Google Translated some articles from 2005

[Echelon]

I translated two foreign articles from 2005 and they came out surprisingly good! I feel that google translate has finally advanced to the point where things actually make sense for the most part.

I think the most fascinating thing I learned from these, is that they actually had a red moon party to celebrate the release of Geogaddi in 2002 and the way its described in the article is very ritualistic even if its just a celebration. It really reflects the duality of BOC, where they do these pagan type things but in a very tongue and cheek way.

These 2005 articles also relate the only time BOC were actually open to meeting people before they became truly distanced themselves from everyone for the last 14 years. Wonder what changed their attitude?

Let me know of any tweaks we can make before we put these up on BOCpages.



La Part du Feu was an interview (in French) by Frank Bedos originally published October 03 2005[1] in Trax magazine Number 88 pp.32-37.

Three years that we waited for the eagle Boards Of Canada to land again on our turntables. On the occasion of the release of The Campfire Headphase, a burning event of this electronic return, the most psychedelic duo of electronics finally agree to speak with their faces uncovered. Conversation around the fire.


The moon is red and low on this freezing night on a beach somewhere in the south of Scotland, near the Pentland Hills. However, as in a strange pagan rite, a circle of twenty people formed around a large crackling fire which seems to glorify the communion of the elements, the forces of nature with the powers of the spirit. Post-hippie rally?
Worship of magic initiation? Clandestine ceremony of the Solar Temple? None of this, because no sorcerer, guru or other supernatural medium to reach the stars here. Instead and for any intermediary, a ghettoblaster. We are in winter 2002, Boards Of Canada, four years after the international coronation of Music Has The Right To Children, their first album, summon their childhood friends and celebrate their way the end of the recording of Geogaddi, which will bring them universal critical recognition.

I see you're coming, laughs Michael, one of the duo's members.
But no, this time we did not do it, despite the fact that the album is called The Campfire Headphase. The weather was average you know that night, that's why once the last touch brought to it, we preferred to take the Marcus car and me to test it, turn on the car radio and drive without destination around our studio in the deserted countryside in the middle of the dark night, at four in the morning.


A special case

Go back. When Warp announced the scheduled release of the third album from Boards Of Canada at the end of June, lots of forums immediately echoed with unbearable expectations for many. We have never glossed as much on simple track titles, never grazed so close to the empty and prospective swoon, and never afterwards so distressed the idea that what we had just downloaded was not the sacro- saint new album of the Scottish duo, but a set of few old tunes that some clever had slyly made up. It is that Boards Of Canada has become in a few years a special case in the world of underground electronics, a situation which could however widen and, by concentric magic, leave the confined edge of the circles of followers to gain a sphere on the scale of the globe and thus transfigure itself into a mainstream phenomenon

Reclusive in their cold lands, granting only rare interviews and only by e-mails, practically never performing live, quoted by Thom Yorke himself as the direct inspirers of the masterpiece Kid A, acclaimed from their first large format realization and carried by a growing rumor installing Music Has The Right To Children among the 25 best psychedelic records of all time in the midst of the Beatles and Pink Floyd, the legend Boards Of Canada is on the move. Also, when Warp confirmed to us after multiple adjournments that Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin finally agreed to meet us near their home in Edinburgh, we found ourselves neither one nor two and despite an imminent closure date on the plane that was finally going to bring closer to the greatest enigma, the darkest star of the electronic galaxy.

Totem and taboo
So here we are in September in the medieval city of Edinburgh, emerging from the time of the knights with its fortified castle defying the mist high on the cliff, its Gothic cathedral, its cobbled alleys and the hills scorched by the wind. girdling. Excluding romantic considerations, it's ten degrees, freezing rain and a miserable jacquard for any defense: the damn Scottish shower. We hasten to find in this unfriendly region the Royal Museum where we have an appointment with the group in order to crack the ice in which many felt trapped listening to their new album (cf. p 65 ), and release the smoldering fire that seems to radiate its compositions.


It is moreover very warmly that Marcus and Michael welcome us into the museum, a bright white canopy where a huge and severe totem stands, guaranteeing an ancestral spirituality. We settle at the foot of the sacred guardianship and our two artists quickly joked about our pitiful appearance, immediately dropping the fear of finding us in front of two grizzly bears condescending to serve us their most polite tongue of wood. On the contrary, they are immediately very concerned about the reception of The Campfire Headphase and urge us to confess. We explain to them the divided reception of the editorial staff, the hot-cold it caused, a sharp reaction.

It's funny because even when you try to make a warm album like this one, it is invariably perceived as something cold and a little sinister at the same time. I think it's just a reaction to the psychedelic elements of our music, which amplify certain effects making the whole purposefully strange and distant. But this is the very characteristic of the Boards Of Canada project: capturing the atmosphere of sounds from a very specific period, from the late 70's to the early 80's.


For us, it's like a tangent from which we only move away in form, by going alternately towards more electronics, acoustics, cinematography or orchestral but always staying in the vicinity of this universe public educational programs, Super-8 videos, jingles in the form of warnings or naive advertisements. Everything that we could compose and which moved away from this first vibe was never retained and never left.
Basically and to be quick, the BOC aesthetic (for friends). It is the equivalent in France of our informative Message and it is really very interesting.

