Boards Of Canada HHV Records 8 Items

Boards Of Canada HHV Records

Trip-Hop and Sound Collages

The brother duo Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin grew up in the 70s and 80s in the Scottish city of Edinburgh. Surrounded by a musical household, the two experimented with Super-8 film tapes during their teenage years and composed their own pieces for their visual works. After various band projects, they eventually formed a band called Boards of Canada – the name is derived from the National Film Board of Canada, whose documentary films accompanied them in their childhood. Moreover, they spent a year in the Canadian city of Calgary with their father. By 1987, the band had shrunk to just the two brothers, and they released a series of tapes independently, initially only for their closest family and friends. In addition to these releases, they joined forces with other creative minds in Edinburgh in the artist collective Hexagon Sun, which shook up the local scene with self-organized shows. With their EP Twoism, Boards of Canada finally stepped into the public eye in 1995: Trip-Hop beats intertwined with nostalgic sound collages, and their sophisticated electronic variations caught the attention of the Manchester-based indie label Skam Records. Their legendary debut album, Music Has the Right to Children, was released in 1998 and fundamentally transformed the landscape of electronic music.

Pioneers of the Experimental

The album became a blueprint for experimental electronic music in the following years, and Boards of Canada were invited to John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show. Through dreamy synthesizers, peculiar vocal samples, and chaotic drums, the duo created an unprecedented, partially danceable sound that spread throughout the scene and inspired many imitators. While the brothers occasionally performed concerts in the United Kingdom, large-scale tours were scarce. Boards of Canada felt more at home in the studio, where they recorded their second successful album, Geogaddi, which skyrocketed in 2002. Alongside Aphex Twin, the duo was now recognized as a pioneer of Intelligent Dance Music. With dark soundscapes, esoteric and satanic references in individual tracks, and a runtime of exactly 66:06, Marcus and Michael made headlines. Simultaneously, their debut EP Twoism reappeared in record stores through a re-release by Warp Records, delighting fans. The album The Campfire Headspace was completed in 2005 and sounded more organic from the first second onwards. Because their creative process is also heavily influenced by images: “We usually imagine our music to have a visual element while we’re writing it, so we were picturing this character losing his mind at the campfire.”

Celebrating the Breakdown

Where the band had previously dedicated themselves to IDM, now Folktronica elements increasingly appeared, revealing a new, lighter side of the duo. After the success of their album, the Scottish brothers went silent. It wasn’t until 2013 that they resurfaced, welcomed with open arms in the electronic scene thanks to their album Tomorrow’s Harvest. Speculations surrounded the new work, as mysterious number combinations with short clips of new songs were spread on various radio and TV channels and YouTube – all to piece together a password for pre-ordering the album. With futuristic and nostalgic elements, Tomorrow’s Harvest ultimately became another milestone for the unrivaled elite of electronic music. And Boards of Canada are aware that their music now sounds even darker than before: “We’ve become a lot more nihilistic over the years. In a way we’re really celebrating an idea of collapse rather than resisting it.”