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|date=2005/11
 
|date=2005/11
 
|publication=OOR
 
|publication=OOR
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|issue=10
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|issue=#10 (Nov 2005)
 
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"[[The Last Secret of Pop]]" (original text in Dutch) by Koen Poolman
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== Bibliography ==
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* ISSN {{ISSN|0921-1616}}
 
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== Text ==
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"[[The Last Secret of Pop]]" (original text in Dutch) by Koen Poolman. ISSN {{ISSN|0921-1616}}
 
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=== Original ===
  
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== Original Text ==
 
 
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== Translated Text ==
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[[Category:Interviews|The Last Secret of Pop]]
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<onlyinclude>
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[[Category:The Campfire Headphase era|The Last Secret of Pop]]
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Boards of Canada article, OOR, October 2005.
 
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Influences
 
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Laptop musicians have got it easy: They know exactly what they want and how to go and do it. Mike & Marcus drift to and fro between guitar and computer, acoustic and electronic, between old and new, folk and avant-garde. On their new lp ''The Campfire Headphase'', they fuse melancholic guitars with chrome coloured beats and synths. "We clearly feel the need to go in both directions", confesses Mike. "Every day, our hearts are somewhere else." Their influences diverge from classical to hip-hop, and from the psychedelic folk of the 60's & 70's, to curious Native American rhythmic measures. They're both classically trained pianists and can play guitar. Out of the two, Mike is the better drummer, while Marcus's first instrument was playing bass in a band. During the two hours speaking to them, the following names were jotted: Julian Cope, Bob Dylan, The Pixies, Cocteau Twins, Phil Spector, Wim Wenders, H.R. Giger, The Polyphonic Spree, Sufjan Stephens, The Incredible String Band, Butterscotch Rum, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, John Denver, Joy Division, The New Scientist (magazine), Zabriskie Point, Hieronymus Bosch, Aphex Twin, Autechre, My Bloody Valentine, Talk Talk, Stevie Wonder, Radiohead, Bibio, Fennesz, Alias, Boom Bip, cLOUDDEAD, Odd Nasdam, William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops I-IV. "But", Mike adds at a certain moment, "I can give you a list of 40 names, and you still won't even have 1 percent of the people who have influenced us." What is certain is that they're not listening to 'folktronica', Techno purists and "all the hundreds of unoriginal Autechre clones who've got no ideas for themselves."
 
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Interview
 
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They've never talked with a Dutch journalist. In any case, they don't talk at all. Performed since their entry in 1998 an average of once every three years. Keeping that same tempo with their albums. They live and work, self-contained in the woods of the Scottish Pentland Hills. Boards of Canada: Music's last mystery. They've just added another chapter to their myth, ''The Campfire Headphase''. Koen Poolman travelled to Scotland to meet his heroes...
 
  
 +
=== Translated ===
  
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By Koen Poolman
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Translation by gated_enclave from the Yahoo group.
  
  
−
Let's begin at the end: The Radiohead question. Without Boards of Canada's ''Music Has The Right To Children [MHTRTC]'' (1998), ''Kid A'' (2000) would have sounded completely different, according to reports. Mike and Marcus hesitate - "I'd never dare say that", "as if they haven't made other fantastic albums", "maybe they'd been listening to Aphex and Autechre." No, that success they refuse to claim. That Thom Yorke is an admirer of their warm, brooding electronica is enough. They think that ''Kid A'' and ''Amnesiac'' are beautiful records. However, U2 also appear to be fans. That leaves them cold. They couldn't care less about fame. Fact is, ''MHTRTC'' and its follow-up ''Geogaddi'' - both sold more than 200,000 copies - after Aphex Twin and Nightmares On Wax, the best-sellers in Warp's experimental catalogue - countless bands and producers have been inspired.
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human music is not unapproachable, not being correct pulse, but a
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scrap in the throat, a light hasitation, a tear. We remind our
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carefree youth, rather then that we dream of a life between robots.
  
