Boards of Canada: Difference between revisions

[[File:boc.jpg|frame]]

 

 

Boards of Canada are an electronic music duo formed of two Scottish brothers, Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin. <ref>(For a while they pulled a [[White Stripes]] and pretended they were just friends; when asked why they explained that they didn't want to attract needless comparisons to [[Orbital]], another [[Sibling Team]] electronic band.)</ref> They are known for their ambient-downtempo-psychedelic-trippy sound constructed by a combination of electronic and normal instrumentation with [[Trip Hop]]-influenced beats and [[Sampling|samples]] of old [[The Seventies|seventies]] media (their name is a nod to the documentaries produced by the National Film Board of Canada, which they were heavily influenced by as their family moved to Canada during their childhood), giving their music a more pastoral and human character compared to other purely synthetic electronic bands. A frequent metaphor/comparison among reviewers is that their music sounds like "the last sounds of a dying machine from [[The Seventies]] that just got recently excavated," or something along those lines.

Boards of Canada has existed since 1986, when Marcus joined Mike's band, but ever since 1989 the band consists solely of the Sandison brothers. Their early songs were released through self-financed cassette releases on their Music70 label, but ever since 1998 their albums have appeared through [[Warp Records]].

 

 

[[Salad Fingers|David Firth]] loves them.

 

Pre-Warp releases (generally unavailable unless you really dig after them; the last two are somewhat easier to get a hold of):

 

* 1987 - ''Catalog 3''

 

Major releases:

* 2005 - ''The Campfire Headphase''

* 2006 - ''Trans Canada Highway'' EP

 

* [[An Aesop]]: "One Very Important Thought".

* [[Arc Number]]: 70. "Sixtyten" is based on how "70" is said in French. ''Geogaddi'' features a song called "The Smallest Weird Number," which happens to be 70. Before being signed to Warp, they were on their own independent label called Music70.

* [[Electronic Music]]

* [[Ghibli Hills]]: Boards of Canada is arguably the aural equivalent of this. When they're not being terrifying, that is.

* [[Non-Appearing Title]]: None of their albums or EPs feature the album title in a song, ''In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country'', ''Twoism'', and ''Boc Maxima'' being exceptions.

* [[Number of the Beast]]: ''Geogaddi'''s last track, "Hidden Window", is 1:46 minutes of silence in order to make the final album length 66:06. [[Word of God]] claims this was done [[For the Lulz]] after a suggestion from Warp Records president Steve Beckett, playing on more gullible listeners' worries about the [[Subliminal Seduction]] and scary stuff in their material.

* [[Old Shame]]: They refuse to acknowledge the existence of any of their work prior to ''Twoism''.

* [[Reclusive Artist]]: So very yes.

** "One Very Important Thought" samples the ending of the 1982 adult film ''A Brief Affair'' on the ''Boc Maxima'' version. For ''Music Has the Right to Children'', the sample was slightly re-recorded, [http://bocpages.org/wiki/One_Very_Important_Thought replacing "would stop you from viewing an adult film" with "would stop you from listening to Boards of Canada"].

** "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" and "Orange Hexagon Sun" reference the Hexagon Sun artistic collective, which supposedly includes the band, Iain Campbell, Simon Goderich, Mark Garrett, Rachel Stewart, Alan Mackenzie, and Andrew Wilson. The band also use "Hexagon Sun" as the name of their recording studio.

** The Branch Davidian cult gets referenced in "Amo Bishop Roden" (she was married to George Roden, who was a rival to David Koresh), "In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country" (whose title and main vocal sample is apparently cribbed from a description of their compound in Waco used by Roden to advertise the cult; the EP's cover also contains a small image of Koresh hidden underneath the CD tray) and "1969" (the vocoded sample "Although not a follower of [[Subliminal Seduction|hseroK divaD]], she's a devoted Branch Davidian" is also a reference to Roden).

** "Kaini Industries" is a misspelling of Kainai Industries, a Canadian company set up in July 1971 (the month Mike was born) to provide emplyoment for a Kainai (Blood Nation) reserve.

** "Roygbiv" is a famous mnemonic used to remember the order of colours in a rainbow.

** "Olson" and "Smokes Quantity" are references to the band's friends Melissa Olson (who directed the "Dayvan Cowboy" video) and an unnamed friend who was nicknamed "Smokes Quantity".

** "Pete Standing Alone" is a reference to Pete Standing Alone, a First Nation Canadian who appeared in seven [[National Film Board of Canada]] documentaries about the Kainai nation, including ''Circle of the Sun''.

* [[Signature Song]]: "Roygbiv"... not that it's the only one that can be called that: "Dayvan Cowboy," "1969," and "Music Is Math" also are contenders.

* [[Subliminal Seduction]]: All of their albums employ heavy use of reversing, which sometimes has landed them in hot water. Notably, some of their shorter songs like "Dandelion" and "Over the Horizon Radar" are made almost entirely of this.<ref>If re-reversed to hear the original, "Dandelion" turns out to sound a bit like a [[Chiptune]] and "Over the Horizon Radar" is... well, still hauntingly beautiful, but it becomes clearer that its melody is played on a Rhodes keyboard.</ref>

* [[Wild Mass Guessing]]: Possibly one of the most guessed-about bands ever, especially since they love using cryptic song titles, obscure and distorted samples, and references to [[Numerological Motif|numbers]] and cults.

** Heck, check out [http://bocpages.org/wiki/Geogaddi this fansite's page on Geogaddi], and ''especially'' the page on [http://bocpages.org/wiki/You_Could_Feel_the_Sky "You Could Feel The Sky"]'s [[Subliminal Seduction]] Satanic themes. Some people have too much time on their hands...