[Interview] Magic RPM (July-August, 2013)

Everything related to our favorite Scottish duo.

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Any info about that magazine and the interview?
http://www.magicrpm.com/magazine
http://www.magicrpm.com/artistes/boards ... e-detaille

Dossier Boards of Canada
+ Interview du duo.

Anyone from France can buy one and share with us?

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Source: http://instagram.com/p/bTSAtzuJEp/

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Here, I scanned in the cover and article.
http://imgur.com/a/6qAif#0

Here's the front cover
Image

And the text in French
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yab ... sp=sharing
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BOARDS OF CANADA
File compiled by Jean-François Le Puil
Article and Interview Sylvain Collin
Photographs Iain Campbell

HARVEST FROM HEAVEN

Nostalgia as a weapon of mass destruction: Boards of Canada look into the past via an (imaginary) means in order to destroy the ideology of technological progress that we are sold on a daily basis. The brothers are back from their travels with Tomorrow's Harvest, true little masterpiece of electronic music. Developed over several years, this album urges the listener to fantasize a quite different conclusion to the end of the world: an ironic and dreamlike apocalypse. A fantastic and exhilarating dialogue between George Orwell and George A. Romero played with exemplary accuracy and thoroughness.

P28 HARVEST FROM HEAVEN
Boards of Canada in the light of The Day After Tomorrow.

P34 THE GALAXY COMES TO LIFE
Co-musicians from all walks of life encourage the duo to open up.

P37 THE MUSIC OF DREAMS
Cut! Thats’s a rap! with Michel Gondry


The review and BoC interview here.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ea4 ... sp=sharing
Last edited by purgruv on Mon Jul 08, 2013 6:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison will try to deny it, but they are very concerned about how the public perceives their music. There is absolutely nothing contemptible in that, quite the contrary. If he could have, Stanley Kubrick himself would have painted the theaters where his films were playing if he felt that they weren’t dark enough. For Boards Of Canada, it's a bit the same. Well, okay, they won’t come and set the equalizer on your stereo for you or change the layout of your audiophile speakers, but they will take care of all the details; from recording to promotion. So it’s only with the release of the LP, The Campfire Headphase (2005), that the duo reveal that they are actually brothers. Why hide such a bland biographical fact? Mainly to avoid comparisons with Paul and Phil Hartnoll of Orbital, they argued at the time. Curious. No doubt they also wanted to avoid a series of questions about their childhood, family, etc. As such, it is particularly instructive to read the articles written at the time about the Beach Boys, The Jesus And Mary Chain and Oasis. However, it’s not so hard to imagine that the Sandisons get along a lot better than the brothers Wilson, Reid or Gallagher. As kids, they already played music together. When they were ten or twelve years old, they tinkered with multi-track VHS. Later, Marcus joined a metal band in secondary school. But that wasn’t Mike’s style, even then, the two brothers continued to fiddle with their synths together. The early 90s is the prologue to the story of Boards Of Canada. A musical framework slowly takes shape and compositions are born. The tracks they made during that period would be enough to fill a few albums, but Mike and Marcus just weren’t good enough, at least, that was their opinion. Having heard some of their old songs; cassettes they distributed to their friends up until the release of Boc Maxima (1996); the first version of Music Has The Right To Children (1998), it’s clear they had what it takes to make the heavyweights of the IDM era (Aphex Twin, The Orb, The Future Sound Of London, Orbital and Autechre) green with envy. Ever since their first release, Boards Of Canada took time out to trim down, polish, refine and tweak to achieve the style they had in mind. Mike once said he could easily spend time and money to recover the right audio material just for a few seconds of music. This is probably why, Tomorrow's Harvest took seven long years to reap.

ZOMBIE
In electronic music, the expiry dates can be short: the days can be worth a few weeks, the years a century. Boards Of Canada’s is the sort that doesn’t ever seem to go out of date. If it seems that time has no hold over their music, it could be that the two brothers are fond of vintage equipment. Certainly, their old equipment give a certain patina to their sound, but their choice of abode and studio location must play a part, too. Of course, in the Scottish countryside where the reclusive composers live time passes slower. Much slower. If living in such isolation allow them to develop a different world, it’s also a direct route to feelings of resentment and antisocial paranoia. How to find the right balance? "Aha, but we’re not really hermits", Mike makes clear, email being the preferred means of communication favored by the group at the time of promotion of Tomorrow's Harvest in the world. "When we speak of isolation, it is from an artistic point of view, not a social one. We don’t feel the need to hang out in an urban context, to keep abreast of what is happening in music, what's popular, etc. That sort of thing: fashion, urban culture - is just background noise for us; radio interference, it becomes a big distraction when we try to create our own music, a good deal of modern music sounds like it was composed by artists who are constantly trying to look over each other’s shoulders. I prefer the pre-Internet era when musical styles were clearly defined. That way different groups and styles of music could evolve independently and develop fully, in a concentrated and exclusive way. The internet and an hyper-connected urban life destroys that kind of purity."