 +
We want to prove that we are ordinary blokes and no magician which
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bring man sacrifices on a mount top
  
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It's that their records get better as time goes by. They belie the cliché of electronic music being cold, unemotional, mechanical, 80's science-fiction movie music for tomorrow's world. Here is a band who do their best to make their sound antique, rickety, damaged even, preferring memories of a carefree youth rather than dreaming of a life amongst robots. Guitars, flutes, aeolian harps, drums, percussion, analogue synths and portable tape-recorders chosen above the newest software. A continuous association of folky atmospheres which demands your attention and renounces perfection. Human music that is not inaccessible. No beating pulse, rather a lump in the throat. A slight falter. A tear.
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Mike: if you stay away from the media for a long time, people will
 +
fill up automatically the breaches in your tale.
  
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And then: A shiver. You hear things you didn't notice at first. Voices, messages, hallucinations. Whoever dives into the psychedelic world of Boards of Canada, discovers traces of occultism, religious cults, spies, numerology, mathematical concepts... These are hidden in titles, artwork, samples, the length of tracks, the total number of tracks, in numerous backward-masked voices, even indeed in audio palindromes, sentences which played backwards or forwards that sound identical. "The Devil Is In The Details" is the name of one of the tracks from ''Geogaddi''. The lp lists 23 tracks (an enigmatic number for occultists), is 66 minutes 6 seconds in duration and 666 megabytes in size. It co-stars David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians in Waco, and Pan, "the God with hooves", Pagan God of woods and meadows, responsible for striking sudden fear in lonely travellers. At first you don't see them and then all of a sudden they seem to be everywhere. The magic Boards of Canada - operating out of a remote commune in the heart of the Scottish Pentland Hills, just south of Edinburgh, where they have their own studio - take it slow on the dark periphery. In all these years refusing to step outside. They've done only a handful of interviews, over e-mail, and after their entry with ''Music Has The Right To Children'', stood three times on the stage.
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Mike : The biggest misunderstanding is our humor. A lot of people
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don't see the irony of it. They take it to litteral. We are just
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interessted (says almost with excusing there selfs) in old cultures
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religious rattans, scientific questions, everything what deviates
 +
from the standard. That's it!! don't seek anyting more about it.
  
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An enigma.
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Actualy we never wanted to make idm, in fact we aren't really
 +
interested in dancemusic. We just took all kinds of instruments when
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we were kids and made a lot of noise with it. We are no technokids.
  
 +
About the campfire headphase:
  
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Now they've finally agreed to do a face-to-face interview. One per country, 2 hours long. They hope to clear something up, about their new lp ''The Campfire Headphase'', for example, but also of the wild tales of the mysterious BoC given about them. They want it known that they are 'ordinary blokes', not "mages bringing sacrificial offerings to the mountaintop." The myth had a bit to do with themselves, realises Mike. "If you keep out of the media so long, people begin to fill in the gaps themselves."
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the basis is a fantasy mind trip, sits itself somewhere in a camp in
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the bunch, spaced out around the campfire. It is dark, you are
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alone, you close your eyes and you fantasise concerning the america
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of the 18th century. you lose you time notion. Hours become days,  
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weeks. There event strange solicits, unexplainable things, jumps in  
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the time, transformations, a little surrealistic without you
 +
experience it as such.
  
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Mike is Michael Sandison, 34 years old, father of a one year old daughter. Visibly tired. Suffers sleeplessness and depression. Wearing a black jumper, jeans and trainees. A week's growth. Inconspicuous. Marcus Eion (32) is smarter, sportier also. Neatly trimmed beard, gelled hair. Evidently a keen snow-boarder. The ring on his finger tells us he was married last year. His t-shirt flashing the names or weirdo rappers Boom Bip and Dose One. Mike talks smoothly and easily, Marcus is more circumspect, giving explanations to Mike's story.
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Marcus: Complete chaos, a world without logic, that kind of idea. Do
 +
you know the movie : Zabriskie point? For me this album is the same
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environment, It is a lunatic movie. there happened of everything
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what is not logical, you try discover a line, find a declaration,
 +
but at the end of the movie you still don't know what now has in
 +
fact happened.
  
