Old stuff from idm-l and beyond

[Moebius]

As mentioned in the 'lost boc forum' thread, here's some neat stuff I have found related to BoC in the [wiki]IDM mailing list[/wiki] archives. The great thing is that the archives go back continuously all the way to 1993 (!), which makes this a pretty rare resource; try finding much else online from that time.

Unfortunately there is no longer a nice web version like there used to be, but you can still get the raw data in mbox format. I clipped some of the more interesting bits to Google Notebook, along with other supporting material I could find.

Most of the notes I made were about their live appearances, since, like most of us, I have never had a chance to see them (and quite possibly never will), but there's a few other interesting things as well.

Rather than overwhelm with one giant post, I'll make multiple replies on this thread.

[Moebius]

The earliest mention of Boards of Canada on idm-l was all the way back in April 2006:

From: William L Samuels <wls>
Subject: (idm) techno du jour

I was reading a magazine about a SLAB - Rampant Prankster (Hydrogen
Duke/uk). Has anyone heard this, it was described to sound alot like
Chemical Brothers with breaks, and 303. It's a double pack with two Carl
Cox remixes.
I also read a DJ list from Autechre, it had an item I have never heard
of: Boards of Canada - Twoism. ?

Keep in mind, this more than half a year before Hi Scores came out. Autechre must have been spinning one of the early copies of Twoism they were passing around...

Their next mention is 2 month later:

From: g3@bleep.org (g3)
Subject: (idm) Autechre & Panasonic
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 11:17:52 GMT



Live Date News:

Live: Autechre
Support: Panasonic and Boards Of Canada

At: The Reach, Southbank Centre, London
Date: 19 July 1996

No Futher Info

g.

Supporting Autechre while they were still unknowns!

[Moebius]

Two people posted about their first show with Autechre. They also played along with Panasonic, Mark Broom (DJ) and Cylob. Full detail and background at Google Notebook (including a scan of the flyer), but here's the main bit:

>When I
>finally got there after getting lost in London, I was greeted by the
>Boards of Canada (I presume). Their music seemed to have fairly
>basic rhythmic structure and I couldn't really get into it with this
>little exposure.

They were ace. Read Jega meets Human League. Eighties synth pop with
distorted hip-hop breaks and without crap vocals, one awesome track
two excellent tracks and a few too many noodly links between tracks.
EP out on SKAM soon which the SKAMeisters say is even better than the
stuff I heard. They have a white floating about now which they put out
themselves - I must acquire. Rumour has it that they've been
approached by none other than Rephlex...

The legend of the Twoism 12" is already starting to grow...

[Moebius]

There were a few scattered mentions of BoC in the next few months (a few lucky people with copies of Twoism?), but not much until Hi Scores landed in November. The release notes contain the earliest offical 'bio' of the band that I'm aware of:

Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 15:33:27 -0500
From: 4th World <106056>
Subject: (idm) Skam*8 review

skam08 boards of canada - high scores ep 12"


press release says thus "the band originates
from the north east coast of scotland (locals!!),
they began recording on home hi fi around 1983..
the main duo of mike and marcus have stuck to
a homemade sound...they can be caught playing
live on january 17th at roadhouse (manchester)
with plaid...you are welcome to join us..."

A number of positive reviews as they began to hit the shelves. There's also an amusing post where someone theorizes it's really Mike Paradinas...

[Moebius]

After this point, Boards of Canada comes up fairly regularly, so I'll stick to the highlights...

Sadly, the Plaid and Boards of Canada (drool) show never happened, but after a few false starts and a change in venue, they played their second show:

From: M.A.J.Huffman ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: Feb 17, 1997
Subject: (idm) Versivo - Boards of Canada
Finally Versivo appeared after 2 cancellations.

Quite an odd venue (The Phoenix) but the usual suspects had no
trouble finding it.

I'm not quite sure of the order in which the DJs played, but it was
up to the usual SKAM standard, a delicious mixture of styles
including lots of tasty electro, from the old and new schools.
And a selection of that there drum and bass (which has been gracing
car adverts, TV trailers for at least a year in the UK).

Boards of Canada unassumingly took the stage at 1.25am, the only
visual distraction being some random images on portable tellies.