"Retro" you can say that again! So then, urban modernity creates negative vibes that affect creativity. On top of that, as he confessed recently by email to the Guardian, in reference to the book You Are Not A Gadget (2010) by the American author Jaron Lanier, Mike believes that “modern technology often gives an illusion of empowerment while in reality it's increasingly all about removal of liberty, and homogenising the user base." This morose yet relevant observation of society has been growing for some time. It recalls the post-apocalyptic films of the 70s - Soylent Green (1973), Logan's Run (1976), Silent Running (1972), Phase IV (1974), etc. - paranoid low budget series of the early '80s (Italian zombie films notably). A fairly uninsightful and downright fanciful forecast, these films are much more interesting in that they reveal our social and ecological anxieties; our collective phobias. Despite the appearance of a clichéd Instagram, the cover of Tomorrow's Harvest just… fits: the San Francisco skyline breaks the line of a desolate horizon and disappears as if engulfed by an incandescent glow. We look upon a city as if in agony, then as a mirage, the persistent memory of a forgotten utopian future ... When the needle hits the vinyl, the atmosphere is almost palpable. Mike lays it on thick in the Guardian interview again "We've become a lot more nihilistic over the years. In a way we're really celebrating an idea of collapse (the track Collapse is in the middle of the album) rather than resisting it. It's probably quite a bleak album, depending on your perspective. It's not post-apocalyptic so much as it is about an inevitable stage that lies in front of us." So much for setting the scene. Certainly, based on one’s personal film experience, or the rapport that each of us has with the music of Boards Of Canada, the album probably won’t evoke the same images. The precise dramatic outline drafted here by the Scottish duo, show that the random and abstract Super8 collages that once served as promotional videos are now an irrelevance. Even if we find a few smooth, familiar sounds, Tomorrow's Harvest is not really an album of progressive ambient electro or an acidic sound kaleidoscope. It was conceived as a soundtrack and must be taken as such. Unfortunately, today, no one is around to make the ideal film for it and this is probably also why nostalgia operates from the very first notes. The Sandison brothers also tip their hats to low budget series composers from the 70s and 80s : Mark Isham, Fabio Frizzi (the composer for Zombi 2 in 1979, a fake Italian Romero sequel), Stefano Mainetti (Zombie 3, 1988) Wendy Carlos (The Shining in 1980, Tron 1982) or John Harrison. The latter seems to find a special place in their repertoire. The sinking feeling of White Cyclosa (track 3 of Tomorrow's Harvest) strangely resembles the introduction that Harrison plays for The Dead Suite, from the soundtrack of Romero’s Day Of The Dead (1985), whilst not being as oppressive and nihilistic as a zombie film. The atmospheres are more subtly layered and the emotions that emerge more diverse, but no less intense. This is certainly one of the more sincere and moving tributes given to this genre of cinema from the electronic music genre. Now let’s allow Marcus and Mike show off their wares in their own way.

What is your strongest memory (musical or non-musical) of the past seven years? Have you been missing the recognition all this time?
Mike Sandison : The births of my children have been the most intense memories of recent years. Being a dad makes you more aware of our planet’s long term problems. On a more personal level, this probably gives me greater self-confidence and esteem, which helps make up for any external approval. Anyway, I would say that I still couldn’t care less for artistic recognition. I’ve learned to go with my gut, my instinct, to compose music that I really want to hear

The treasure hunt for the promotion of Tomorrow's Harvest, searching for hidden clues on a variety of media and over different continents was fun. Aren’t you afraid it will make your fans search for hidden meanings (wild ones often) in your music? Or is that part of the musical experience for you?
Marcus Eoin:
It may actually be part of the musical experience but you’ve got to avoid making it seem forced or artificial. The music has to be enough in itself. In this case, we thought that this method would go well with the general atmosphere of the album. It also gave us the opportunity to get away from the boundaries of the audio format and create a game that involves the listener.