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"The greatest misunderstanding", says Mike where he left off, "is of our humour. Most people miss the irony. They take everything we say literally." Almost apologetic, he says they're just interested in old cultures, religious excesses, scientific problems, everything that deviates from the norm. We shouldn't be looking for more than that. And no, they are resolutely no 'failed techno band' that you see much of on IDM-nerd internet forums. They've never wanted to make 'Intelligent Dance Music', "actually we've never been interested in dance music, techno or whatever. The world exists in a far off place from us. Since kids, all we've ever wanted to do is to make as much a racket as possible with every instrument that fell in front of us. We're not technokids."
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Mike: The central question is: How much of these experiences are
 +
real? have they really taken place? how much executed itself in a
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hallucination? he who sometimes had a psyhedelic experience , knows
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that you aren't able to tell litteral what has happened, it changes
 +
every moment
  
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At the end of a good trip = the campfire headphase, there will be a
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downer, the last 3 tracks are going very deep. Marcus: as a result,
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it continues longer (it will stay longer with you, (dont know how to
 +
translate acurate)
  
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Enter ''The Campfire Headphase''. Another unpolished gem, with intimate synths and beats, and for the first time, guitar loops, which, held up to the light look good and slowly begin to sparkle. The light also reflects the image of a classic road-trip through the old America, criss-crossing time. Titles such as "Dayvan Cowboy", "'84 Pontiac Dream" and "Ataronchronon" (an old Native tribe) betrays something of the intention.
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Mike: I never could make anything that is complete optimistic.
  
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"The basis", explains Mike, "is a fantasy, a mind trip. You're sitting in the woods, spaced out around the camp-fire. It's dark and you're alone. You shut your eyes and fantasise over 18th century America. You loose sense of time. Hours become days, weeks. Strange things happen, inexplicable things. Leaps in time, transformations, a bit surrealistic, something that you haven't experienced before. It's a dream, you're a genuine cowboy. Till the music merges and changes, such as in '84 Pontiac Dream. You wake up, you can hear voices behind you, the heavens come crashing down, and you're in Central Park, someone playing acoustic guitar in the distance, and God only knows how you got here."
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Mike: Farewell fire is Marcus on keyboards, nothing more, he made it
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in one night session.  
 +
They wont say for whom they made that track, though it could only be
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for someone who past away .
  
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Marcus: "Utter chaos, a world without logic, that sort of idea. Do you know the film [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabriskie_Point_(film) Zabriskie Point] (Antonioni, 1970)? If you ask me, this record's captured the same atmosphere. It's a crazy road movie. Everything that happens has no logic, you try to discover a line, to find an explanation, and yet at the end of the film, you still don't know exactly what happened." Mike: "The central question is: How many of these experiences are real? Have we found real places? How many were part of a hallucination? Someone who's had a psychedelic experience knows very well, that some things can't be literally described, it changes each moment."
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The singing guitar in chromakey dreamcoat has been recorded on the  
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beach with the rottenest taperecorder marcus could find, he also has
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digital recorders though he is using those seldom.
  
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"Sherbet Head", one of the often beautiful vignettes BoC are so fond of, perhaps best describes the psychedelic experience: A head full of sorbet. A bit dizzying. Slight tingles. If the pitch-black predecessor ''Geogaddi'' was a bad trip, ''The Campfire Headphase'' is its counterpart: The good trip.
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Never call their music nostalgic, Marcus hates it, also retro is
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word he doesn't like.
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Marcus : we referring to something from the past, something
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tragically or something beautiful that has lost has gone. We try to
 +
take that back, but we wont stop there, we try to bring it "further"
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to imagine how it would become if it still existed. We don't copy
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the past, we rewrite it. We go back to a certain moment in time and
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place and take an alternative road. We say to each other : make it
 +
1978 and then take it somewhere.
  
 +
Mike admires jeroen bosch (1450-1516) a deeply religious painter,
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in antagonism of contemporaries, the work of Bosch was about : fear,
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abomination,calamity emergency. Mike: His work was about weird,
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spooky elements, elements where no declarations for were it were
 +
fantasy's, his work was surrealistic though surrealism didn't exist
 +
at that time.
 +
There are elements in his work that shouldn't be there,
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inconsistencies. This elements make the work of bosch so strong and
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seizing.
  