Bohemian
First, there is this name, Boards Of Canada, which is not the floating trunks on which the beavers bask on the edge of the Great Lakes but which is inspired by the National Film Board Of Canada, a film company which broadcast all kinds animal documentaries and social programs, with this very particular grain of the film giving a sort of wash to the image and which we find on the artwork of most of the duo's achievements. This might seem anecdotal and constitute only the material of a disc, but the strength of Boards Of Canada is to have linked this slightly fuzzy and obsolete visual universe with a musical identity which, by taking up or sampling the sound elements making up the material hearing of these videos and by combining them steel guitars, synthesizers and rhythm machines of time, and children's voices in the background, is charged with a strong evocative and nostalgic power
Listen to any BOC record and, if you are in your 30s, you are transported to this world so familiar with eph's paws, shovel pie shirts, smoked glasses, scratching undershirts, all imbued with '' a slightly bohemian atmosphere of utopia.
We lived our childhood in Canada, and it is really this culture in which we bathed, we savored it like any child at this age which is a tremendous catalyst of the world around it. American road movies, Glenn Larson's TV shows, all kinds of animations ... There were only three channels at the time and all those who lived on the American continent at that time were fed of these programs, it was really mass media and the next day at school everyone was talking about what they had seen the day before.

Treasure hunt
It will not take more to petrify the unconscious of young Mike and Marcus who, upon their return to their native Scotland, then adolescents having fun like many others at this age to tamper with audio cassettes, will systematically draw their inspiration at the heart of this portion of spirit frozen somewhere in the ice of Alberta. It was at the beginning of the 80s that they started to edit Super-8 movies and make their own soundtracks while learning to play all kinds of live instruments, drums, guitar, synthesizer. A collective of musicians is born from this musical bulimia which will count up to fourteen members, including vocals as a classical mat formation with already a clear preference for twilight atmospheres, minimal structures electronic manipulations and distortions capable of installing a disturbing climate and unstable.

At the end of the 80's while continuing their video montages, they set up a recording studio which they called Hexagon Sun, a "junkshop" in their words, rather than the bunker in which the press, eager for eccentricities , put them away a bit quickly, a sort of analog museum where the samplers rub shoulders with the guitars, the sequencers the flutes, the computer the wind harp.
We are very attached to old instruments, we are still trying to find them. If you want to ring 1988 for example, you will have to get the analog equipment corresponding to this period. We never wanted a clean sound, stereo, phat, rather something that would have been recorded like twenty-five years ago, mono, a bit like James Taylor (Californian singer from the 70s, editor's note). That's why we often use old cassette recorders, 4-track Tascam. For the new album, we wanted this disc to be like a lost recording and that we would have found years later when no one had heard it.

The law of silence
In parallel with the creation of their studio, they launched their label, Music70, which will remain, even today, a platform for visual and sound experimentation. All the old unpublished songs, often recorded on good old cassettes and that the fans tear off, date from this period going from 90 to 95, where the formation really sedimented, abandoning the group configuration to devote itself to strictly compositions electronic. A trio time, Boards Of Canada finally becomes the duo we know and released their first self-produced vinyl, his name is Twoism and he will land in the offices of Skam in Manchester and in the ears of Sean Booth of Autechre, who call and sign them on the spot. Will follow immediately after the maxi "Hi Score" which, with titles like "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" or "Everything You Do Is A Balloon" and their spiral loops, their haunting melancholy, their hip hop rhythm in apposition, will slowly install the sound BOC in the British electronic psyche.

We know that we will never have the impact of a rock band, we do not play in this category, we prefer to creep into the heads of listeners. When you make a record, you often want to react against what you hear at that time. This is what happened with Music Has The Right To Children, which appeared in the middle of the jungle period, where the techno became harder and harder, the sounds more and more clear and clean. So we were surprised in silence, people didn't expect us to use the elements of drum 'n ’bass to make something so slow, almost empty.

It was in 1998 that the first BOC album was released, it was signed jointly on Warp and Skam and finally opened the doors of an international audience to the group. Bomb with fragmentation in its form, delayed in the background, it will cause a strange black butterfly effect, an eagle beat in Scotland then stirring a melancholy ignoring the borders. {{boc | We don't make noise so that we can be heard, our music is more a reaction to the constant noise that surrounds us. We would rather be like a doorway that would let the light pass and invite people to take the plunge. It's just a free space, a ticket to somewhere else, to escape the race of the world and to escape. It reminds me of when I was in school, there was a student who was very calm and hardly ever spoke. But when he did, and even in the middle of the hubbub, it was in a weak and very quiet voice. Everyone was listening to him. "


Life in retreat
Time will take over to sculpt the myth Boards Of Canada. These two rather peaceful guys, who never really realized that their music could one day exceed the tumultuous shores of the North Sea and accompany something other than their night parties with friends in the forests or on the beaches, will arouse curiosity proportional to the care they take to hide, to detach themselves from the overwhelming cogs of the music industry. Their reputation will continue to grow as the success of Music Has The Right To Children serenely extends beyond electronic territory and speculation about the personalities of Mike and Marcus and their pastoral life continues.

We have often been taken for new age survivors, kind of post-hippies composing soft, ethereal and slightly mannered music. We don't see ourselves at all like that, we don't make music for the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, we always underpin it with dark, lugubrious elements, that's the price I think for making a smart music, which really touches people. But we do not necessarily link our work to spiritual or meditation, we see our approach more as something scientific, it would rather be a scientific approach to affect. All the fears linked to existence and which religions develop, it is just a spring for us. Our retired life is a way of keeping a form of purity, but it's more of an ideal, because we don't really see ourselves like that, we don't live in a bubble, we often go to town, we buy records travel a lot. Marcus is snowboarding.