We know that you enjoy paranoid or post-apocalyptic movies from the late 60s to the early 80s. Instrumental electronic records are often compared to film music, and even if it’s a lazy or easy comparison to make it really seems relevant in the case of Tomorrow's Harvest.
MS:
Yes, of course, is exactly what we wanted do. We have always collected these sort of films and soundtracks, so this is something that has influenced our music from the very beginning. And it became more intentional on this album. We hope that anyone who likes this kind of cinema will be inspired enough by Tomorrow's Harvest to make their own visual interpretations.

The Campfire Headphase was built as a collection of pop songs while Geogaddi (2002) was much more abstract and ambient. The general structure of the new album is actually a lot more elaborate than that.
MS:
Actually, we decided early on that we wanted to give it a soundtrack feel, but to make this type of album is a real challenge without it sounding too cheesy. So when we started working, we listened to a lot of soundtracks, including some from the 80s, by focusing on specific issues, studying the practices in terms of layout and timing. The ideas we learned gave us a framework, a structure to expand upon. We knew exactly how it should begin and how it would end.

Could you give us a soundtrack in particular?
MS:
No, there’s no theme or soundtrack in particular that inspired us. As I said, we mainly shaped the sound and visuals of Tomorrow's Harvest based on our memories of some of the films of that time, generally dark and pessimistic. There are a lot of budget films based on survivalism, horror, political conspiracy, uncontrolled science, etc. Electronic music is regularly used in these works ranging from dark loops, synthetic atmospheres and sometimes even tribal sounds. Strangely, the horror and sci-fi movies of the 80s are often filled with a sort of cheerful dark humour. That's the kind of atmosphere that we tried to recreate.

LAME
The production and arrangements of Tomorrow's Harvest are really impressive. All your albums have this retro warmth, in comparison the latest release sounds much more hi-fi. Have you changed something in your recording methods and how it was this part of the writing process?
ME:
Because we designed this record as a soundtrack from the past, we knew that the production would be a very difficult exercise and everything had to be perfectly arranged, much more than on our previous LPs, where we went out of our way to fuck up elements to get that grainy sound. We certainly used a lot of vintage gear for this album but if you play back the music that inspired us carefully, apart from the fact that they are often made ​​with analog synthesizers and other rudimentary electronic instruments of the time, you realize that the arrangements are very accurate and that the production is still very high.

In light of Tomorrow's Harvest, do you consider The Campfire Headphase, with samples of guitars and the jolly almost euphoric atmosphere, as a digression in your discography?
MS:
This may be a digression in the context of Boards Of Canada, but not for us as individuals. We’ve been playing guitar since we were kids - especially Marcus, he’s an excellent guitarist - but we didn’t really want to put this to the forefront in our albums, mainly because we think it would not be consistent with the rest. What we did on The Campfire Headphase is injecting naive guitar loops in the sampler and write our songs around it like we usually do.

Is the material in Tomorrow's Harvest entirely new or have you (re)used any old stuff?
ME:
We write and record music all the time and this album consists solely of new songs. We do not have a strict way of working, but generally, we first create several drafts independent of each other, then we choose the ones we like the most and develop each in parallel.

Some of your fans think that there is a link between Tomorrow's Harvest and Deadly Harvest (1977), an obscure Canadian sci-fi film. Is this the case?
ME:
Honestly, no. We were not inspired by this film, but I recognize that there are undeniable similarities between the two works. References to the "seeds" on the album are not to be taken literally

How should we take them then?
ME:
There are clues in the song titles but if we explain all of it then it longer has any interest!

Do you pay attention to how the public perceives your music? You say you play a lot of guitar music but that this has no place in the context of Boards Of Canada. Why not start a traditional band or even release solo albums?
ME:
We don’t really pay attention to how the public perceives us, we only make music we love. On the other hand, we are obviously aware that our centres of musical interests go beyond the usual Boards Of Canada sandbox. And yes, we write and record a lot of music that has no place on a BoC album and perhaps we will explore this in the future.

What does this music sound like?
ME:
It’s much less synthetic. I can’t give you a good idea of the style because it’s a bit all over the place. Some pieces are very experimental. We record with friends and use whatever comes to hand in the studio - guitars, drums, stringed instruments and other classical means. In a sense, it looks much more like the work of a traditional band.