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''Geogaddi'' ended with "Corsair", 'the light at the end of the tunnel'; at the end of the good trip awaits a downer. The last 3 tracks are deep, very deep. Marcus: "Therefore it hangs longer." Mike: "I can't make anything that's completely optimistic." Especially the closing "Farewell Fire", a pastoral organ drone, catches you in the throat. They won't tell me who it was written for, but it can only be for a departed beloved.
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A parallel to music has the right to children, on what naieve child
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voices clash with atonal sounds, chromocoloured beats and dissonant
 +
melodies. Those voices from children don't belong there in such dark
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music, they make you feel upset in away. You don't know why they are
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there, but they just are around. They suggest innocence but also
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danger. You just don't know but it just seize you.
  
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Mike relates: ""Farewell Fire" is Marcus on keyboards, nothing more. He made it one night during a session. There are faltering moments and it really sounds like someone who, because of grief, isn't in a good state to go on playing. That's something you could never reach with programming. Although it's an electronic piece, it sounds very human and heart rending. Just at the moment it stops, it's like a faltering breath, like a voice that's just fell silent." Marcus: "Many people who make electronic music insist that it has to be sterile and mechanical... and futuristic" (laughter). "That's very simple. All you have to do is turn on the equipment. The art is giving synthetic sounds emotion. As if it's a voice."
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Their life aim is the desire to their youth, the lost youth, the
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time that life was still simple en luck was very ordinary. That's
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what they are searching for, those warmth those innocence. The
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feeling that every adolescent slowly looses.
  
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A synth-line, Mike lets known, is written just like a vocal phrase. A vocal phrase that's almost forged. "The best singers have a limited voice. A voice like Bob Dylan, so nasal, trembling, not altogether clear, far from complete, yet brimming with character. If you ask a session musician to sing you one of their songs, it's technically perfect but soulless, without life. That is precisely our principle: It must not be perfect. We include intentional mistakes and damaged sound in order to let the music breathe."
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Mike: I have a long history of depressions, when im depressed I
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always seek for consolation in my childhood. That sadness,
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melancholy is always around In our music.
  
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Mike about geogaddi: It was a project, its its own thing, a
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claustrophobic trip through a world full of paranoia and darkness. A
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lot of people confuse this album with humanity, we are no
 +
(cursethinkersÂ…Â…don't know of an accurate word, thinking about it)
  
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Whoever hears a BoC record for the first time is amazed by the 'singing' sound in the background, as if the cassette wasn't shut properly. That's precisely what's going on. The duo swear by the sound of old tape-recorders that don't play so well anymore, where the sound drops out now and again, or is off-level, goes to slow, or just a bit too fast. They find it gives their recordings a magical tinge. It takes them back to the time when they made cassettes themselves, to their lost youth. Their debut lp ''Twoism'' sounds like a mispress, as though it was off-center. "Slow The Bird Down" from their new album has this quality as well. The 'singing' guitar in "Chromokey Dreamcoat" was recorded on a beach with the most fucked-up tape-recorder Marcus could find. He's also got a digital one. Seldom uses it. The melody from "Julie and Candy" was recorded with a pair of flutes, continuously bounced between the built-in microphones of two tape recorders, until little more than a sound, a foggy reverberation, a kind of siren, survives.
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Mike continues: Don't forget that we were in the studio when 9/11
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happened, the last 5 months of geogaddi were at the same time with
 +
the aftermath of 9/11. It was a time of fear, feel liked we got back
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to the cold war. Suddently I felt this fear again, the fear of the
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nuclear bomb I had as a child. I think everyone of our generation
 +
knows that feeling. We couldn't escape of that fear, it influenced
 +
our conscience. The tone was getting more oppressed. The atmosphere
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the samples everything has to do with it. Moreover I was having a
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very difficult time for myself, it was a bad year
  
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Nearly everything you hear on one of their records, comes from a flute, a guitar, a piano, a percussion instrument, an aeolian harp, or some other exotic instrument, yet the sounds are so carefully treated that they are seldom recognisable. The more you play with a sound, the more synthetic it becomes, explains Mike. Their synths are also faithfully vintage: Old analogue models with crunchy and crackling sound.
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Now 4 years later:
 +
Marcus takes over the conversation : The threat of 9/11 seems to be
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permanent now, the world seems to be changed permanent, permanent
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unsafe. More chaos en darkness and paranoia. When you experience
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that day in day out, you will eventually ask yourself: How can we
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escape from this? How can we forget reality?
  
