Revision as of 23:16, 26 April 2013

April 20th, 2013 marked the 6th annual Record Store Day, a global celebration of independent record stores for which record labels produce special limited edition releases and reissues and distribute them for release on this date. On this date, twitter user @imnopandabear found a mysterious Boards of Canada 12" vinyl in Other Music, NYC. This vinyl provided one of six messages forming part of a 36-digit key. Following this event, more messages have been broadcast over different media. Despite initial skepticism, the AtalantaFugiens YouTube account (known to be official) updated the annotation on its Julie And Candy live video to briefly show the key format at time 4:19, confirming the legitimacy of the record.

Key and Message Format

The term key refers to the entire 36-digit code. The term message refers to a broadcast which provides any number of digits from the key. The term message position refers to the position of the message within the key.

It is unclear at this stage whether the key represents a mathematical challenge, or an encrypted ciphertext, or a key for decoding some as-yet-unknown ciphertext. If it is ciphertext or an encryption key, then information theory (and in particular Shannon's noisy coding theorem) tells us that it is not useful information until the full message and its related key/cipher is known.

Key Format

The key is 36 digits long and numerical in nature. The message titles suggest that the key follows the format:
------ / ------ / ------ / ------ / ------ / ------
So far, we know the following 24 digits in the key:
----- / 628315 / 717228 / 936557 / ------ / 519225
And the message 699742 has been broadcast without a title to divulge its position. This message can be placed in the key once the positions and bits of the remaining message is known.

Message Format

The messages are distributed by 45 second audio sequences following a set format:

• a shortwave-radio-like noise floor with a numbers station sample being played quietly and noisily throughout.
• a musical callsign announcing that a message is ready to be played
• a 6 digit numerical message being read in a distorted, computerised manner

Each message is partnered by a textual 'title' of the following format.
------ / ------ / ------ / XXXXXX / ------ / ------
The 6 digit message is taken to fit into the marked six positions in the title. There is nothing at this stage to say that each message will be broadcast continuously, and the following title, for example, would not be impossible or unheard of in other schemes:
---XXX / XXX--- / ------ / ------ / ------ / ------

Message Distribution

Vinyl

The vinyl found in Other Music is a 12" record found in a sleeve bearing the following marking

BOARDS OF CANADA

------ / ------ / ------ / XXXXXX / ------ / ------

(P) 2013 WARP RECORDS LIMITED (C) 2013 WARP RECORDS LIMITED

The message on the vinyl is "9 3 6 5 5 7" and can be heard here. According to a store employee, the record was hand-delivered by a Warp Records representative and is one of only 6 in the world. One other identical copy has been found in Rough Trade East, London.

gabrielconry from WATMM messageboard shared this bit of additional info. [1]

The Rough Trade BoC single was put out on Saturday (Record Store Day) night by Noreen, the manager, who couldn't tell anyone else about it. It was deliberately misfiled under Techno and placed backwards as well. It then had to be removed at some point, as 'somebody' needed to get a photo of the customer buying it (and BoC it up with a blank face), so it was put back into the racks on Tuesday morning, waiting for someone to chance upon it. As they did.

YouTube

On the 22nd April, the AtalantaFugiens YouTube account again updated the annotations for the "Julie And Candy" live video to briefly flash for 0.1 seconds "ONE GOT FAT" at time 4:20 (video 1), in reference to the source video for an Everything You Do Is A Balloon fan video (fig 2). Also at this point the Boards of Canada YouTube account updated its top favourite video to "Everything You Do Is A Balloon" fan video. On that fan video, a comment from a YouTube account hellinterface links to the nuevas semillas private video (video 3) shown above with interesting graphics from little house on the prairie. That private video contains a link to the fourth video (video 4) shown above in which the new message is played (with digits 717228) and the message position is flashed on screen.

Moebius distilled the following timeframe using the YouTube API. The times are in US CDT.

Radio

On the evening (GMT) of 23rd April, Zane Lowe played the sixth message of the key on BBC Radio One. Upon consulting the show's playlist on the BBC website, it lists a track by Artist: Unknown, Title: ------ / ------ / ------ / ------ / ------ / XXXXXX. The message was 519225.

On the evening (EST) of the same day, NPR played another message on All Songs Considered. This message was 699742. The title is unknown and therefore the message position has not been confirmed, although when future messages are broadcast then this can be deduced.

Messageboard

The fifth clue was distributed on the early morning (GMT+2) of 26 April, on the Twoism messageboard. To officially confirm this, the Boards of Canada YouTube updated it's top favourite videos to three Twoism_(song) fan-videos. [2].