We both live on a farm in the countryside, in the middle of nowhere, but we are not bumpy so far, it just allows us to cut all ties with the outside world, to build another, imaginary world, where only our work as a musician matters. It's not like I get up in the morning and stay in ecstasy at my window in front of the tree and the stream, it's just the freedom that these conditions give us. Our music needs that to flourish, but it's not related to Scotland in particular, we could do the same in Iceland or Wyoming.
Just a haven of peace, a sheltered corner "ln A Beautiful Place Out ln The Country".

A musical equation
With a strong sense of irony, BOC released this maxi in 2000. In the middle of a millennial paranoid, here they are, reciting vocoding words from David Koresh, of the Davidian sect, and that the track "Amo Bishop Roden" is taken from the name of one of the members of this same sect, 86 of whom committed suicide following the 1993 FBI assault on Waco, Texas. They will not stop there with the release in 2002 of Geogaddi, where for the first time they will move away from their visual universe to explore the cryptic relationships between nature and science, the unconscious and mathematics, creation and geometry, which they pack in a vague religious iconography. Tracklisting is obscured by titles like "Music Is Math", "Alpha & Omega", "Gyroscope", and stretches into a silent sigh until a fateful duration: 66 min 6 sec.

What we are trying to do since Geogaddi is wash out the sounds. On Music Has The Right To Children, the sound elements were clearly identifiable, they came back often and the material of the tracks identified with these recurring components. It is now much more difficult to recognize the instruments you are using, because they have been so retouched and worked on, combined with other sounds or instruments that come close to it that they are very far from their original sound. It is more vague and that is what we wanted to transcribe, this troubled impression with a very unstructured construction, short and destabilizing pieces which would appear as a slow descent towards abstract thoughts and the black background of the soul.

Writing a song means writing the spaces between the lyrics. We write for the hollow moments of life, those who facilitate the return to oneself, who welcome sadness. It is not morbid, because it often allows you to free yourself from it and it passes the test of time better. You see, I listened to the Polyphonic Spree lately, it immediately appealed to me, but after several listenings this exaggeration of joyful feelings ended up being right for me. I never got tired of a Joy Division album.

Ascending logic
Since their beginnings, the Boards Of Canada have drawn a perpendicular to our real world on which they stand as weightless and which is their best point of view on the world, their "Magic Window" which they close on themselves to start a gyratory dance of which they are the only ones to know the steps and which guides them "always more deeply inside (their) sound, all against the framework which supports it". Geogaddi, by exploring the dark side of reminiscence, had cooled many fans and journalists, it is however to this day their masterpiece as composers, the disc where their universe, in the absence of light , was most anxiously deployed in the undergrounds of consciousness. If the title "The Devil Is ln The Details" could summarize the philosophy which irrigated Geogaddi, then "Constants Are Changinq" would be the one who works in depth The Campfire Headphase, more engaging, less tortured album which, by taking their ingredients and restoring them under a dim light, could well constitute for those who discover them an ideal entry door to the world of Boards. For the others, after three years of long waiting, they will discover, as long as they enter the immobile temporality of the disc, another facet of the duo, more direct, more stripped down, more American.

We moved our studios last year, that's why the recording took so long. We had a full album in February 2004 but when we listened to it in our new premises, it no longer suited our tastes. We then destroyed everything and we took a new direction. Head to San Francisco in a convertible for a psychedelic trip. The challenge was to reproduce our aesthetic but with live instruments like the guitar which is very prominent. We wanted this album to be like the acoustic counterpart of Music Has The Right To Children, to work more simultaneously, to return to something simpler, more positive, in a more pop format. This is why the voices disappeared, the record was already quite pop in itself and then we didn't want our sound to be always associated with the same components. ourselves.

Here, the tracks keep a repetitive aspect but they develop, grow, follow an upward movement in the restraint to reach a summit where all the elements are then released: drums, violins… We are not too used to 'hear that in electronics where the tracks go up and down without stopping or follow a horizontality. It was a new way of working for us, a new way of doing electronics, I hope we got there.

Farewell fire
Now it's up to you to judge, but know that The Campfire Headphase will not immediately be revealed and that it will peacefully extend its web in your mind as you listen to it. As technology increasingly shapes our daily lives, the pace of our bodies accelerates without brake, while the world here is only a huge valley of tears, Boards Of Canada returns to a form of ingenuity, slows down the pace to freeze time, opens a door to the clouds to escape the gray cities. Where we can simply warm up, with friends, around this campfire which they invite us to light like them on this icy evening when they get closer so that it never goes out.

The title of the album is like the mystical projection of a mental experience that one can have at these moments, they finally admit to us in
the form of an enigma. This idea of ​​diving inside a spirit and thinking of the album as an introspective road trip that would end with this track 'Farewell Fire', a farewell fire that would represent the exit to the outside and celebrate a great communion with things and the universe.

We will never know what they ate at their little improvised meetings, but what was evident when leaving them was the warmth and simplicity with which they had greeted us and this flame in their eyes, ensuring that the was not about to end. There, in this hearth, the sacred fire of Boards Of Canada was slowly burning, at the foot of this totem which was mysteriously scrutinizing us. On his card in epigraph, this three-thousand-year-old saying from the obscure Heraclitus: "Who will hide from the fire that does not go to bed?"


Boards of Canada" was an interview (in Swedish) by Billy Rimgard originally published October 2005 in Sonic magazine Issue 25 (Fall 2005) pp.40-45

They were first with what is sometimes called folktronica. They were also one of the world's secret bands for a long time. Now the Boards Of Canada have started talking. Billy Rimgard hears myths shattered in a rainy Edinburgh.