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Mike: Instead of going with this flow of psychosis, you can search
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for an evasion. (Coincidence or not in this period mike listened a
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lot to the first record of "the polyphonic spree") I thought I
 +
wanted to make something hopeful, optimistic.
  
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Never call their work nostalgic; Marcus dislikes it. 'Retro' is such a word. It's too easy, he finds. "We refer to things from the past, something tragic or beautiful that's lost, we try to bring it back. But it doesn't stop there: We try to go further, to suppose what would happen if that time still existed. We don't imitate the past, we rewrite it, changing the course history has taken. We go back to a certain place and time and tread an alternative way back in. We'll say: Make it 1977 and then take it somewhere. How would the music have sounded now, if, back then, we had beat a different path? A sort of parallel world." Mike: "As if the 90's had never happened, or something. Where would the world, the music be, if we'd skipped time?"
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And so arised the idea for the campfire headphase : they would go
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back to the time when there music was "simple" escapism, back to
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twoism.
  
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The 90's, with it's loud MTV culture, its unbridled hedonism, and its furthering globalisation, stand for everything that's wrong for the retiring duo.
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Twoism is probably our least political album we made. Its music to
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dream with, even if your life isn't great and you hate your job,
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when you listen to twoism and carry along with the melodies you will
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forget your misery. We tried to create this again with TCH : an
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airbubble where you can rise and fly away, away from everything.
  
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They sacredly believe in a 'sideways culture'. Marcus: "Most people take the world as it is, they don't ever ask how the world exists, as if they're all going through a tunnel. If you look at the current state of music and you consider its roots, then the way to go is automatically seen as the only way the music could have been put down. Nobody realises that it's that presumption that determines what they do, they just follow that path. Look at it like a corridor. Everyone stands in the middle, making eyes for the exit. They consider the situation and know: We must come to the end of the corridor. What we try to do, is put another corridor next to it, one that you can perhaps reach via a secret entrance."
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TCH hasn't got a secret agenda, the only thing it is saying ; Fuck
 +
all this stuff, turn of the news, get away from your shitty job, get
 +
out of town and take some time to think back about your memories,
 +
think about happier periods. Everyone has a great year in his mind,
 +
the best summer of his life. That's our goal: We offer you a window
 +
to the best summer in your life.
  
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Marcus: see the album as an appliance, as a timemachine, a private
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timemachine. Our music doesn't work in public spaces, she will speak
 +
to one person at a time. Our music is music to listen alone, music
 +
to crawl away, we offer you a safe place.
 +
Mike: A place to go.
  
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Mike shows himself to be an admirer of [https://www.hieronymus-bosch.org/biography.html Hieronymus Bosch] (1450-1516), the deeply religious painter whose work carries the style and themes of his day. In contrast to the serene work of his peers, Bosch's fantastic work is about angst, horror and adversity. "His work is full of strange, spooky elements." Mike explains, "elements that don't have any explanation. They were fantasies. His work was surrealistic before surrealism was invented. His paintings were the passage to another world. There are elements in his work that shouldn't be there, inconsistencies, which rightly, make the work so strong, so stirring." He makes a parallel with ''MHTRTC'', where naive children’s voices clash with atonal sound, chrome coloured beats and dissonant melodies. "The children’s voices brings it out. They make a big impression, they don't seem at home in such cryptic music. You don't know why they're there, they just are. They suggest innocence, but also danger. You just don't know what it is. Yet it somehow grips you."
+
Mike: Music is for me an escape from gap, when im in a clothing
 +
shop, I think very soon: fucking hell, I could possible strike
 +
someone, I have to get as quick as I can get away from here, back to
 +
my world of fantasy.
  
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"If you should make paintings about what happens on one of our records," says Mike, and he apologises himself in advance for the pretentiousness in the next statement, "then it should be a completely surrealistic work. Nothing should make sense. Everything's made up. And it should be something you don't have to explain."
+
About orbital:
  
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Marcus: "If you have to explain it, then it's not art."
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On all orbital records there was written: By hartnoll & hartnoll. We
 +
didn't like that really, we wanted to go anonymous through life and
 +
no stories about the musical family Sandison.
  