On for about an hour, they played only a couple from SKA08 and those
they did had been tweaked. Not an improvement, I thought. Still
good, though. There were lots of Phils and new stuff which has been
aired on Disengage. The crowd weren't rocking, but it wasn't really
_rocking_ music. I think perhaps they need to think more carefully
about which tracks to put in a set. Perhaps the PA was a
bit lacklustre.

I really enjoyed it but it could have been even better. Looks like
their future releases will live up to the first one, though.

After they finished Rob Hall strutted his Techno stuff, including a
marvellous passage where he mixed from something I can't remember
into Radio Babylon and then Tamphex (or something like that). Hmm -
that's a chronic description but it sounded niiice.

A quality evening.

Roll on Autechre/Jega and Plaid.

It's my suspicion that some other IDM characters were present.

adam

Additional background in Google Notebook, but no other reviews.

[Moebius]

Their next show was just 5 days later, again supporting Autechre, back in their home turf.

From: Greg Egan (greg@warp-net.com)
Date: Feb 5, 1997
Subject: (idm) Ae:UK tour update
Autechre UK tour dates. please phone venues for more details or as
last resort mail me.

february:

thursday 20th - edinburgh - venue - support from boards of canada live
dj; surgeon

Sadly, unable to find any reviews for this. Other notes on Google Notebook.

[esselfortium]

This is really fascinating stuff. Pity there doesn't seem to be any recordings of these early shows

[Moebius]

One of the funny/sad/wistful things about digging in the archives is reading about what might have been... like a possible BoC Funkstörung remix, mentioned in an Forcefield interview (the same site that later had one of the earliest BoC interviews):

"After the Freeform EP we will release a Funkstörung-record with remixes by Gescom & Freeform. On the same time we will release a Funkstörung-record on SKAM, with remixes by Jega and possibly Bola or Boards of Canada. Both records are released on exactly the same time. So it’s a kind of double EP. Each record has four tracks, two Funkstörung-tracks and two remixes. It’s important for us to show that the two labels are strongly connected to eachother. Originally we wanted to make a sort of Christmasgreetings-record, but this develloped in these two EP’s."

AFAICT this release never happened, at least not on SKAM; maybe it mutated into something else?

[Moebius]

In March '97, SKAM's SKAMPLER promo was released with a BoC track. The release info had another tantalizing mini-bio:

BOARDS OF CANADA: Mike and Marcus were born on the North East coast of
Scotland where they began recording on home hi-fi in 1983. They are
currently very busy writing for an album for Skam for release in August.
They spend most of their time hanging around an ancient monastry in
Midlothian.

(I actually spent a while trying to figure out what monastry they might have been (especially during the whole Red Moon affair). One possible answer is Newbattle Abbey, although it looks a bit posh now for the boys to have been hanging around in.)

This might be the first mention of Music Has the Right to Children, which of course eventually was co-released by SKAM and Warp (6 months later than advertised)

[Moebius]

Autechre continues to support the band in their early days, and leaks perhaps the first hints of the existence of the Boc Maxima tape:

From: Daniel.Scruton@uni-konstanz.de (really?)
Subject: (idm) autechres top 10
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1997 12:18:50 +0000

>>obligatory idm content: autechre revealed their 10 favourite records in spex
>>this month... i'll put it up on the list if anyone's interested
>>
>Please post it. Thanks!

here goes... a rough translation...

[ -- snip -- ]

(7) boards of canada: box maxma
it's a shame we can't pick demos. the best new electronic music is to be
found on demos today. since the interest of the mainstream has shifted to
drum'n'bass things have been getting better again. the kids don't hope to
get signed and do whatever they feel like doing. but this track here isn't
bad either.

[Moebius]

Around this time, they played their first festival, the Phoenix Festival. Which appears to have had an unbelievable IDM lineup:

From: Aca ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: Jun 17, 1997
Subject: (idm) UK Phoenix Festival !
...and as if you all *needed* another reason to come and live here in
sunny Great Britain...

17th - 20th July, Long Marston, near Stratford Upon Avon, UK...

"The 5th annual Phoenix Festival"

Check out some of the names appearing this year...

Aphex Twin, Orbital, Autechre, Squarepusher, Luke Vibert, U-Ziq
(is this the first time that all the above have appeared on the same
bill ? Surely it must be...)

Others include : Andrea Parker, Boards of Canada, Claude Young,
Freeform, Mark Broom, Panasonic, Plaid, Spring Heel Jack,
Ultramarine, Witchman... plus MANY more, and I haven't even mentioned
any the acts appearing on the "Dance" stage !!! (most of the above
are on something called the "Think" stage)
Basically, it would be easier to list people who are NOT appearing

The only downside is all the non-IDM-related acts... rubbish such as
The Charlatans, Gabrielle, Warren G, Faith No More, Shed Seven,
Teenage Fanclub, , ZZZzzz...

See you all there,
Aca

p.s. can i have a free ticket now, please ?

They appear to have opened the 'Think Tent' on Sunday:

From: greg ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: May 30, 1997
Subject: (idm) think tent at phoenix festival.
Think tent at Phoenix Thu Fri Sat Sun 17 18 19 20 July 1997

[ -- snip -- ]

Sun

Boards Of Canada
Knight Of The Occasional Table
Alien
Ultramarine
Luke Vibert
Mu-ziq
Surgeon
Dave Angel
Claude Young

Unfortunately I had not been able to find any reviews :/
Google Notebook

[Moebius]

The existence of Twoism begins to become more widely known...

Date: Mon, 14 Jul 1997 23:02:06 +0100
From: "brian flanagan (DA7A7TH13F)" <bri>
Subject: Re: (idm) Another Boards of Canada release?

Henrik Andersson wrote:
>
> I was talking to Sasha @ Hardwax in Berlin.
> He said that it exist another (very very limited) Boards of Canada record.

indeed there is..and sadly you stand very little chance of getting a
copy...they were mostly given away as demos before skam signed em up

i guess i could give you a tracklisting for what its worth

BOARDS OF CANADA : TWOISM (1995)

A
Sixtyniner
oirectine
iced cooly
basefree

B
twoism
seeya later
melissa juice
smokes quantity

more BOC stuff will be out soon, but i can say no more..sorry!

bri

BTW, you might recognize that name...

[Moebius]

They played another festival a week after Phoenix; well, maybe... They were on the bill for the Sunflower Festival in Germany, but apparently the weather was terrible and they might not have played after all:

From: Alexander Reynolds ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: Aug 1, 1997
Subject: (idm) bad vilbel, sunflower festival

sunflower was an absolute mess. it's been raining a *lot* in germany these
past weeks, and the festival should have been called 'woodstock iii' or
some such, due to it being held in some poor farmer's sunflower patch. a
lot of warp and skam acts should have shown up, according to the schedule,
but i guess due to the rain they decided to opt out -- including autechre,
unfortunately -- and i don't blame em a bit. this would have been a great
event, with acts like mike paridinas , andy maddocks, freeform, autechre,
and boards of canada. i'd have asked for my money back but i had an
alright time, i suppose, even though the festivaal was held twenty km
northwest of regensburg, itself a good two hour trip away from muenchen. i
had to perform heroic juggling acts to schedule this part of my trip --
wish i'd lived in europe instead of the states.

so, no autechre review. sorry, gang.

These seems to be corroborated by a somewhat fanciful report in a piece about the German duo Cloinc:

The two electrominds [André Estermann and Jan Bruhnke] meet for the first time in 1998, in an inferno of
cloudburst, mud and deluge called the Sunflower-Festival. Like Atlantis,
the central Ambient area goes down in the flood and the crème de la
crème of the german-british IDM-scene goes SOS. Jega, Mike Paradinas,
Autechere and Boards of Canada melt into The Swamp-Thing rushing to
rescue its equipment, and Electric Sheep drags a less weatherproof André
Estermann on slippery Converse Chucks out of divers mudholes. After
that, they become electronic blood brothers forever.

Yet strangely their own official bios on the old EHX page suggests they did play:

After a string of remix works, the summer of 1997 saw them play alongside Autechre at the Phoenix festival in Stratford-Upon-Avon and the Sunflower festival in Munich with Mike Paradinas.

This seems to have been a pretty big festival, I found a few other mentions which are in the Google Notebook, maybe someone who speaks German can figure it out more conclusively...

