Boards of Canada

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Boards of Canada
File:Bocf1.jpg
Background information
Years active1987 – present
MembersMichael Sandison
Marcus Eoin Sandison

Boards of Canada are a Scottish electronic music duo comprised of brothers Michael Sandison (b. 14 July 1971) and Marcus Eoin (Sandison) (b. 27 May 1973). They have released a number of works, most notably Music Has the Right to Children and Geogaddi, with little advertising and few interviews. Their sound has frequently made reference to sounds of the 1970s and the 1980s. It recalls, amongst other things, the warm, scratchy, artificial sounds of 1970s television, and indeed, band members Eoin and Sandison admit to being inspired by the documentary films of the National Film Board of Canada. The duo have recorded a few minor works as Hell Interface.

Early Boards of Canada (1970s-1995)

Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin experimented with creating music together through their teens. Growing up in musical families, they began playing instruments at a young age, and experimenting with recording techniques at around 10-years-old. Using tape machines they experimented with laying cut-up samples of found sounds over compositions of their own. Although they had made music together as children, "Boards of Canada" did not exist until much later.

The band would have a nebulous roster throughout its history, encompassing at least fourteen different core members and an unknown number of collaborators.

Boards of Canada have said they "began writing and playing music in a more serious way at some point around 1987". They go on to say, "At first, we experimented without setting ourselves any questions, with whatever means were available to us, then we worked a lot with other musicians and with real instruments, which brought more complexity into our music. Five years ago [1993], we sounded a lot more Gothic, much closer to experimental rock, with the occasional vocal. Though it was heading for electronic music; already we were sampling our own instruments. Then we went back to something closer to our original spirit: simple and instinctive, the only difference being that from then on, we could use all the wonders of digital technology, and so it was a lot easier to experiment and to get what we wanted" [VM].

By 1989, the band had been reduced to Michael and Marcus. In the early 1990s, a number of collaborations took place and the band was putting on small, fairly regular shows among the "Hexagon Sun" collective. In early 2000, the official website for the band, Music70.com, has removed the early discography of Boards of Canada, some information has been preserved by fans. The early tape releases of the band include "Play By Numbers," "Acid Memories," "Hooper Bay," and the earliest known release by the band is titled "catalog 3." None of the material from those days is readily available, and judging from the fact that the official BoC sources ignore the very existence thereof, there is little hope for the early music of the band to ever be released in the future.

Boards of Canada from Twoism (1995-present)

Twoism was released 1995 on their own Music70 label. It was a self-financed cassette and LP distributed privately. Though not a widespread commercial release, it was considered of such high quality to be subsequently re-pressed in 2002 and serves as a demarcation point into more professional releases. Also in that year, their Edinburgh studio was christened Hexagon Sun.

The precursor to Music Has the Right to Children was released in 1996. Titled Boc Maxima, it was a semi-private release that is notable for being a full-length album. Boc Maxima's work was later used for Music…, with which it shares many songs, though there were also a number of additions and subtractions. Boards of Canada's first commercial release occurred after attracting the attention of Autechre's Sean Booth of the English label Skam Records, one of many people sent a demo EP. Skam released what was considered their first "findable" work, Hi Scores, in 1996. Prior to that, their distribution had been limited to a small number of releases (mostly cassette-only) passed among friends and family.

Another collection of prior and new songs was released as the seminal full-length album that many consider to be their real debut, Music Has The Right To Children, in 1998. Many consider this record to be a masterpiece, while others point out that much of its tone has been obviously inspired from other Warp Records luminaries, such as Autechre. Nevertheless, the popularity of the record was substantial enough to start a wave of "sound-alikes," a few of which went on to find their own sound and become established in their own right.

John Peel featured Boards of Canada on his BBC Radio 1 program in January of 1998. The session featured two remixes from Music Has the Right to Children—"Aquarius (Version 3)" and "Olson (Version 3)"—along with the tracks "Happy Cycling" and "XYZ". "Happy Cycling" was later edited and appended to the United States release of Music Has the Right To Children (1999, Matador), and to the subsequent worldwide re-release in 2004 on Warp. Excluding "XYZ", the set was released on a Warp Records CD titled Peel Session.

Boards of Canada also performed live a few times, once at the Warp Records 10th Anniversary Party, then the Warp Lighthouse Party and finally during the 2001 All Tomorrow's Parties festival.

Boards of Canada released a four-track EP In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country in November 2000, their first original release in two years. The title had come from a recruiting video made by the Branch Davidians. The song "In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country" features the repeated vocals "Come out, and live in a religious community in a beautiful place out in the country." Another, "Amo Bishop Roden", is named after the Branch Davidian member of the same name. The full-length album Geogaddi was released in 2002. It was described by Sandison as "a record for some sort of trial-by-fire, a claustrophobic, twisting journey that takes you into some pretty dark experiences before you reach the open air again." The album has a darker, more complex, and fuller sound than Music Has the Right to Children.

Michael Sandison's first child, a girl, was born in July of 2004. Boards of Canada members Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin currently live a few miles outside Edinburgh, Scotland.

Their third album for Warp, The Campfire Headphase, was released on 17 October 2005 (18 October in the United States).