Text Billy Rimgard


MY FLIGHT TO Edinburgh would go in less than ten hours but I still didn't know where, when and how to meet the Boards Of Canada. It was 22:00 and I crawled on the walls of worry when a text message came. The Museum Of Scotland on Chambers Street, through the swinging doors, up the stairs, through the main exhibition, the cafeteria area on the right, at five. Signed "X".


Not until a day later was I sure this article would actually be written.
Few bands are as mythical as Boards Of Canada. Their breakthrough, "Music Has the Right to Children", changed the entire map for electronic music when it came in 1998. The album was special because it did not derive its energy from the future but rather from yesterday. "Music Has the Right to Children" sounded like the duo had tried to recreate their childhood with samplers and sequencers but not quite got it all right - but instead built the picture on how they remembered it as adults. The music was forward thinking but the feeling nostalgic.


After "Music Has the Right ...", the Boards Of Canada withdrew to their base in the countryside outside Edinburgh, took four years to release the sequel "Geogaddi" and thus lost control of their image. "Geogaddi" was spiced with occultism, mathematical formulas, references to religious cults and geometry. Every time you listened to it something new appeared and every little detail meant something.

This electronic's equivalent to the "Da Vinci Code", together with the band's refusal to do any promotion other than a few email interviews, helped to spread the rumors. It was said that they were Satanists, that they lived under sect-like conditions in a creative collective, that they tried to brainwash people through the music, that they were hippies.


So what would I believe?


If I was surprised when they accepted an interview, I was almost terrified by that text message. Why would anyone who has not done interviews in eight years suddenly want to meet a confused Swede if there was no purpose for it? I saw myself becoming a mortar in the construction of the myth of Boards Of Canada, a fun anecdote to address in future press releases: "Once upon a time they even tricked an unsuspecting Swedish journalist into a museum in Edinburgh to ..."


THE CLOCK IS TWO MINUTES for the next five days. I go counter-current among German backpackers and Japanese tourists into the museum, but when I arrive, the cafe is empty. Dot five, dozens of old church bells start ringing, the staff piles chairs on each other and a guard steps forward and asks me to leave the room as they close. I still don't think it's going to be an interview. I text to the number I got the message from the day before and ask for an update. "About ten minutes outside the main entrance," the answer reads.

A moment later I sit in the balloon seat of a car. There, Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison sit down and discuss which place is best to do the interview, based on where there are parking spaces. The duo, who are Boards Of Canada, say that most people don't know about it, but that half of Edinburgh's population is patchwork. They are friendly, ask how the trip was, apologize for the rain whipping outside and say that I should try to come here some more time so I can see how beautiful the city is with better weather. They are the very opposite of the contradictory UNA bomb-like eccentrics that I had expected to meet.


The fact that we did not do promotion is not because we are shy or withdrawn. We just don't want to be seen that much. We want our audience to discover the music themselves rather than being told to listen to us through advertising,
tells Marcus as we sat down in a bar.

They have bought expensive imported stock for me and waved the money away when I want to pay. They are genuinely surprised that anyone can think of going from Sweden just to talk to them and say the least they can do is bid on beer


The reason we do interviews now is that we want journalists to meet us in person,
continues Michael.
It has been written so strangely about us that most people think that they come here to meet two druids in caftans who make sacrifices on top of a volcano. Now we really want to meet them to show that we are just two ordinary guys.




We are not Gandalf, we do not wander around with each rod and bump forints and we are not hippies,
Marcus laughs.

It is noticeable that the Boards Of Canada are two people who have known each other since the sandbox. They talk about "we" or "us" all the time. They end each other's sentences. When one gets stuck in a reasoning, the other picks up the thread and continues. Marcus comes up with spontaneous opinions, says straight out what he thinks and jokes a lot. Michael is a little more restrained and careful. He thinks before answering and often explains something that Marcus said with a longer interpretation that a more media-savvy artist would probably have seen as unnecessary, since far theorizing rarely does well in an article, In an interview with Pitchfork Media, done after my visit in Edinburgh, they claimed to be brothers. Which of course can be true but just as happy does not have to be.


My interview with Boards Of Canada is their third before the release of the new album "The Campfire Headphase" and thus they have done more interviews in a week than they have in the last eight years. After "Music Has the Right to Children" they got tired of being quoted and therefore only started communicating with the outside world via email. Although not then without restrictions, In addition to a mail interview with NME, they chose not to reply to any major newspapers but instead got smaller, niche music magazines the opportunity to "talk" to them. The band then discovered that even silence and email interviews can be misinterpreted.




We are not interested in the whole music industry stuff,

says Marcus.
We do not go to all parties for the simple reason that we like best at home with our friends. The problem when you are absent is that people take the matter into their own hands and fill in the empty fields. Unfortunately, our decision to not do any interviews with the release of "Geogaddi" coincided, so maybe we can blame ourselves a little. I think we underestimated the power of making such a record.


We added a lot of messages because we thought it was fun. The problem was that everyone did not understand that it was with the twinkle in their eye but instead took it to their fullest seriousness. And the sad thing was that the focus shifted from what we always thought was most important, namely the music. Don't mess up, but we didn't start making music to be in newspapers,
says Michael and smiles.

>> GEOGADDI << WAS A Dark Album. There was a pre-apocalyptic mood over it, as if the Boards Of Canada knew something about the world we others didn't know.

I loved it. At least after a while. When I reviewed "Geogaddi" in Sonic number six, I hadn't even begun to understand the extent of it. Although the album was not a pronounced concept album, it required dedication. You had to concentrate to discover the details and bring the music to life. But once I got there, I actually liked it more than its predecessor.