[zeoevil]

Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. It makes me think about what I was listening to at the time. Nothing like Boards at all. Mostly harder electronic music like Front Line Assembly and Skinny Puppy. If I had only known then what I know now.

Please continue.

[Twoism-ist]

I was listening to Technotronic

[zeoevil]

I was listening to Technotronic

Nothing wrong with that. That whole KLF/Snap/Technotronic era wasn't all bad.

[Moebius]

I guess the deal with Warp was already inked at this point, because they played at their first club night in London. A nice long review for this one, full details on the Google Notebook of course:

From: M.A.J. Huffman ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: Nov 4, 1997
Subject: (idm) Blech last Friday

[ -- snip -- ]

At around 11.15 Boards appeared to perform a half-hour set. They had three
TVs showing their own cut-up style material. This was okay but I've seen
so many of those things that it didn't really make any impression.
However, the music: firstly, I should point out that there was nothing
from Hi-Scores. There were 3/4 main songs with a few fills inbetween. I
recognised one of the fills and one of the songs. No radical departures
from what you will have heard but the beats were a little more incisive
timbrally. Lots of nice pad sounds as you'd expect. Not a set you could
really let go to, but that's not necessarily a criticism. I don't think
their music will ever drive a crowd wild. It was the same when I saw them
in Manchester earlier this year. Shame the set was so short though.

Another quick comment:

From: wayne ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: Nov 29, 1997

[ -- snip -- ]
once again,the support act is more enjoyable than the main act,boards of canada rocked and
sefeel didnt

[Moebius]

One quick comment about the Blech show (as well as Versivo). Blech is not the name of the venue itself, but rather just the regular event run by Warp. The actual venue was a place called The Powerhaus. Versivo (the SKAM club night) is the same kind of thing; in fact, in that case, it seems that the Versivo nights took place a few different clubs over the run.

Maybe this is plainly obvious to the cool kids who normally go to clubs like these, but it had me confused for a while, and from other listings it looks like I wasn't the only one.

[Moebius]

I've leave this as the long one before I go to bed, but it's a pretty good one.

With the new album on the way, now officially a dual-label co-release, the band put out their first single. The release info had the longest band bio yet, with a number of interesting details:

boards of canada - aquarius KMAS001 7" 500 copies only

tracklising__

aquarius
chinook

release date - january 5th

neither of these tracks will appear on their forthcoming album which is a
joint project between skam & warp records.

boards of canada originate from the north east coast of scotland, where they
begun recording on a home hi-fi set up around 1983. various xtra band
members have come & gone since 1986, but the main duo of mike & marcus have
always stuck to the original home made sound. their first vinyl release was
_twoism_ an eight track LP limited to 100 copies which they produced &
financed themselves in 1995. having supported Ae, panasonic & cylob in july
of 1996, they released the _high scores_ e.p. through skam records.

1997 saw their second support slot with Ae and a headline @ versivo [the
skam club] in manchester. their live show soon became a talking point,
highlighted by their continued use of video footage derived from
derived from 8mm film. after a string of remix work, the summer of 1997 saw
them play alongside Ae @ the phoenix festival & mike paradinas @ the
sunflower festival in munich. this was their followed by an autumn mini tour
and dates in ireland, germany & switzerland, and the band also played live @
the opening night of warp's blech night in london. along with their
forthcoming album due out through skam/warp, the band will also start work
on an album for mike paradinas' new label, planet mu.

Yeah, that's right - an entire 3 country tour that no one had ever heard of? It was even confirmed by the Cosmic Crofter, the webmaster of EHX (including the band's first official page):

From: The Cosmic Crofter ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: Jan 15, 1998
Subject: re: (idm) Fw: boards of canada # 2

> you sure they played in ireland?

Horse's mooth, honest.

How can these dates have escaped us? Here's the Google Notebook but I haven't been able to find a single thing about any of these shows...

[radiateme]

Thanks for the huge write up, Moebius. Really interesting. I bet there were a lot of unreleased "MHTRTC vibe" (as said in that other thread) tracks played at these shows, damn.

Eighties synth pop with
distorted hip-hop breaks and without crap vocals, one awesome track
two excellent tracks and a few too many noodly links between tracks.

Don't diss the noodly links! Those are sometimes the best tracks.