Early vs. Late Releases
Boards of Canada's discography essentially falls in two camps.
- The well-known releases that followed after the duo were signed, first to SKAM and then to Warp Records, which can be purchased in any decent record shop.
- The releases which precede this, of which original copies are exceptionally rare. Much of the knowledge we have of the latter is due to The Cosmic Crofter's webpage, which is now defunct.
- The exceptions: copies of BoC Maxima and the "Old Tunes" tapes which are almost certainly legitimate are readily available on the p2p networks.
- These older items are NOT AVAILABLE; only friends and family of BoC have heard them.
- In addition, three extracts of genuine old tracks came from a BoC-related website that no longer exists. They are: "duffy" (extract) (0:24), Wouldn't You Like To Be Free (extract) (0:56), circle (extract) (0:35), duffy is a gentle and innocent track a little bit similar to Melissa Juice; "wouldn't you like to be free?" features massed guitars; "circle" has slowly changing high-pitched glacial tones, fitting the Alaskan theme of the album it comes from.
Fakes
Many albums which purport to be other rare releases are commonplace too, but almost without exception, these have proven to be fakes of varying qualities so far.
- Among the fakes, the most common are "eno test" and "parson", wrongly taken to be by Marumari and BoC, whereas they are by Marumari alone. A few other such mis-labelled tracks go around from time to time.
- "Stry Craty Bya" (as seen here, for instance) is actually "eno test".
- Other fakes include a longer version of "circle" which sounds nothing like the genuine short extract. "trillions" (3:31) is a fake, as is "treeline" '(1:12).
- Another set of fake MP3s that went around were called "nskino", "gridlock", "lavender trapezoids", "golden hinterland", "rhomboid", and maybe some more.
- We've been told that these are mislabeled tracks by CiM "nskino" is really "disco alta", "rhomboid" is really isempty'", and so on (thanks, MCBPete). With any luck, the fakes will eventually stop being labelled as BoC.
- "Slow Bicycle", a song by múm, is often mislabeled as "Seward Leaf".
- A recent fake that surfaced is the track "Sur Round [1], [2]--Fredd-E 15:00, 25 August 2008 (CEST)
- A track by the name of "Chameleon" was featured on iTunes a couple of days at the end of October 2010.
Rare/Early Releases
General Releases
Albums
Eps and 12"s
- Twoism: 1995, Cassette + LP (100 copies originally printed, now many), BOARD1
- Hi Scores: December 1996, LP, SKA008
- Aquarius: 5 January 1998, 7" LP (limited to 500 copies), KMAS001
- Peel Session: 15 January 1999, CD + LP, WAP114
- In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country: 17 November 2000, sky-blue LP, WAP144
- Trans Canada Highway: 29 May 2006, CD + Enhanced CD + EP+ Promotional copies, WAP200
Promotional Releases
Bootleg Releases
Remixes
Remixes by BoC
Remixes of BoC
Notes
- Several bootleg remixes of BoC tracks also exist, but are not listed here.
- ROYGBIV (Alpha Quest Mix) was a custom edit by BoC for an independent film. Not intended to be released, the mix was leaked onto the internet.
Tracks On Compilations
As Boards of Canada
- Korona : Dec 1996. 12". Limited Edition. MASK100.
- Orange Romeda : 29 June 1998. CD + 12". WAP100CD + WAP100.
- Sixtyniner : July 1998. 7". Limited 500 copies. DISKONO001X.
As Hell Interface
The Hell Interface side-project seems to be more in the nature of a remix project than Boards of Canada proper. The works released under the HI name are: remixes of Colonel Abrams' Trapped and of Midnight Star's Midas Touch, and a strange little speech-only track called The Story of Xentrix. Can this last track be described as a remix? Most of the speech seems to be synthesized; however, the last few words sound rather different - perhaps from another source (just speculation).
There used to be link here to an animated trailer here, for a program called "Zentrix", which was taken down after a while. By request, here it is again (be aware that the trailer is not necessarily related to the Hell Interface track, except by the similarity of names). The trailer can be found at the Zentrix site [5].
Produced by BoC for Others
Live Bootlegs
An overview of Boards of Canada's live set geographical locations can be seen here.
Some of those performances were bootlegged:
Others
Radio Shows
BMI Repertoire search results
The following track titles returned by a BMI Repertoire search for "Michael Sandison" do not appear in the track listing of any known BoC or Hell Interface release: