Geogaddi is the Boards of Canada's next album, following the relaxing In a Beautiful Place Out In The Country and Music Has the Right to Children, Geogaddi finds the Scots exploring darker, more intense musical territory. Boards of Canada are an electronic music duo from Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, comprised of brothers Mike Sandison (b. 1 June 1970) and Marcus Eoin (b. 21 July 1971). They have released a number of works, most notably 'Music Has the Right to Children' and 'Geogaddi', with little advertising and few interviews - like many of their label-mates on the.
Boards of Canada are an electronic music duo from Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, comprised of brothers Mike Sandison (b. 1 June 1970) and Marcus Eoin (b. 21 July 1971). They have released a number of works, most notably 'Music Has the Right to Children' and 'Geogaddi', with little advertising and few interviews - like many of their label-mates on the pioneering electronic music label Warp. Boards of Canada have had an enormous influence on the ambient, downtempo and idm scenes. They have frequently made reference to the warm, scratchy, artificial sounds of 1970s television.
Boards of Canada have had an enormous influence on the ambient, downtempo and idm scenes. They have frequently made reference to the warm, scratchy, artificial sounds of 1970s television. Indeed, the Sandison brothers admit to being inspired by the documentary films of the National Film Board of Canada, from which they take their name. The duo have recorded a few minor works under the name Hell Interface. Boards of Canada's music has been used in several CSI episodes and on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim interlude shorts; small bits of their music have been used on the BBC program Top Gear for transitional music.
Early Boards of Canada (1970s-1995)
Growing up in a musical family, brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin began playing instruments at a young age. They experimented with recording techniques at around the age of 10, using tape machines to layer cut-up samples of found sounds over compositions of their own. In their teens they participated in a number of amateur bands, however, it wasn't until 1986 when Marcus was invited to Mike's band that Boards of Canada was born.
By 1989, the band had been reduced to Sandison, Eoin and Christopher Horne. In the early 1990s, a number of collaborations took place and the band put on small, fairly regular shows among the ?Hexagon Sun? collective.
In early 2000, the official website for the band, Music70.com (now Boardsofcanada.com) removed the early discography of Boards of Canada, although some information has been preserved by fans. Early tape releases by Boards of Canada 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 since official Boards of Canada sources ignore the existence of this material, there seems to be little chance for this early material to ever resurface.
Boards of Canada from Twoism (1995-present)
In 1995, the band released the first work from the Hexagon Sun studio, the EP 'Twoism'. Like earlier Music70 releases, it was produced in a self-financed limited run and was privately distributed, primarily to friends and labels. Unlike previous releases though, a small number of copies were also released to the public through the IDM mailing list. 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.
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 Has the Right to Children', with which it shares many tracks.
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 Boards of Canada's first 'findable' work, 'Hi Scores', in 1996.
'Music Has the Right to Children' was released in 1998. Many fans consider this record to be a masterpiece. The popularity of the record was substantial enough to start a wave of sound-alikes.
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' ? 'PlayAquarius (Version 3)' and 'PlayOlson (Version 3)' ? along with the tracks 'Happy Cycling' and ?XYZ?. Excluding ?XYZ?, the set was released on a Warp Records CD titled 'Peel Session TX 21/07/1998'.
Though never an actively touring band, Boards of Canada did perform a handful of shows. Early shows saw them supporting Warp label-mates Seefeel and Autechre in a scattering of UK dates. They also participated in a few festivals and multi-artist bills, including two Warp parties: Warp's 10th Anniversary Party in 1999 and The Incredible Warp Lighthouse Party almost one year later. They made their most prominent showing in 2001 as one of the headliners at the Tortoise-curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival. They have not performed a live show since.
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 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.?
Throughout most of their career, Mike and Marcus chose not to publicize their brotherhood and were simply portrayed as childhood friends. Their kinship was finally revealed in a 2005 Pitchfork interview. Mike explained that they concealed the fact to avoid comparisons to Orbital, another well-known UK electronic group composed of two brothers.
Their third album for Warp Records, 'The Campfire Headphase', was released on 17 October 2005. The album covers much of the same musical territory as their previous works and featured fifteen tracks, including ?Peacock Tail?, ?Chromakey Dreamcoat?, and ?Dayvan Cowboy?. Two versions of ?Dayvan Cowboy? ? the original and a remix by Odd Nosdam ? are on the six-track EP, 'Trans Canada Highway', which was released on 26 May 2006.
Sound and methods
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?.
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, which is a compositional technique shared by many electronic or experimental artists such as Nightmares on Wax, Canabrism and King Crimson. 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, symbolism, and religion
Marcus and Mike have both expressed a strong interest in the power of subliminal messaging and their work is full of cryptic messages.
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').
http://www.boardsofcanada.com/
http://www.warprecords.com/
Early Boards of Canada (1970s-1995)
Growing up in a musical family, brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin began playing instruments at a young age. They experimented with recording techniques at around the age of 10, using tape machines to layer cut-up samples of found sounds over compositions of their own. In their teens they participated in a number of amateur bands, however, it wasn't until 1986 when Marcus was invited to Mike's band that Boards of Canada was born.
By 1989, the band had been reduced to Sandison, Eoin and Christopher Horne. In the early 1990s, a number of collaborations took place and the band put on small, fairly regular shows among the ?Hexagon Sun? collective.
In early 2000, the official website for the band, Music70.com (now Boardsofcanada.com) removed the early discography of Boards of Canada, although some information has been preserved by fans. Early tape releases by Boards of Canada 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 since official Boards of Canada sources ignore the existence of this material, there seems to be little chance for this early material to ever resurface.
Boards of Canada from Twoism (1995-present)
In 1995, the band released the first work from the Hexagon Sun studio, the EP 'Twoism'. Like earlier Music70 releases, it was produced in a self-financed limited run and was privately distributed, primarily to friends and labels. Unlike previous releases though, a small number of copies were also released to the public through the IDM mailing list. 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.
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 Has the Right to Children', with which it shares many tracks.
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 Boards of Canada's first 'findable' work, 'Hi Scores', in 1996.
'Music Has the Right to Children' was released in 1998. Many fans consider this record to be a masterpiece. The popularity of the record was substantial enough to start a wave of sound-alikes.
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' ? 'PlayAquarius (Version 3)' and 'PlayOlson (Version 3)' ? along with the tracks 'Happy Cycling' and ?XYZ?. Excluding ?XYZ?, the set was released on a Warp Records CD titled 'Peel Session TX 21/07/1998'.
Though never an actively touring band, Boards of Canada did perform a handful of shows. Early shows saw them supporting Warp label-mates Seefeel and Autechre in a scattering of UK dates. They also participated in a few festivals and multi-artist bills, including two Warp parties: Warp's 10th Anniversary Party in 1999 and The Incredible Warp Lighthouse Party almost one year later. They made their most prominent showing in 2001 as one of the headliners at the Tortoise-curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival. They have not performed a live show since.
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 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.?
Throughout most of their career, Mike and Marcus chose not to publicize their brotherhood and were simply portrayed as childhood friends. Their kinship was finally revealed in a 2005 Pitchfork interview. Mike explained that they concealed the fact to avoid comparisons to Orbital, another well-known UK electronic group composed of two brothers.
Their third album for Warp Records, 'The Campfire Headphase', was released on 17 October 2005. The album covers much of the same musical territory as their previous works and featured fifteen tracks, including ?Peacock Tail?, ?Chromakey Dreamcoat?, and ?Dayvan Cowboy?. Two versions of ?Dayvan Cowboy? ? the original and a remix by Odd Nosdam ? are on the six-track EP, 'Trans Canada Highway', which was released on 26 May 2006.
Sound and methods
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?.
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, which is a compositional technique shared by many electronic or experimental artists such as Nightmares on Wax, Canabrism and King Crimson. 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, symbolism, and religion
Marcus and Mike have both expressed a strong interest in the power of subliminal messaging and their work is full of cryptic messages.
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').
http://www.boardsofcanada.com/
http://www.warprecords.com/
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A good knowledge of North American TV shows of the late seventies helps in an understanding of the ideas and sounds of Boards of Canada. As children, Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin taught themselves to play various musical instruments whilst soaking up the American cathode-tube culture of the likes of The Six Million Dollar Man and Sesame Street, as well as the bleak vision of movies like The Andromeda Strain, Logans Run and Silent Running. The duo was also picking up influences from the more synthetic exponents of new-wave pop of the time, in particular Devo and The Human League. For a few years Mike focused on creating a band, to keep himself anchored whilst his family relocated several times between northern Scotland, London in England and Alberta in Canada. By the age of ten, now based back in Scotland, Mike was making his own home recordings on old worn-out cassette tapes.
The sci-fi paranoia and flawed TV soundtracks of that era were a big influence on the duo, as were the early arcade videogames of the time. At the beginning of the 1980s Mike and Marcus had begun writing tracks that imitated the warbling, damaged-sounding music found on the soundtracks of 16mm educational documentaries made by the National Film Board of Canada, and they later named their band as a nod to this early influence.
The band spent the early eighties near the beaches of north-east Scotland making crude multi-track recordings with friends, using borrowed tape machines, analogue synths and live drums. Around 1981 they had begun producing home-made movies on Super-8 cine film, and were creating the films soundtracks themselves. By 1984, aged thirteen, Mike was already visiting a local recording studio and making rough demos. Mike and Marcus were by now producing more structured songs with any instruments they could lay their hands on, as well as completely abstract tape collages of found sounds from radio and TV.
In the mid-eighties, now based near Edinburgh in Scotland, Mike recruited a few friends to form the first of several incarnations of a proper band. Marcus Eoin was drafted in, initially as a bass player, but he soon emerged as co-writer and co-conspirator for what the band was later to become. At this point the band had a fairly traditional live set-up; guitars, bass, keyboards, drummer and occasional vocals, but the emphasis was on minimal, atonal electronic songs, a sound that easily stood out amongst the abundance of traditional rock and hair-metal bands the audiences in their local area were used to. The line-up of the group changed frequently, and Marcus was later quoted as saying that they had gone through at least fourteen other musicians during this period, a statistic Mark E. Smith would be proud of.
During the late 1980s whilst working on a series of film and photographic projects, the group decided to create a studio of their own. Unrewarding day-jobs funded the purchase of audio gear and a variety of exotic acoustic musical instruments, and with the acquisition of samplers the band began producing do-it-yourself garage demos on their own label Music70 which they distributed mainly amongst friends. Soon the band was producing cassette EPs and even entire albums of demo material, some of which have since gone on to become legendary collectors items. It was during this period that the name Boards of Canada, initially an EP project title, became the name of the band.
Around 1990 Mike and Marcus, frustrated by the traditional line-up and the lack of commitment of other band members, started to mould the bands performances into something altogether more bizarre. Every summer Mike and Marcus collaborated with friends under the name Hexagon Sun to throw late-night outdoor parties in the countryside near their studio in Scotland, where bonfires were accompanied by electronic music, processed television themes, films, projections and reversed speech tapes to create an exciting, if slightly threatening, atmosphere. These nights, which the band still occasionally organise to this day, became known as Redmoon nights after an early event which was dramatically backdropped by a blood-red full moon.
In the summer of 1995 Boards of Canada recorded and self-financed a vinyl-only limited-edition album called Twoism. It was essentially a well-produced demo, and the intention was to mail it out to record companies and artists that the group were listening to at that point. The album was a breath of fresh air to those who had grown tired of the frantic and polished sci-fi studio acrobatics of jungle and drum&bass which were the predominant trends in electronic music of the time. Twoism was a collection of spacious, gnarled and glacial tones and dissonant, melancholy melodies over sparse hip-hop beats, but with a curiously deliberate broken-ness to the production. Every melody had been created to wobble and flutter slightly, like damaged music from an old worn-out cassette. In an era of clean, digital music, and with compact discs having largely replaced vinyl as the primary format for commercial music, this nostalgic, imperfect sound was to earn Boards of Canada huge respect as innovators in subsequent years.
At the beginning of 1996 a copy of Twoism arrived at the headquarters of Skam Records in Manchester, England, and within a day of hearing it, Autechres Sean Booth had contacted Boards of Canada. Mike and Marcus recorded the Hi Scores EP for Skam and it was released later that year. A string of live dates followed, notably including an appearance at the 1997 Phoenix Festival, where BOC brought their anachronistic sounds and Super-8 visuals to play alongside various luminaries of the electronic music scene.
In February 1998, amid much speculation, the announcement came that Boards of Canada had signed to Warp Records, and after a few remixes and single appearances, the band completed the album Music Has the Right to Children which was jointly released between Warp Records and Skam Records in April 1998.
Music Has the Right to Children combined beautiful sparse melodies with off-pitch analogue synths and moments of unsettling fragmented speech, all produced with the bands trademark damaged sound. The record closes with the wry anti-censorship message One Very Important Thought which pastiches the messages usually found at the end of 1980s porno videos: a very BOC moment.
Music Has the Right to Children received rave reviews in the international music press, and after landing a licensing deal with Matador Records in the USA it went on to become one of the most highly acclaimed records of 1998 and received multiple end-of-year awards. “Album of the Issue” – Jockey Slut, April/May 1998, “Album of the Month” – Wax magazine, May 1998. “No.16” NME Albums of the Year 1998, “No.3” – Jockey Slut Albums of the Year 1998, “No.5” – The Wire Albums of the Year 1998, “No.8” – DJ Magazine Albums of the Year 1998, “No.19” Muzik Albums of the Year 1998.
Boards of Canada recorded an exclusive session for the John Peel Show on the UKs Radio 1 in June 1998, and performed live on the show during the recording of the session. Peel described it on air as an “excellent session.” Warp later released the session as a single.
Music Has the Right to Children returned to the UK Independent Chart Top 20 in February 1999, and after staying around for three weeks it peaked at number 7. Simultaneously the Peel Session single hung around the Top 10 of the Independent Singles Chart for several weeks. Boards of Canada soon found themselves in demand for remix work and obliged with a handful of mixes for various artists, including the hugely influential Meat Beat Manifesto.
In May 1999 NME included Boards of Canada in its “Top Ten Nu-Psychedelic Bands,” alongside Mercury Rev & The Beta Band. In the same issue, NME ranked Boards of Canada’s debut album ‘Music Has The Right To Children’ in its Top 25 Psychedelic Records of All Time. ‘Music Has The Right To Children’ sat alongside other luminaries such as ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ by the Beatles, ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ by Pink Floyd, ‘The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice ‘ by Hendrix and ‘To Here Knows When’ by My Bloody Valentine to name but a few.
From 1999 onward various tracks from the BOC back-catalogue were being licensed for compilation albums, TV synchronisation and film soundtracks all over the world.
In the summer of 1999 Boards of Canada commenced work on their second full-length album for Warp Records. Meanwhile they contributed two exclusive tracks to Warps 10th Birthday celebration albums which were released later that year.
In November 2000, after a few more live dates in the UK, the band released a four-track EP called In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country. It was a deceptively optimistic title for a collection of beautifully sad, melancholy tunes, especially as closer inspection revealed references in the artwork and titles to the 1993 killings by FBI agents of David Koreshs Branch Davidian cult at Waco in Texas.
In April 2001 BOC headlined at All Tomorrows Parties, a festival on the south coast of England with an esoteric line-up including Lambchop, Television, Yo La Tengo, Tortoise, Broadcast, Sun Ra Arkestra, and many others.
In February 2002 Boards of Canada released Geogaddi, the long-awaited follow-up to Music Has the Right to Children. Described as a darker partner to the previous album, with its swirling psychedelic melodies and layers of dense ephemeral detail, it managed to be both beautiful and disturbing. Geogaddi immediately entered the Top 20 Album Chart and stayed there for several weeks. In interviews, Mike and Marcus revealed that the album had included many so-called easter eggs, and that some of the music had been developed using number theory and equations such as the Fibonacci Ratio. This led to some of the bands fans setting up entire websites devoted to decryption of the back-masking and other hidden details on the record. Ultimately, BOCs true intentions were written there clearly all along; in typically sardonic style they had even included a track on the album entitled The Devil is in the Details, as a kind of knowing wink to the astute listener
In September 2002 Boards of Canada produced a lush remix of US artist Boom Bips track Last Walk around Mirror Lake for a single taken from his Seed To Sun LP, and in February 2004 BOC created a giddy reworking of the song Dead Dogs Two by US band cLOUDDEAD from Oakland. The BOC version brought in the whole gamut of retro psychedelic elements including reversed guitars, flutes, sitars and strings, and culminated in a wigged-out Beatles-esque climax reminiscent of A Day In The Life.
In the summer of 2004 Mike became a father. His daughter was born during the writing sessions of the bands third studio album for Warp.
At the end of 2004 US artist Beck asked Boards of Canada to remix a song for his upcoming album Guero. BOC took the vocal lines of his beautifully wistful track Broken Drum and created a whole new melody around them, with an epic, heavily layered crescendo. In an interview with Clash Magazine in the spring of 2005, Beck described the remix as
my favourite remix Ive ever had done
they brought out something that was there but then they just added a whole new dimension. I guess its quite an emotional song and they brought out something bittersweet in it that was kinda hippyish, but it doesnt maim you with saccharin. It kinda gets you right in the chest.
In summer 2005 Boards of Canada completed work on their third album for Warp Records. The Campfire Headphase was released in October 2005. Described as an epic sci-fi western, the album is a surprising deviation into 1970s guitar licks and graceful, summery lysergic melodies. A video was released for the track Dayvan Cowboy, featuring a sky-diver falling from space into the ocean then surfing into the sunset at the songs euphoric climax. This was the first publicly-available video to be released outside the bands live shows.
The album was followed by the release in June 2006 of the Trans Canada Highway EP. Originally intended as a single release of the track Dayvan Cowboy, BOC took the opportunity to create several supporting tracks, and drafted in friend and collaborator Odd Nosdam for a cinematic remix of the single, thus expanding the release to EP status.
— By jambase