 +
We have 2 brothers, they are also making music, one lives in
 +
Australia and the other in London.
  
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Rig a record up with hidden messages about God and Satan and mortals who feel that they are an ambassador of both, you wind up with an altar. That's what Marcus calls the previous album ''Geogaddi'', an altar. He says, a bit with scorn. On the internet circulate the wildest theories and analysis about the three year old record. About David Koresh and his Branch Davidians, who, on the track "1969" and the ep ''In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country'' are consecrated (correct). Over the use of 'the Golden Section' and other unusual number sequences such as the Fibonacci-series in musical arrangements and song structures (correct). About links with the work of Bertholt Brecht (nonsense). About samples taken from spy-agencies during the cold war (correct). About Satanism (nonsense). About audio palindromes ("with technique, anything is possible.") Over the album title having something to do with signifying the desertification of the planet (quiet). They leave that last one open. There must be something left to puzzle over.
+
They have plans for soloprojects, they are negotiating about a
 +
soundtrack of a big movie. They are already started a new BoC album.
 +
They still have a contract for another 3 albums by Warp.
  
−
All the 'little things', as Mike calls them, place the instrumental music in context, a thread through it, a concept if you like. "As long as you think of it as a concept, not as you would over the rules of a game of chess."
+
Mike: the next album will be for everyone a big shock, nobody is
 +
expecting this from us.
  
−
On ''Geogaddi'' stood 'little things' originating from the darkest caverns of their souls. On their other records, you can hear the desire for the simplicity of their youth. The leitmotiv in this story. Lost youth, the time when life was simple and you were just happy, that's what they are looking for. The warmth. Innocence. That feeling that every adolescent slowly loses. "If I'm depressed... and I've got a long history of depression", Mike lets on, "then I always look for comfort in my childhood years. That sadness is always present in our music."
+
There are even some plans for liveshows in spring, but this rumour
−
 
+
was 3 years earlier a fact.
−
One thing he wants to dispel about ''Geogaddi'': "It was a project. It's its own thing. A claustrophobic trip through a world full of paranoia and darkness. Some people confuse the record with us. We're no doom merchants."
 
−
 
 
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"Don't forget," he says just after, "we were in the studio when 9/11 happened. The last five months recording ''Geogaddi'' were spent in the aftermath of 9/11. It was an anxious time and it felt like we were going back to the cold war. Again, I was reminded of the anxiety I had felt as a child about the nuclear bomb. I think everyone from our generation knows that feeling very well. We couldn't get rid of it, it affected our mood. The tone got more oppressive. The atmosphere, the samples... It's got everything to do with it." "Besides", going further, "I was going through a difficult period. It was a fucked-up year."
 
−
 
 
−
 
 
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"Now, four years later", Marcus takes over, "It seems the threat of 9/11 has become permanent. The world has been permanently changed, permanent danger. More chaos and darkness and paranoia. If you experience that day in day out, you have to ask yourself: How can we escape this? How can we forget about reality?" Mike: "Instead of going insane you can look for a way out." Accident or not, at the time Mike was listening a lot to the first lp from positivos The Polyphonic Spree. "I thought: I want to make something hopeful again."
 
−
 
 
−
And so, the idea for ''The Campfire Headphase'' was born: They wanted to go back to the time when making music was for them simply an escape. Back to ''Twoism'', their debut lp, with its maddening singing sound. "''Twoism'' is probably the least political record we've made. It's music to dream to. If your life's shit and you hate your job, you put on a record, the melodies move you, you can forget everything. That's what we've tried to recreate again. An air bubble in which you can rise and fly off. Away from everything. The new record's got no hidden agenda. The only thing it says is 'fuck all this stuff', switch off the news, fuck the job off, get out of the city and take the time to go back and think about happier times. Everybody has a year in their head, the best summer of their lives."
 
−
 
 
−
Marcus: "See it as a remedy. A time-machine. A private time-machine. Our work doesn't work in public places, it speaks at once to the listener. It's music to listen to on your own. Somewhere to creep off. We offer you a safe haven."
 
−
 
 
−
Mike: "A place to go."
 