And the acoustic version of Music Has The Right To Children, where is it?
ME:
Well, it exists. It's pretty lame, but that's what gives it it’s charm. I'm not sure that we’ll ever release it.

The review and BoC interview here.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ea4 ... sp=sharing
Last edited by purgruv on Mon Jul 08, 2013 6:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Wow! You are awesome!! Thanks!

We owe you a big big one!

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bdzz wrote:Wow! You are awesome!! Thanks!

We owe you a big big one!


^^

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THE GALAXY IS ALIVE

Holding their own for fifteen years against other Warp artists, Boards Of Canada are appreciated and cherished by fans of rock, pop, metal, hip hop. If the music of Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin enchants, it is often their radical approach to production that fascinates their musical counterparts. Some of them were keen to ask them a question or two. An unnatural exercise for the autarkic duo who still managed to play the game.

COORDINATION JEAN-FRANCOIS LE PUIL
TRANSLATION SYLVAIN COLLIN

Yoni Wolf
(WHY?)

From what I understand you’ve just finished the new album and everyone’s overjoyed! I haven’t had the chance to hear it yet, but I was wondering if you approached it differently. How do you keep your creative process fresh after two decades?
Mike Sandison :
Developing new songs always gives us a lot of pleasure and we both try to outdo one another with our respective drafts. We go back and forth quite a bit because we are very critical with one another (we can even be quite brutal) and when we find a rough idea that we both like we work together to develop it. I think we managed to stay focused on Tomorrow's Harvest because we had a very good idea for the structure and what we wanted to achieve right from the start, including the general tone of the album. It was like filling in a blank space where before we could only see edges.

GHOST BOX RECORDS
(Belbury Poly, THE FOCUS GROUP, ETC.)

As artists, we are often asked about nostalgia and memory, and we believe the notion of "past inside the present," as found in your work, was far more important a model than the reinterpretation of the music from our childhood. To us Boards Of Canada evokes a world where time doesn’t exist and contemporary sounds appear little more than references to the past. This is probably what makes your music last, which makes it timeless, beyond nostalgia. Is this something you recognize in your work and to what extent is this intentional?
MS:
I think you summed it up very well. Our goal has never been to ape the past, I also don’t see the point of this kind of approach. Rather we try to use the stylistic elements of the past as a starting point from which we imagine a new direction - what might have happened if this style was developed further? It's like imagining a parallel reality where music took a different route. From there you can probably hear both anachronistic and contemporary elements side by side in our music.

BENOIT Pioulard
What is the best chord?
MS:
B9, because there is nothing even slightly malicious about it.

PARSLEY SOUND
(EX-SLUM)
If you could perform an action to change the ecology of the planet for the benefit of human life, what would it be?
MS :
Reduce the number of human beings

BIBIO
Can you recommend a specific place in Scotland to visit with headphones and what would you listen to?
Marcus Eoin :
The Devil's Staircase in Glencoe with the Highlander (1986) soundtrack, so you can imagine Christophe Lambert going around beheading people.

JACQUES GREENE
Your electronic music is the most human I've ever heard, and yet there are a load of numbers and mathematical calculations inside it. Feelings and memories of emotions up against electronic hardware and sequences. Is there a specific link between man and machine, between the numbers and the emotions that you are trying to explore?
MS:
We are inspired not only by music, but also by science. There is no great separation between the structure and maths behind the music and the emotion that it brings. Most of the time, we play with these mechanisms through an old style of melodic writing. Sometimes, however, we design certain musical patterns obsessively that are more like mini psychological experiments. Much of our music is perhaps subject to an effect such as "The Uncanny Valley" (hypothesis in the field of human aesthetics which holds that when human features look and move almost, but not perfectly, like natural human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers theorized by Masahiro Mori), when we blend in a disturbing way human and non-human sounds.

BENOIT Pioulard
Where is the center?
ME :
As far away as possible from the extremities?

NEIL KRUG
(DIRECTOR OF "TOMORROW'S HARVEST" VIDEOS)
What is your favorite Stevie Wonder album?
ME:
Ugh, it's like choosing a favorite James Bond ... It's heartbreaking for me to not mention Talking Book (1972) and Songs In The Key Of Life (1976) but I would place still Innervisions (1973) first. All of Stevie Wonder’s work has always greatly influenced me, but that particular album is the pinnacle of refinement in terms of production. It’s so organic and analog, with a huge sound which doesn’t forget to leave a bit of breathing space. Innervisions contains tone changes, which when used by any other musician would have sounded so clumsy and yet he manages to make everything so natural.

