michael and Marcus' sophomore album as "under-produced" or not as good as their last album. Despite this, the album has mystified listeners with its large amounts of hidden details, subtle hints towards cosmic entities and kaleidoscopic imagery, Geogaddi is now held as one of the duos best albums to date, auditorially and visually. Jump a couple years into the future to 2005 where Boards of Canada finally released their first album in three years. The Campfire Headphase made two milestones: it incorporated guitars and lacked the trademark laughter. Instead of kids playing and laughing and educational tunes chiming there was the sound of an untuned, poorly-kempt guitar to create a totally new sound for Boards of Canada. Some welcomed this change, while others disagreed with it, citing the difference between this and their early, "better" work.

Pre-commercially known work

Besides their successful full-length albums, Boards of Canada also have an extensive list of early work. The assorted creations date back to the 1980s and most information regarding them is widely available. This includes album artwork and titles, song lengths and times and so on. Although at present most of this work has never been released to the general public and may never be heard by people other than the brothers friends and family. However, there has been rumors that they actually may release a boxset with their earlier work in it but this is all purely skeptical.

Possibly the most well known early album was Twoism. An album with a strong fan following, Twoism was the reason the duo received their record deal. Sean Booth, from Autechre, brought Twoism to the attention of Skam Records president Andy Maddocks and it took off from there.

Lyrics, garbled speech and sounds

Boards of Canada utilize many tricks and sounds during the creation of their albums. Most of the assorted sounds used went on later to become trademarks of the band and give them reason for their "nostalgic" label. They also use many lyrics in their albums ranging from one-liners to full paragraphs. Most of their speech bits are words that are simple or things you would hear in movies literally. But most of the other lyrics are equally as garbled, cut-up, destroyed, mixed or reversed.

One of the more prominant methods in the production of their albums is making them sound as if they came right off an old educational program from the 1970s. Being born during the early '70s and growing up on its shows, Michael and Marcus delight in bringing back old memories with imitating the faint, childish and artificial sounds of the time.

List of samples used by Boards of Canada

Live sets

As a band, Michael and Marcus have only played a handful of live shows. But what makes these shows so special is that besides playing original, well-loved songs, they often also play never before heard, unnamed songs. Some of their most fascinating and finest songs are played during these live shows.

The show with the largest amount of unreleased work is their 2001 performance during All Tomorrow's Parties. Encompassing five unknown songs and seven known, this collection displays what Boards of Canada really has in their unreleased music rack.

Discography

See Discography

Interviews

See Interviews

Videos

See Videos

Related pages

• EHX -- Electronic Audio Artform in The Capital, website by The Cosmic Crofter
• Equipment
• Statements from Hexagon_Sun -- From time to time, certain trusted representatives of Hexagon Sun post comments on various message boards.
• IDM mailing list
• RedMoon -- A timeline of events
• The Cosmic Crofter -- The webmaster of the EHX website, home to the earliest Boards of Canada web page.
• Trans Canada Highway Microsite
• Yahoo! group