"Geogaddi" was not only the result of a band trying to advance in their music, it was also an album so full of symbols that pages where the album was analyzed soon began to dive into the internet. If you read there it says, among other things, that a track like "1969" contains a sampling named "David Koresh" played backwards. The song is 4:19 long, which corresponds to the date, April 19, 1993, when Koresh's sect in Waco, Texas, was stormed by the FBI. The song title "1969" refers to the year it was banned for the US Army to use the type of gas that Koresh killed himself and the sect members at the Waco massacre.

About two-thirds of what is on the internet pages is on the album, the rest they have found on themselves,
Marcus laughs.
It's a bit like Kabbalah. You take a page out of the Torah, hold it up and down in front of a mirror and say "Look! I see a letter up here! Everything is right now! It's true!".




Man is programmed to find patterns,
says Michael.
Even when we are babies, we learn to recognize faces and voices. If anyone thinks that our music is based on symbols and starts looking, then they will find them too.

We lost our grip on what Boards Of Canada really is, says Marcus.
Others began to define what the band was to us, which is why we are doing interviews now. We want to show who is driving this bus.


ABOUT "GEOGADDI" CREATED the great myth of Boards Of Canada, it was their first major album, "Music Has the Right to Children", that put the band's name on everyone's lips.


Marcus, Michael and their friends had been experimenting with music literally since childhood. Later they became a duo and released their debut album "Twoism" in 1995, but it took another three years before the breakthrough came.


During the 1990s, it was often the record company Warp that released the most innovative electronic producers. Names such as Aphex Twin, Luke Vibert and Squarepusher released records with crazy jungle drums and sabbatical songs that made the albums a noisy symphony in some kind of mix of rave culture, fusion jazz and advanced electronic sound processing.

When Warp stood behind "Music Has the Right to Children", Boards Of Canada's campfire electronics became a contrast to the company's other, slightly hysterical profile. The duo really didn't sound like anything else. Sure, there were producers who for many years made ambient electronic music, but it was often about mixing in dolphin sounds and that it would sound nice. "Music Has the Right ..." was harmonious but at the same time very skewed. There was always something that was "not right". Boards Of Canada played beautiful chords with broken, voiceless sounds. They sampled informational videos and happy little children as they played over ghostly analog synths. In addition, they used hip-hop beats and acoustic instruments that they sampled and then destroyed, making their own sound.

Marcus says that the skew comes from when one of them asks the other to "do something diagonal". The call to "do something diagonal" means in their studio to add sounds that break from the linear, something that goes directly against how the song is constructed.


When "Music Has the Right ..." was released it became an awakening for me. At that time, I probably lived in a world where electronic music was either psychedelic amber madness or ambient myspys. Boards Of Canada landed somewhere in between. In their music, they were also not afraid to capture the feeling of foggy autumn beaches or of quiet camping nights in the highlands. The record simply set a standard. Boards Of Canada influenced electronic producers (from lesser known as Ten And Tracer or Faction to bigger names like Four Tet), they were constantly mentioned by Radiohead as the inspiration for the recording of "Kid A" and they basically included the first band in a long line which later would be somewhat doubtful labeled "folktronica",

No connection
I think they have been to the dreamy electronic music what the Ramones were to the punk rock, but Boards Of Canada themselves do not agree.




I would never say that someone else sounds like us just because they have listened to us, because that would be pure bullshit,
says Marcus.
Some people who liked the record might get ideas and move in that direction in their own music, but so have we when we heard something good and thought "oh, here we should do".




It may also have been the case that there were others who did the same thing we all the time but who, after we arrived, discovered that there was an audience for that kind of music,

says Michael.
When it comes to the obvious loans, it has actually been most flattering to hear. The only time it has felt awkward was when the track list for "The Campfire Headphase" came out and some spread songs that they made themselves on the internet under the name Boards Of Canada, with titles taken from the album. They include children's voices, hip hop beats and all our features.




In a way it's good,
continues Marcus.
Those who make carbon copies of our music in this way show that it is possible to parody our sound. Therefore, these parodies become motivation for us to find new ways of expressing ourselves.
MARCUS and Michael THOUGHT THAT "Twoism" felt a lot more groundbreaking when they did and that the album that came to be their first success was just a natural follow-up.


I ask if, quite frankly, they have not really noticed what impact their breakthrough had on electronic music over the years to come. They respond that they cannot see such from their perspective and that they respect other composers too much to be able to take on any kind of honor. At first I do not know what to believe, but as the hours go on I understand that there is no dressed humility but that they have actually just made music they like and in a slightly naive way do not actually understand how I can sit and make such claims .
However, they admit that the sound of "Music Has the Right ..." is no longer unique. For someone who became interested in electronic music recently, the album probably stands out as pretty standard electronica, since it released so soft music whose starting point is in that album.

After "Geogaddi", some reviewers wrote that "this is common background electronics",
Michael laughs.
But when we did "Music Has the Right to Children" others were jungling and then we were not just ordinary background electronics. The problem with "Geogaddi" was that it took four of us to drop the disc, so we probably missed the train a little bit.




It has been a concern for us,



says Marcus.
It is a bit sad when you notice that a sound that you thought felt brand new and now fresh is suddenly widespread. It has made us stop and think "where is it now for us?".