Influences

"We love artists like Joni Mitchell and The Incredible String Band. There's a sort of purity of sound that they have, and I guess we are striving for that ourselves, in our own way. We actually record a fair bit of music that is in that direction, though it's not been released yet. Most of our musical influences are things like this, not electronic music." Sandison, [OOR]

"We have all the Stringband records! In fact, they come from the same place where we live now. We see them from time to time. So I guess our rural sensibilities are similar. Personally, I think they are one of the most important and underrated bands in the past forty years of music. They influenced so many other artists yet they never get due credit." Eoin, [OOR]

"We've touched upon the theme of lost childhood a few times because it's something personal to me that gives me real inspiration through its sadness. I think sometimes the best way to get inspiration is to face up to the things that make you very sad in your life, and use them." Sandison, [OOR]

"It's important to leave a certain space there for the listener's imagination." Eoin, [OOR]

"The Beatles really became enthralling to us through their psychedelism." BOC, VM

"Psychedelic experiences lead in this direction; they help us to see things in terms of numbers and their forms, of structures, as if the music was made out of crystals." Virgin Megaweb

Sound and methods

Boards of Canada's unique sound is a product of their strong use of analogue equipment, mix of instrumental and synthetic sounds, use of often unrecognizably distorted samples, use of live and radio or film lyrics, and their layering and blending of these elements.

"A lot of the synthetic-sounding things you hear are actually recordings of us playing other instruments, pianos, flutes or twanging guitar strings or field sounds we get from walking around with portable tape recorders, like electronic beeps in shops, or vehicles, then they are mangled beyond recognition. We have an arsenal of old hi-fi tricks up our sleeves and we basically destroy the sounds until they're really lovely and fucked up. So we're using sounds that are totally our own thing," Sandison said [HMV].

"The voices are sometimes from old TV shows or tapes we've made. We have a lot of stuff we've collected, going back to the early '80s. But half of the time, it's things we've had friends record especially for us. We create tapes all the time. Practically everyone we know has been roped into recording something for us at some point," said Sandison [1].

"Of course we are massive fans of My Bloody Valentine. Loveless is probably one of my top five favorite albums of all time. I think that, even if we don't sound like them, there's a connection in terms of the approach to the music." said Sandison [2].

Brief songs or "vignettes" feature prominently in their music. Such songs are often weaving melodies or speech accompanied by atmospherics to capture a specific moment or mood. They often last less than two minutes, but, as Sandison says, "those short tracks you mention, we write far more of those than the so-called 'full on' tracks, and in a way, they are our own favorites" [OOR].

Boards of Canada have written an enormous number of song fragments and songs, most of which will never be released. It does not appear that music is made exclusively for commercial release. Rather, albums seem to be the result of selecting complementary songs from current work. Geogaddi's development involved the creation of 400 song fragments and 64 complete songs, of which 23 were selected, one of which is silence.

Subliminal messages, symbology, and religion

The band have developed some enigma and controversy. They have only participated in a few tours, and infrequently do interviews or public appearances. Sandison and Eoin enjoy their privacy and the quiet life Scotland affords them, but do instigate on some occasion (unknowingly or not) the perception of themselves as an enigma. They have both expressed a strong interest in the power of subliminal messaging and their work seems rife with cryptic messages. No doubt the sheer amount that can be found in their catalog (not just the scattered and reversed vocal samples, but the mathematical timing of beat structures, song titles, colours, cover art, and track lengths) does much to propagate this enigma.

Some critics refuse to listen to their music on account that they are positive the band is trying to brainwash their listeners for unknown motivations, citing references to David Koresh and occult symbols as proof. Others approach these facts from the skeptical angle, saying it is nothing but a bunch of "cute tricks" and an ironic gesture towards people who take such things seriously (and some would say, as a bit of a similar gesture towards their own body of work in later releases, such as Geogaddi).

Michael Sandison sought to dispel their occasionally cultish image in an interview, saying: "We're not Satanists, or Christians, or Pagans. We're not religious at all. We just put symbols into our music sometimes, depending on what we're interested in at the time. We do care about people and the state of the world, and if we're spiritual at all it's purely in the sense of caring about art and inspiring people with ideas."

Lyrics and references

Main article: Lyrics of Boards of Canada

There are a multitude of masked, backwards, or otherwise obscured messages in Boards of Canada songs- however there is no official word on the validity of these quotes, which may be incorrect.

Discography

Albums

Singles and EPs

Live and radio appearances

Collaborations, covers/remixes and soundtrack appearances

Boards of Canada have remixed a number of artists' songs. The work of these artists is generally described as electronic, ambient, experimental, or hip-hop. Most artists come from the United Kingdom or United States. Boards of Canada has additionally remixed two older, popular songs under the alias Hell Interface, detailed below.

Remixes of Boards of Canada

Remixes by Boards of Canada

Remixes by Boards of Canada as Hell Interface

Soundtrack Appearances by Boards of Canada

  • "Turquoise Hexagon Sun", used on several episodes of Monkey Dust.

Aliases

Boards of Canada has also recorded as Hell Interface.

Interviews

References

See also



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