"Prophecy At 1420 MHz" is the second track on Boards of Canada's fifth studio album, Inferno. It was released alongside "Introit" on May 7th, 2026, as the album's lead single.
The vocal heard over the track is sampled from "In the Beginning Was Consciousness", a lecture by Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr at Harvard Divinity School on May 1, 2003.[1] The lyrics are spliced together from different parts of the lecture and Q&A.
Timestamps in the table below correspond to the referenced YouTube video of the lecture. Words and phrases from the lecture have been combined to create new phrases altogether.
1420 MHz is the emission frequency of the spin-flip transition of the ground state of neutral, solitary hydrogen atoms, the most commonly-occurring element in the universe. This frequency is part of a "protected spectrum", reserved for astronomical/extraterrestrial research; terrestrial transmissions on this frequency are forbidden. The frequency is often mentioned in the context of the "Wow! signal", an unexplained signal (with this frequency) that was detected on August 15th, 1977.[2]
The song premiere occurred 30 minutes earlier than intended on the album's Apple Music page, which allowed some users to listen to the single early.
Videos
The split music video for the song was released on May 7th, 2026, through the band's official YouTube channel.
It is directed by Robert Beatty and produced by Greg Burne of Big Active.