“We are in a place we’ve never been in before, so if I can do anything to use the gift of song to help to feed people, to show my love … it is my joy.”
Where are our words with hope?
Oh how we need those words of hope
Not the kind of hope that leaves some of us behind
But the kind of hope that lifts up all humankind
Where is, where is, our love song?
Not a love song between you and I
But a song that will test the universe to the Heaven’s eye
You say you're sick and tired of us protesting
I say, "Not tired enough to make a change"
You say, "Just you hold on"
I say "No way, 'cause we can't put it in the hands of fate"
Driving around the outskirts of Edinburgh, drying off in (the) warmth of his plush, silver BMW, Eoin ejects a Stevie Wonder CD out from the car stereo and rummages through his rucksack. ‘You have to hear this. It’s the Mysterious Voices Of Bulgaria – 30 women in traditional dress singing these unbelievable harmonies! It’s the kind of music that is totally divorced from normal music, bit I love it. It resets my clock.’
Surely drugs must have inspired such weirdness? Boards of Canada – typically – disagree. ‘We want to reiterate this,’ says Sandison. ‘This isn’t drug music. I’ve always imagined it as daytime music: it’s a beautiful day, in the middle of the afternoon, and you’re with your friends listening to twisty music’.
Mike Sandison once had a dream that he was in Edinburgh, near the castle. All the stonework of the buildings and the roads were covered in flowerbeds sown with a tapestry of bright flowers in concentric patterns. ‘It was the most amazing thing, and it stuck with me for ages. It made me think: there’s nowhere in the world like this! Nowhere at all! So I thought we should try and make tunes that people in that town would be listening to’.
To myself: to explaining the long gaps between releases. ‘Someone wrote that we smoke too much and that’s why we the music takes so long’ splutter’s Sandison. ‘They have no idea!’ The fact is that, like the countryside itself, Boards Of Canada can’t be rushed. The gentle, ageless beauty of their art is the result of months and years of evolution; and of constant, backbreaking work which brooks no metropolitan distraction.
https://bocpages.org/wiki/Breaking_Into_Heaven (January 2001 interview)