"THE CAMPFIRE HEADPHASE" is more stripped down and contains more acoustic instruments than before. As usual, it requires time to understand, but the direct associations are as strong as usual. I sat with the album in my headphones on my way to Edinburgh. The music accompanied beautifully and perfectly when the aircraft broke through the cloud cover and met the sunlight. At the same time it felt like I was sitting on a doomed flight, a plane that would soon be in ruins on a Scottish field. The contrasts have always been the strength of Boards Of Canada's music.




With "The Campfire Headphase" we tried to make it as simple as possible,


explains Michael.
We wanted to scale everything down to the ground and write music that was simple. The album is a road movie about a man who parks his car and pitches his tent. The music is what goes on in the man's head as he sits in front of the campfire before he goes to bed. The album leaked online now this week and I read some reactions to a discussion forum. Half said "they were much better at 'Music Has the Right to Children', why can't they sound like that instead of experimenting?". The other half said "uh, they sound just like they always did". It's simply not possible to win.

Damned if you don't, damned if you don't,
says Marcus, shrugging his shoulders.



I still love "Music Has the Right to Children" but we could never make an album that sounds like that now.

Boards Of Canada's frugal release rate has not only contributed to the rumors of their supposedly strange life, but has also built up a lot of fans' expectations before each release.

We've always had good reasons for not releasing albums so often,
says Michael.
Before "The Campfire Headphase" we moved to new studios and so I became a dad. The way we work also means that it takes a long time for us.

If you look at bands in the seventies and eighties, they didn't release new albums every year,

says Marcus.
The real bands, like Led Zeppelin, sometimes took two to three years for completely natural reasons such as tours, privacy and stuff. Today, there are such unreasonable demands that one must be productive. Everything should go fast and the problem with it is that it lowers the quality of the music. We could have released a new record twelve months after "Geogaddi", but it had not been as good.

If I lived at home with my parents and had no responsibility, I could sit down at the laptop with a pair of headphones and release a new album every week,

says Michael.

IT RAINES PROCEDURE when we break up from the bar. I am offered a transfer home to my hotel and on the way Marcus repeats that it is a prejudice that it always rains in Edinburgh and reminds me that I should come here again to see the city from its right side. I just thanked for the shot and will step out when it strikes me that the most important question has not actually been asked. The red thread through the Boards Of Canada's records is campfire anyway. Whether it is literally or just in the mood, there is always a campfire in their songs. Is it also just part of the big myth that Michael and Marcus have chopped into pieces in front of my tape recorder in recent hours?

Let's say this ... If I have to choose between going to a packed club in London and dancing or going out to a deserted beach and camping with some friends and a bottle of wine, I prefer the latter every day of the week,
says Marcus.
But we're not hippies or anything,
adds Michael quickly.

[bungler666]

Interesting article, the first one.
I am Swedish and if you want to I can correct the second one. I actually worked on a translated version of that but I lost it.

[Echelon]

Interesting article, the first one.
I am Swedish and if you want to I can correct the second one. I actually worked on a translated version of that but I lost it.

That would be awesome. I've been trying to pass time as a fan so I'd be down!

And yeah, the first one is really interesting. When I was translating it, there were quite a few bits of lore I've never heard before. The Red Moon celebration being one of them.

[bungler666]

Do you suppose I should just post it in this thread when I'm done with it?

[Echelon]

Do you suppose I should just post it in this thread when I'm done with it?

Yep. And I'm sure someone who actually knows how to edit Bocpages could probably put it up. I don't actually have an account.

Still, it's nice to have the article actually translated instead of having to rely on the much improved Google translate. The article makes total sense but there are some weird turns of phrase.

The french article is even worse in terms of that. There's a weird section that explains that once they released TCH, they drove around in Marcus' car and listened to it but the word order is strange.

Thanks again though

[ZosoCon]

Do you suppose I should just post it in this thread when I'm done with it?

Yep. And I'm sure someone who actually knows how to edit Bocpages could probably put it up. I don't actually have an account.

Still, it's nice to have the article actually translated instead of having to rely on the much improved Google translate. The article makes total sense but there are some weird turns of phrase.

The french article is even worse in terms of that. There's a weird section that explains that once they released TCH, they drove around in Marcus' car and listened to it but the word order is strange.

Thanks again though

Thanks for the help with the translations Echelon. We need a lot of help with getting proper translations (especially the Japanese ones). Of course it's better when the translator is fluent in both English and the concerning language, so bungler666 your input would be appreciated since you're Swedish. You can pm me with the translated text and I can put it up. I've pretty much taken over the interview section; have done the majority of the editing and over 90% of the scans come from my personal collection

[Echelon]

Do you suppose I should just post it in this thread when I'm done with it?

Yep. And I'm sure someone who actually knows how to edit Bocpages could probably put it up. I don't actually have an account.

Still, it's nice to have the article actually translated instead of having to rely on the much improved Google translate. The article makes total sense but there are some weird turns of phrase.

The french article is even worse in terms of that. There's a weird section that explains that once they released TCH, they drove around in Marcus' car and listened to it but the word order is strange.

Thanks again though

Thanks for the help with the translations Echelon. We need a lot of help with getting proper translations (especially the Japanese ones). Of course it's better when the translator is fluent in both English and the concerning language, so bungler666 your input would be appreciated since you're Swedish. You can pm me with the translated text and I can put it up. I've pretty much taken over the interview section; have done the majority of the editing and over 90% of the scans come from my personal collection

No problem.

If we get the Kanji up for the japanese ones I can see if the google translate provides reasonable translations and then I can pull a valotonin and try to interpret it. I don't mind sitting there and doing that. It's not the same as getting a proper translation but it can be a placeholder until we actually get one. I just like hearing more of the lore

[ZosoCon]

No problem.