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Then Mike suddenly realises: "Now, if I think about it, this is something that we consider a matter of course, so much so that we can't imagine that there are other people who should want to achieve something different with their music. Yet many of the producers making urban, and now R&B, or whatever, they think precisely the opposite. What they almost say is: What we're doing, it must represent here and now, it mustn't deviate too much. It has to be suitable to be played in Gap. Music for me, is an escape from Gap. If I wander into a clothes shop, I swiftly think: fucking hell, somebody should do something about this, I've got to get away from here as fast as possible, back to my fantasy-world."
 
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Back to the woods of the Pentland Hills. Back to his girlfriend and daughter. And back to his brother. Only after urging, they add: Mike Sandison and Marcus Eion are brothers. Eion - pronounced Ian - is Marcus's middle name. They've kept it secret for 10 years. They think it's not important. The story is the music, not the people. The myth fades, the music remains.
 
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Nobody knows them, nobody's ever seen them perform, nobody has ever seen an advert or a video or TV performance by them (they don't exist), nobody knows precisely what they think, yet 200,000 solitary souls identify with their quiet sadness. Their longing has borne the most beautiful music of the last ten years. Just ask Thom
 
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Yorke.
 
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appendix
 
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Orbital?
 
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The producers of ''Chime'', ''Belfast'' and ''Halcyon + On + On'' were also brothers. On the dark stage they wore their characteristic miner's lamps to light up their samplers and sequencers. The first lp's were OK, find Mike and Marcus, but now, to go through life as the second Orbital... no. Therefore they kept silent when Warp signed their family band. For 10 years, Marcus hid himself behind his middle name, Eion. Mike: "On all their records is written: by Hartnoll & Hartnoll. We find it nerdy." They wanted to keep on living anonymously and to avoid stories over the 'musical family Sandison'. They've got two other brothers, also musicians. One of them lives in Australia, the other in London. Mike and Marcus live in a small commune in the woods of the Scottish Pentland Hills, just beneath Edinburgh. They were brought up in London and Calgary. There they saw nature documentaries by the National Film Board of Canada on TV. From there... For that matter, Mike is also threatening to fly off, his girlfriend had a job in a design bureau in Auckland, New Zealand, and would like to go back. Mike has doubts. BoC may have to become a broad-band band while jamming is so essential for their music. A tape recorder is always running in the studio. Yet for everything there is a solution, says Marcus positively. "I'm always saying: Don't let me hold you back, do it! We've done this for as long as I can remember (Mike since 1980, Marcus since 1986) and it's never been a reason for us not to reach our dreams. If I should think that there was something else that could make life happier, then I wouldn't be restrained by the music. That's why I've said to Mike: I don't want it to come between us. If that's really what you want, don't consider it the end, think of it as a new challenge." For the time being, enough challenges. They've got plans for projects of their own. They're in negotiations for a soundtrack to a big film. They've already begun a new lp (they have a contract for another three albums with Warp). Mike: "The next album shall come as a shock to everyone. Nobody will expect this from us." And there really are plans for some live performances with a band in the new year. But that rumour went around three years ago as well. They've kept silent since.
 
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''TWOISM'' (1995, REISSUE 2002)
 
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Brought out themselves (200 copies). Eight tunes full of strange, dreamy ambience, somewhat deceptive electronica. It's as if the record plays off-center. Influences of Aphex and Autechre are clearly hearable. Via the latter, their lp ended up with the Skam label from Manchester. Seven years later, which in the meantime was fetching 500 Euro on ebay, was re-released, the only one of their privately managed lp's and cassettes so far. They've played with the idea of ''Boc Maxima'' (1996) having a decent release. Up to now, the closet with the Music 70 demos has remained hermetically sealed.
 
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''HI SCORES'' (1996)
 
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Mini lp for Skam. The first six tunes normally available. Dreamy electronica, abstract Autechre-like beats and electro. Classics: "Everything You Do Is A Balloon", the melody from which came to Marcus in a dream, and "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" (also on ''MHTRTC'').
 