BENOIT Pioulard
What is the onomatopoeia you would use to accompany a time lapse of a peony blooming?
MS:
I think we sampled this sound for Magic Window (The last track on Geogaddi, totally silent.)

ANDREW HUNG
(FUCK BUTTONS)
What are the differences between your solo sessions and those where you work collectively? Does the way you work with each other have an influence on the tone of your music and has this aspect of your relationship evolved over the years?
ME:
Working together makes us cut to the quick and finish the job. We become particularly ruthless about what we do when we work together So, I think pieces made together are also the most simple, whilst the more refined tracks where we work on our own tend to be more complex. It’s easier to keep adding over and over to a title you're working alone on. In the end, a song always ends up in the hands of the other, who listens with a fresh ear, then refines or rejects it. We’re very frank with each other.

BOOM BIP
Do you think there is a tempo to nature? Are you trying to give your music this tempo?
MS :
If this is the case, it’s not a conscious decision. A few years ago, we had this idea: divide the day into two, then in half again, and so on until you reach a tempo and then add frequencies that are consistent with the duration of a day. We called it “Day Harmonics.” I now realize that this is a concept that is similar to the harmony of the spheres (philosophical theory based on the idea that the universe is governed by harmonious numerical ratios).

JUSTIN Broadrick
(JESU, GODFLESH)
Are you interested in metal and its derivatives? As a member of a metal band, Boards Of Canada is one of my influences and I know many metal fans that are also big fans of your music. Have you already heard of this and do you like this style? I'm pretty sure I've read that you listened to bands like Nine Inch Nails, but I could be wrong!
ME:
That's an excellent question, Justin. People often put us in the dance music section but they are missing the point. Mike and I have never been fans of dance music. Our musical education took place during the 80s listening to post-punk and industrial bands and this was probably our biggest influence. I was in an industrial/thrash metal band when I was a teenager. So yes, of course, we are still big fans of the style today. I listened to a lot of artists from the dark ambient scene recently, I feel a great affinity with these guys.

BOOM BIP
Do you hear music in your dreams? If so is it new stuff or is it distorted versions of other artists’ music?
MS:
I sometimes hear music in my dreams, actually, then I go to the studio to try to reproduce it . I remember dreaming once about a wonderful new song Cocteau Twins. It wasn’t a real song Cocteau Twins, of course, but I loved what I heard in the dream. I was annoyed that the memory faded so quickly when I woke up.

JON HOPKINS
Is there an instrument that has always given you inspiration and what is your relationship with it?
MS :
Good question. Probably the Akai sampler. I keep going back to my old Akai. We use them more like synthesizers than samplers we record our own instrumental parts on it and then manipulate them. It’s not really an instrument in the sense that it doesn’t have it’s own sound, it's just a tool. I love the old stuff, the memories they hold and the efforts of memory they require. Also, they look like stuff in Soviet hospitals, which encourages us to do depressing music.

Collective interview and interview with Michel Gondry.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awS ... sp=sharing
Last edited by purgruv on Mon Jul 08, 2013 8:46 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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THE MUSIC OF DREAMS
Michel Gondry

Filmmaker originally from Versailles (not necessarily well respected in his own country, part-time drummer for the group Oui Oui) Michel Gondry knows about music. Music video director for artists such as Björk, Daft Punk and The White Stripes, he used three Boards Of Canada tracks for The We And The I (2012) soundtrack. The filmmaker explains why the albums by Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin so inspire his work.

How did you hear about Boards Of Canada?
Actually, I was driving in a car with Bjork in Los Angeles listening to Discovery (2001), the second album by Daft Punk, which had just come out, and she told me."If you like that you should listen to Boards Of Canada" So I took her advice. Although I personally didn’t see the connection to Daft Punk, I liked the abstract and colourful side of Boards Of Canada right away. It’s a fairly open style, so very useful to me when I'm writing because the ideas come faster than if I listen to something more narrative. It helps me get the right atmosphere during a period of writing in the same way as the more recent stuff by Morton Feldman (American composer who died in 1987) or the classical music by Glenn Gould (Canadian pianist who died in 1982). Isolate oneself from the outside world to help achieve the desired state.

Were you listening to Boards Of Canada during the writing of The We And The I, an odd film in an already quite strange filmography?
I can’t really remember. In any case, it was obvious for me to use their music in one of my films. Anyway, I'm not at the point where I use systematically in a film the music I listen to when writing.