If we get the Kanji up for the japanese ones I can see if the google translate provides reasonable translations and then I can pull a valotonin and try to interpret it. I don't mind sitting there and doing that. It's not the same as getting a proper translation but it can be a placeholder until we actually get one. I just like hearing more of the lore

Sounds good to me with placeholders. Yeah unfortunately a big problem with the Japanese articles is the transcription. When there are edits and corrections to be made after the OCR software transcribes the text, it's difficult to edit the characters without a Japanese keyboard (and of course without familiarity with the Japanese writing system). Plus, I've noticed with google translate, a lot of times the Japanese translations are hilariously wrong. But yeah I'll try and get some really rough transcriptions on bocpages soon and go from there.

[Echelon]

No problem.

If we get the Kanji up for the japanese ones I can see if the google translate provides reasonable translations and then I can pull a valotonin and try to interpret it. I don't mind sitting there and doing that. It's not the same as getting a proper translation but it can be a placeholder until we actually get one. I just like hearing more of the lore

Sounds good to me with placeholders. Yeah unfortunately a big problem with the Japanese articles is the transcription. When there are edits and corrections to be made after the OCR software transcribes the text, it's difficult to edit the characters without a Japanese keyboard (and of course without familiarity with the Japanese writing system). Plus, I've noticed with google translate, a lot of times the Japanese translations are hilariously wrong. But yeah I'll try and get some really rough transcriptions on bocpages soon and go from there.

Yeah I'll keep at it with the other ones and create placeholders for them. I just did this Greek Geogaddi era one today.

Saddest quote: Marcus: If in twenty years we still create things I find interesting and still enjoy it, I will be very happy.


"Boards of Canada" was an interview (in Greek) by Christos Karras originally published October 2002 in Fractal Press magazine Number 131 pp.20-21

The wait for the release of their second album has reached a point of hysteria among the audiences of the so-called leftfield -they are progressive- electronica. And this is not the case with applied hype. the Boards Of Canada won the sympathy of the modern bourgeoisie thanks to the power of their sound to take you to a distant space-time. The soul plan that was achieved four years ago with Music Has The Riqht Children and is repeated with this year's diamond Geogaddi, is what makes Marcus Eion and Michael Sandison now the leaders of an electronic music movement made up of names. (Mum, Minotaur Shock, Manual, Casino Vs Japan []) that combine analog with digital sound, retrieve the child that each listener hides inside and build
which combine analog with digital sound, retrieve the child that every listener hides inside and build complex but at the same time sweet and attractive atmospheres. The glory is now a reality for the two residents of the Scottish province who, as if they do not want or can believe what is happening to them, are still distanced from the musical metropolises, rarely appear and let a wind of mystery hover around them. .


However, in the interview they gave us via e-mail, they did everything in detail.

Fractal Press: What was involved between Music Has The Right Children and Geogaddi? What happened during those four years?

Mike: For a whole year we wrote music, traveled and filmed the north. Then we rebuilt our studio which took a long time to get ready. We had a lot of technical problems for about a year, until we finally got over them. We've spent the last two years writing music for our new album, but we've also done some remixes and favors for others, such as the remix of Mike Paradinas' Slag Boom Van Loon project.


Then we decided not to do any more remixes or collaborations in the future because all of this absorbs valuable time that we prefer to use while writing our own records. In addition, we released two EPs, In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country and John Peel session.

F.P .: For you, what were the most important differences between Music Has The Right Children and Geogaddi?


Mike: At Geogaddi we used a lot of distorted sounds to achieve a more "generalized" sound where the individual elements were less important. The idea was to make the sounds unrecognizable, and for example there are some points you can't tell if you're listening to a flute, voice or synthesizer. In the previous album we focus more on simple melodic lines by synthesizers and small individual sounds.

It was a more minimalist and sparse sound and the truth is that this is how we usually sound. Most recently, though, I've found myself trying to trap some of the weird sounds I hear when I dream, sounds I can't recognize in the tone of a musical instrument, and I think at Geogaddi we did.

F.R .: When do you realize that a piece of you has reached perfection?

Marcus: I don't know if there's a point where a piece is perfect. I guess this happens when you get to the point where you love the sound of your song and you think that whatever you add or subtract will destroy it. Then it might be perfect. I'm happy when I can finish a piece in a day, but sometimes I'm obsessed with certain parts of a piece and it can take me weeks. At this time, however, I try to write more music but spend less time on each piece, because I know that's when musicians do their best work.

F.P .: Where do Boards Of Canada draw their inspiration from?

Mike: We have the same influences. As we were amoebas in the early 70's we listened to a lot of music, but the biggest influence is movies and books as well as older pop music from the '60s and' 70s. We like TV music from the 70's to the 80's, like the jigsaw puzzles that fall at the end of American TV shows. I get a lot of inspiration from movies, especially from those paranoid freestyle movies of the late '70s to the early' 80s.


We have also been deeply influenced by some documentaries, cartoons and citizen news programs. I read serious science fiction as I try to imagine the sounds that match the scenes described. Definitely this is food for the music I write.

G.P .: How do you choose the titles of your records and tracks? To what extent do these titles refer to your music? Doesn't the nominal performance of music often limit the listener's ability to create his own scripts in his own sense, when listening to music?

Marcus: It's important to leave some ambiguity in these things, because what the listener can imagine is always stronger than what you can actually give him. We approach each of our titles differently. Sometimes it can be as simple as the name of the person whose voice is heard on the track, or it can be a distorted phrase that someone noticed as they were drunk or breastfeeding. False phrases have been used several times because such a phrase exudes inspiration as it evokes emotions, becomes surreal and suggests a confused, enhanced form of reality.