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''MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN'' (1998)
 
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Debut for Warp. Appeared scarcely without a remark, now seen as a classic in the world of electronica, and the starting point for sub-genres such as indietronica and folktronica. The record with the children’s voices. They talk and count on and off, backwards and forwards. Mellow beats, nostalgic synths, psychedelic and intimate, some folky moods, heavenly melodies. The most beautiful: "ROYGBIV" (2:28) and "Olson" (1:24), one of the typical BoC vignettes that fill in the gaps between the 'real' tunes and the real preferred enjoyment. Synthesizer music that you can hear at the end of a TV program, just as the titles disappear from the screen. Chill-out-hit: "Aquarius". Them: "A record for outdoors on a cold, sunny day."
 
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''IN A BEAUTIFUL PLACE OUT IN THE COUNTRY'' (2000)
 
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"Come out and live with a religious community in a beautiful place out in the country." An invitation from David Koresh and his Branch Davidians sect in Waco. Next to the title track, "Amo Bishop Roden" also refers to the sect; it is the name of one of the members who perished. Her portrait is shown on the back of the record, Koresh's can also be seen inside. Classic: "Kid For Today". The whole ep (4 tracks, 24 minutes) is brilliant.
 
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''GEOGADDI'' (2002)
 
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A pitch-black record. Dark, sinister, almost devilish. Yet very melodic and organic. Brimming with secret messages, references, mathematical concepts, gematria. "Music Is Math" announces the beginning. "1969" plunges right back into the Branch Davidians. The track's duration is 4:19. It was on April 19th 1993 that the slaughter in Waco took place. After each message hides an explanation, it seems. Anyone who plays the record backwards will be rewarded. In "You Could Feel The Sky" you suddenly hear 'a god with hooves'; in "A Is To B As B Is To C" they reveal a real audio palindrome: 'all you love we' becomes 'we love you all' and 'I've been gone about a week' stays exactly the same! Strange, disturbing record. "Gyroscope" came to Marcus in a nightmare and that is exactly what it is: An actual nightmare. Them: "A claustrophobic trip through a world full of darkness and paranoia, but at the end, a glimmer of hope." A journalist: "Music just like a spiral or a fractal, becoming more detailed according to the deeper you go in." It is the album that first yielded wide recognition for the Scots, and also in OOR, chosen as one of the best 10 releases of the year. Hit: "1969".
 
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''THE CAMPFIRE HEADPHASE'' (2005)
 
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The new record. It doesn't disappoint. 'A genuine Boards of Canada lp', they think themselves, with elements of ''Twoism'' and including subtle guitar loops. Dreamt road-trip through the old America. A lot less darker than ''Geogaddi''. Never have sounded so cheerful, as on "Peacock Tail", their 'Stevie Wonder' tune' (Marcus). Be careful of the last tunes: A heavy depression awaits.
 
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by Koen Poolman, OOR.
 
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translation: liverlipslightentertainment, n© 2006.
 
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</onlyinclude>
 
  
 
== Scans ==
 
== Scans ==
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<onlyinclude>
 
<gallery>
 
<gallery>
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Image:2005 11 Oor No10 Cover.jpg
 
 
Image:Boc interview in oor by koen poolman 01.jpg
 
Image:Boc interview in oor by koen poolman 01.jpg
 
Image:Boc interview in oor by koen poolman 02.jpg
 
Image:Boc interview in oor by koen poolman 02.jpg
Line 247: Line 271:
 
Image:Boc interview in oor by koen poolman 04.jpg
 
Image:Boc interview in oor by koen poolman 04.jpg
 
</gallery>
 
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== Highlights ==
 
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*
 
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== External Links ==
 
== External Links ==
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<onlyinclude>
 
* ''[http://www.oor.nl/ OOR]'' #10 (October 2005), pp. 65-68 [[http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/boards-of-canada/message/5011],[http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/boards-of-canada/message/5013]] [http://www.barneum.com/twoism/viewtopic.php?t=227]  
 
* ''[http://www.oor.nl/ OOR]'' #10 (October 2005), pp. 65-68 [[http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/boards-of-canada/message/5011],[http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/boards-of-canada/message/5013]] [http://www.barneum.com/twoism/viewtopic.php?t=227]  
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</onlyinclude>
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== References ==
 
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<references />
 
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[[Category: Interviews]]
 
[[Category: Interviews]]
 
[[Category: The Campfire Headphase era]]
 
[[Category: The Campfire Headphase era]]

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