Will there be another Boards of Canada release?
You know what... I've a horrible feeling that Boards of Canada won't release another album under this project. In fact I think they may have thought this way when they created 'the campfire head-phase. There is something about that album that sounds like they were saying goodbye. Obviously they went on to create Tomorrow's Harvest and it was extremely well suited to today's climate. Once again that album gives optimism towards the end, but then ends with absolute despair and dread.
BoC are very true to themselves and their followers. Although they take music very seriously, I don't think they've let the seriousness of their success affect them. They've rarely played live and I personally don't believe they will again. I think they see it as a bit of a bleak and pointless task, which would only serve as facade. They create music designed to interfere which your everyday thought process. But have they exhausted themselves? They are philosophers of sound and it would be really interesting to know about their own personal mental state of mind and political identity.
I once got into an argument about politics on this group and I explained that I believed that BoC's music has always expressed deep (although well hidden) political messages. References to the native Americans, 1969 and the Manson family murders bringing around the demise of that whole revolutionary movement of counter-culture, energy warnings, the attack on the branch davidians and the right to religious freedoms, drug references, mathmatical cues, there is an angle on virtually every track. They either care deeply about society or just love the study of it.
Tomorrow's Harvest was a message to all of us. A very stark warning of our place in history. It acted as a wake up call and offered a glimmer of hope.
The Societas X tape mix did exactly the same, the second to last track offered a glimmer of hope and a wake up call 'butterfly soon to fall, all is love, love is all. But the ending track of Christian Chevallier - Sea Cathedral seemed to summarise that society doesn't exist. Society is an illusion of constant changing rules and opinions. A mass of minds moving like tides across the biosphere. We can all have bright ideas, but in the end the planet wins. You are here and now, but one day you'll be over and consumed, just like everything else.
One day Boards of Canada will end and I very much doubt that they would announce it.