Sometimes we even put enigmatic secrecy in our pieces, because we are wondering if someone will understand what they are referring to. A title can make music sound completely different so it can be a great thing if done carefully.

F.P .: How do the visuals you use in your concerts relate to the music you play? Are there any messages you want to convey behind these images?

Mike: I like people to form their own views on what n music means, and so do visuals, which is why we make ambiguous images that all imply specific things. We usually make quite abstract images, with loopholes from cartoons and gloomy clips from sad moments. In the same way that a piece can have a voice and the listener does not recognize what exactly the voice says, in this way we like to use abstract images with subtle or subconscious tricks.


We have recently used images that take on a theme and make strange connections between art, geometry, mathematics and religion. We always change our concept every time we release a new album.

F.P .: What are your favorite records of all time?

Marcus: I could answer you forever, but the top ones are Loveless for me by My Bloody Valentine, New Traditionalists by Devo, Pet Sounds by Beach Boys, Heaven or Las Vegas r and Blue Bell Knoll by Cocteau Twins and Julian Cope's 20 Mothers.


Mike: My answer would change from time to time, but for now I'd say Cocteau Twins' Garlands, Deeno's Midnight Runners Geno, anything from Joni Mitchell's Wendy Carlos, Clouds, I Don't Know Why I Love You by Stevie Wonder ...

F.P .: Listening to Boards Of Canada makes me feel like a child again. How do past experiences load your material?

Mike: We like to play with the images and memories of childhood, they are a good source of inspiration, because we have all been children before, and we have all lost part of our lives. Almost all pop music is based on current issues and current interests of adults, but most of this material leaves me empty and indifferent. I want music to make me feel sad,

i want n music to make me feel anything. That's why in my music I recall memories, some good and some tragic. I also believe that, as a young person, you may have strange ideas and sophisticated thoughts in your mind, but as you grow older, all of these are repelled and put into the subconscious. Maybe we're trying to recapture those ideas by writing our own music. We try to disguise something complicated in something simple and naive, and maybe when you listen to our music it seems childish or simplistic, but that only applies to the surface of our music.

F.P .: Is there anything you're missing from the early days of Boards Of Canada, when you were a broader art collective without formal jobs?

Mike: Yes, I miss n anonymity.

F.P .: How do you achieve this multidimensional type of music, where listening, no matter how much it is, never loses its interest?

Marcus: Our songs are quite musical. I mean, we're better musicians than the soundtrack of Boards Of Canada can reveal, and we're basically writing melodies that have a good degree of emotional "analysis" in them. The magic "fifth string".

When composing our tracks we want them to include things that are not obvious the first time you listen to them, so that after several hearings you can find sounds and hidden melodies that you had not noticed before. We also write a lot of songs. Only one-twentieth of our work finds its way to the market and only after we have worked on them for months, only then do we have a good idea of ​​which parts have the most endurance over time.

F.P .: The new album is a bit darker than Music Has The Right Children. What led you to this change of direction?

Marcus: It was not our intention to write a darker album. I think the sound just reflects our mood as we record it. I think we unconsciously reacted to the feeling we had that the sound of our previous record was a little lighter than we really are and we also reacted to specific personal, traumatic experiences of recent years.

F.P .: You rarely show up live and don't communicate with your listeners. How do you get feedback on your music? How do you rate this feedback and how much do you let it affect your music?

Mike: In fact, we try not to get feedback. It's easier for us to have fun creating our music when we imagine no one is listening. We get the most feedback from friends. We don't like to follow what other cats think, it's very easy to be disappointed by a bad reviewer. When we started writing music we were very happy that we didn't know what others thought of us, as there were no expectations or demands.

We don't want to be changed by what people say, whether it's good or not, so these days we're trying hard to get locked out of the outside world and imagine that we're still going through our first period.

F.P .: How do you look to the future?

Marcus: If in twenty years we still create things I find interesting and still enjoy it, I will be very happy.

Mike: Music forever.

[The Spaniard]

>> GEOGADDI << WAS A Dark Album. There was a pre-apocalyptic mood over it, as if the Boards Of Canada knew something about the world we others didn't know.

They knew about it!

[♄ope keeper]

Nice Marcus, Campfire Headphase goes to Tomorrow's Harvest...

phpBB [media]

[koroviev]

As we were amoebas in the early 70's

[Mexicola]

I think Google Translate has turned Dexy's Midnight Runners into Deeno's Midnight Runners

[Echelon]

Mike: We don't like to follow what other cats think, it's very easy to be disappointed by a bad reviewer.

I think Google Translate turned Mike Sandison into a 1950s beatnik.

[ParticleGhost]

Mike: We don't like to follow what other cats think, it's very easy to be disappointed by a bad reviewer.

I think Google Translate turned Mike Sandison into a 1950s beatnik.

iced cooly...

[Jango9]

I think Google Translate turned Mike Sandison into a 1950s beatnik.

Funny you should mention that, I found actual photographic evidence of the time Mike Sandison traveled back in time to the 50s and disguised himself as a beatnik in order to blend in:

Spoiler: show

[Echelon]

I think Google Translate turned Mike Sandison into a 1950s beatnik.

Funny you should mention that, I found actual photographic evidence of the time Mike Sandison traveled back in time to the 50s and disguised himself as a beatnik in order to blend in:

Spoiler: show

Ha! It now makes sense why the bongo playing on Alpha and Omega is so good!