But the soundtrack of The We And The I is more of a compilation of a certain mid-to-late 80s rap style (Young MC, Slick Rick, Run DMC ...). Do you see Boards Of Canada as Scottish hip-hop?
The film opens with sequences with a happy hip hop vibe that’s full of humor. It's cool, fun and outgoing because that’s the way the teens in the film imagine it. But as it progresses, behind the scenes something more internal, deeper and less easily definable develops. Boards Of Canada contributes to this message, without contradicting the initial vibe, with music that allows an organic continuity, in order to enter the intimacy of the characters.

Boards Of Canada remains a very inaccessible band: was it easy to get the rights to these three titles in particular or did you ask for a wider range even if only to retain a portion for editing?
I requested three titles (Over The Horizon Radar, Ready Lets Go and Satellite Anthem Icarus) and what we proposed must have been agreed because I heard nothing more except to allow us to use them. If there had been a problem the film crew would have suggested changing the music. So I was able to use the Boards Of Canada tracks that I wanted.

What do you think of the new album Tomorrow's Harvest? (the interview was conducted a few days before its release)
I got it pretty recently and started listening to it immediately. It is in line with previous stuff which is reassuring. Boards Of Canada can’t reinvent themselves, but each track quite literally explores different directions while echoing what they have already done before, to the point of reusing some of their sounds so that each track is a kind of extension of the previous one, a permanent work in progress, almost infinite. I love this kind of self-flashback idea for those who are already Boards Of Canada fans.

POLICE
You mentioned Björk, whose third album Homogenic (1997) was produced by Mark Bell of LFO, pioneer of a certain Warp sound. Boards Of Canada would be the label’s last representative. Which artists, related to Warp or not do you connect most to Boards Of Canada?

I feel a bit badly placed to answer this question, firstly because music often just comes to me more than that I actually seek out new stuff, and secondly, I don’t really know the Warp label. Some folk or psychedelic attempts by The Chemical Brothers, in their time, had something of the Boards Of Canada style. Otherwise, I do not know, sorry, but there surely are.

The soundtrack for your latest film Foam Of The Days is written by Etienne Charry, singer for Oui Oui in which you used to play the drums. And you chose personally the soundtrack for The We And The I. Having proven yourself as a filmmaker in the 2000s, beyond your status as director of music, are you interested in music again, then?
But I've never lost interest in music! I just have more control in all my work, including the music, even though I’ve already had the chance to collaborate with composer Graeme Revell (Human Nature, 2001), Jon Brion (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, 2004), Jean-Michel Bernard (The Science of Dreams in 2006 and Be Kind Rewind in 2008) and James Newton Howard (The Green Hornet, 2011). I gained some freedom in terms of production and the musical direction is part of that. To the point of being able to reuse Boards Of Canada tracks, if it seems justified to me, for one of my upcoming films as if I was the sound director.

The quite frankly minimalist visual charter of Boards Of Canada gives free rein to the imagination of its listeners. How does a filmmaker, let alone a music video director compete with that?
I know there is a contradiction in my work as a music video director, I offer my vision of a song on screen, while the latter, if successful, is sufficient in itself and does not need to be associated to images. I sometimes come to regret some of my choices. I shot a Massive Attack video for example (Protection, considered a benchmark of its kind in the mid-1990s), and a while later I had an idea that would have been more appropriate. As an excuse, I say that if it’s not me that illustrates all the tracks off the same album, someone else will. Somehow, it looks like a book-to-film adaptation. Because I discovered the music of Boards Of Canada at the same time as the cover art, I feel it in different shades of blue or orange without totally mixing-up the colors. There’s a Boards Of Canada track that recycles the American voice-over artist for Jacques Cousteau in The Silent World (1956), a film by Louis Malle and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, I grew up with Cousteau documentary films so this is a very strong connection for me. But if music captivates me, I don’t think about how it's done, how to plug the guitars in or twist the knobs, I've more of a tendency to the visual aspect. Even the name of Boards Of Canada evokes images to me, as I am a fan of the Canadian animator Norman McLaren (a key figure in the National Film Boards of Canada). In fact, the band's sound reminds me of the texture of 16 mm film ... But it is also linked to the cover art. As a teenager, I listened to the second album by Police Reggatta De Blanc (1979), the one with Walking On The Moon, and the lack of access to music videos to go with the music meant that the cover art, with faces of the three members of the group in blue and silver, visually influenced how I heard the music. Well, it was the era of vinyl, the effect was increased tenfold by the object.