The clue was found on Twoism when DaveJ from Twoism discovered one of the rotating banners of the forum had changed, as shown: [3]

The overlay added to the banner shows an image resembling the csch video above. Running the unix "strings" command on the gif file returns the following:

GIF89a
csch,hexagon sun,boc,hell interface,boards of canada,music70,boctransmission,hexagonsun,fyt,twoism
http://snd.sc/11W7vpv
http://snd.sc/11W726Q
there is another...
GIF89ai

The first part of the strings links to two Soundcloud uploads called ∑, Greek uppercase Sigma, which means SUM in maths, with album art showing a signal mixer which sums two inputs. By summing the two Soundcloud files you can retrieve the clue: 628315 <flashmp3>628315.mp3</flashmp3>

The second part of the strings is a second embedded gif containing the message position of the clip, as explained by rdy2bz from the Twoism messageboard [4]

I'll explain how to get this image:

• take your hex-editor
• notice that all gifs are v89a, so they start with the letters "GIF89a"
• go to the offset where the soundcloud links are hidden
• notice the "there is another" hint
• which is followed by a GIF89a and some more binary stuff
• copy everything beginning from this GIF89a and paste it into a new file
• voila, the new file is the shown one.

By analysing the ID tags of the WAVE files from Soundcloud, we find the following interesting information:

Current speculation is that Cosecha, Spanish for "harvest", is the name of the numbers station project rather than the album. This would give meaning to the video titles "csch" and "new seeds".

Projection

Rough Trade Records tweeted the following:

• 9:22 PM - 26 Apr 13 "Wonder what this is going on opposite Rough Trade East?..." [5]
• 9:35 PM - 26 Apr 13 "20:35 | #BoC | ?" [6]
• 10:15 PM - 26 Apr 13 "So, this just happened, outside Rough Trade East. Vid to follow (technology permitting)." [7]
• 11:13 PM - 26 Apr 13 "This has been showing on a loop outside Rough Trade East for the past hour. Sketchy video c/o our Ellis. http://bit.ly/12viSHR | #BoC" [8]
• 11:27 PM - 26 Apr 13 "Ok, someone's currently trying to upload elsewhere. FYI, we had NO idea this was happening. This whole operation's being done by mobiles." [9]
• 11:34 PM - 26 Apr 13 "The #BoC loop from outside Rough Trade East is here >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZXFSngACXo … Thank you @AERTIME!!" [10]

aeiouer tweeted the following:

• 11:03 PM - 26 Apr 13 "I'm here! No audio i can hear. Video's of a desert, very sunny. Only shows the Xs in the code, 1st block [11]
• 11:11 PM - 26 Apr 13 "Don't think the live stream's gonna happen. Sorry. Just a video on loop, no new numbers" [12]
• 11:17 PM - 26 Apr 13 "There's sound inside. Can't hear it well at all. Callsign then numbers." [13]
• 11:23 PM - 26 Apr 13 "NOT ACCURATE: Sounds LIKE 59342_? Recording audio for later" [14]
• 11:28 PM - 26 Apr 13 "Field recorder goes in the mail box to the building" [15]
• 11:40 PM - 26 Apr 13 "Think it's safe to say nothing's happening tonight. Busy street on friday night, hard to hear [16]
• 11:43 PM - 26 Apr 13 "But there are numbers coming from the building" [17]
• 11:44 PM - 26 Apr 13 "Met three others trying to find out too. Good dudes!" [18]
• 12:13 AM - 27 Apr 13 "I'm going for a big bloody pint! Will check it out again tomorrow. Bad audio uploaded soon" [19]

Audio clips

Hint 1

------ / ------ / ------ / 936557 / ------ / ------ <flashmp3>4-936557.mp3</flashmp3>

Hint 2

------ / ------ / 717228 / ------ / ------ / ------ <flashmp3>3-717228.mp3</flashmp3>

Hint 3

------ / ------ / ------ / ------ / ------ / 519225 <flashmp3>6-519225.mp3</flashmp3>

Hint 4

------ / ------ / ------ / ------ / 699742 / ------ <flashmp3>2-699742.mp3</flashmp3>

Hint 5

------ / 628315 / ------ / ------ / ------ / ------ <flashmp3>628315.mp3</flashmp3>

Resources and Discussion

• 2020k WordPress blog
• Reddit /r/boardsofcanada
  • I got a really weird record today
• twoism Forum > Boards of Canada
  • Something strange just happened on the BoC Facebook page.
• freenode Web IRC - ##boardsofcanada
• Live log file of the IRC channel

In the Media

• NPR
• BBC 1 Radio
• Pitchfork (first vinyl)
• Pitchfork (second vinyl)
• Pitchfork (twoism messageboard)
• The Guardian
• NME
• Fact Mag (recap)
• Fact Mag (twoism messageboard)
• Stereogum