Are there any artists you would like to make a video for?
Michael Jackson would have been great but he had probably never even heard of me. I always preferred Prince, contrary to the critical canonisation of the 80s. I've always been suspicious of what was considered cool. During my long stays in the US, I fight homesickness by listening to some French variety that reminds me of my childhood, France Gall and Julien Clerc. But it would be a pleasure to make a video for Boards Of Canada if they ever asked me.

NB. While waiting to discover Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? his animated documentary about (and with) the American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, Michel Gondry's films are available on DVD as well as a selection of music videos, The Work Of Director Michel Gondry (2003).

Collective interview and interview with Michel Gondry.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awS ... sp=sharing
Last edited by purgruv on Mon Jul 08, 2013 6:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
J'aime faire des craquettes aux chiens!

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So the acoustic MHTRTC does exist. Would love to hear it in all it's lame glory.

Found this interesting, because he has kids of his own:

PARSLEY SOUND
(EX-SLUM)
If you could perform an action to change the ecology of the planet for the benefit of human life, what would it be?
MS : Reduce the number of human beings

I struggle with this because I agree, yet I will be having at least 1 kid of my own. Thoughts from others on this?

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"What is your favorite Stevie Wonder album?"

I like questions like this.

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bdzz wrote:"What is your favorite Stevie Wonder album?"

I like questions like this.


Yes. And Innervisions is the best!

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Merci :)

And the acoustic version of Music Has The Right To Children, where is it?
ME: Well, it exists. It's pretty lame, but that's what gives it it’s charm. I'm not sure that we’ll ever release it.

I'd be very interested to hear what it sounds like…

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LMAO at the mention of "the sound sampled for Magic Window." Let all the new theories and speculation begin :lol:

Also, anyone care to research the dialogue Michel Gondry says is sampled in a BoC song from 1956, The Silent World? My guess is it's the samples heard in An Eagle in Your Mind...but who knows.

Great read overall! Thanks for translating. :)
The preparation for a dive is always a tense time.

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Thanks for contributing, purgruv!

purgruv wrote:"Aha, but we’re not really hermits", Mike makes clear, email being the preferred means of communication favored by the group at the time of promotion of Tomorrow's Harvest in the world. "When we speak of isolation, it is from an artistic point of view, not a social one. We don’t feel the need to hang out in an urban context, to keep abreast of what is happening in music, what's popular, etc. That sort of thing: fashion, urban culture - is just background noise for us; radio interference, it becomes a big distraction when we try to create our own music, a good deal of modern music sounds like it was composed by artists who are constantly trying to look over each other’s shoulders. I prefer the pre-Internet era when musical styles were clearly defined. That way different groups and styles of music could evolve independently and develop fully, in a concentrated and exclusive way. The internet and an hyper-connected urban life destroys that kind of purity."


This response literally makes me feel bad both for being so heavily influenced by other artists, and for living in a suburban area. :(

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Sterling work! Merci beaucoup 8)
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Slow down...

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Fantastic read! Thanks for the transcript pugruv!

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North by North wrote:If you could perform an action to change the ecology of the planet for the benefit of human life, what would it be?
MS : Reduce the number of human beings

I struggle with this because I agree, yet I will be having at least 1 kid of my own. Thoughts from others on this?
"For Sweet Love of Planet Earth all human beings must die"

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many thanks for this translation!

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bdzz wrote:Wow! You are awesome!! Thanks! We owe you a big big one!

North by North wrote:^^

Ottomatik wrote:Merci :)

harpoon dodger wrote:Great read overall! Thanks for translating. :)

Inownly wrote:Thanks for contributing, purgruv!

Mexicola wrote:Sterling work! Merci beaucoup 8)

ONTHE88 wrote:Fantastic read! Thanks for the transcript pugruv!

kid wrote:many thanks for this translation!


Thanks for the love guys, if you see any odd turns of phrases or amendments please visit the original gdocs page and comment:

The review and BoC interview here.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ea4 ... sp=sharing

Collective interview and interview with Michel Gondry.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awS ... sp=sharing

Original French text here
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yab ... sp=sharing
J'aime faire des craquettes aux chiens!

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:D Purgruv, you are a gentleman and a scholar my friend!
Thank you for mucho translating and collating :D
...what subtlety?

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