The Pop Corporation

Pressure is a terrible thing to heap onto a reclusive musician. With that in mind, many fans of Boards of Canada invariably don’t want to spook the brothers behind the name, but also, get visibly excited at the mere mention of their name. And rightly so – outside of Aphex Twin and Autechre, they’re just about the most loved group of a certain type of electronic music.

And BoC keep coming to the front of the brain in recent years because, well, the world went a bit Boardsy in their absence. Look at the successes of things like Weird Walk and people’s subsequent appetite for the psychedelic side of nature, stone circles and odd folk rituals; look at the cult-like insanity that’s found its way into popular culture and politics. As unhinged pseudo-healers peddle their wares on social media and the unnerving quality of the unknown that they use to try and prise money from people’s PayPal accounts – there’s so much of it in the air, that it feels like Boards of Canada might be the only musicians on the planet who can channel all this weirdness into their retro-futuristic, tape-worn sound.

Like we said though, no pressure. Ready whenever you are. No, you’re biting your fist in anticipation.

Things have been quiet on the BoC front. Their last album was over a decade ago, so they’ve kept feverish fans somewhat sated with a couple of remixes here and there and in 2019, Warp Records had an anniversary celebration on NTS Radio called WXAXRXP. What was important about this takeover was that it featured a two-hour mixtape from Boards of Canada which went by the name of Societas x Tape. Fans devoured every element of it, on the hunt for clues to anything new, unreleased material and… well… simply enjoyed it because it was great.

In the meantime, their Instagram has caused occasional palpitations as they sporadically upload videos to their music. These are fan-made videos and once the adrenaline wears off that it might be something new, we gaze at the graphics and wonder what some new music from them might sound like.

Such is the world that BoC have created around themselves – mysterious, filled with riddles, codes, backmasking and mathematics – there’s been a number of fans who have been staring hard at dates and any number they can get their hands on, and trying to work out whether we’re all being told something. It’s all pure speculation of course, but if any band is going to play the long-game and wait for everyone to work a puzzle out before releasing a new LP, it’s Boards of Canada.

That, or they’re just taking their sweet time about it all, and will surprise everyone by dropping a new long player on a random date with absolutely zero fanfare and make all of our heads melt on the spot. This is the thing – you can’t really second guess them. They may well have retired and are paying their bills with some uncredited work that no-one’s spotted yet. They might be completely fine on what’s in the bank. We know nothing. No-one does, apart from Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin.

And maybe that’s what makes them so incredibly alluring. The world has shifted toward the weird world of BoC, and in a media landscape where we’re almost privy to too much personal information about the pop stars and creative people we like, Michael and Marcus are just not bothered by it and might be somewhere putting the kettle on, oblivious to it all. They’re just as likely to drop an album as they are announcing a tour. Could you imagine BoC putting their own Hexagon Sun festival on in the wilds of Scotland, filled with psychedelic music, freak folk, electronic acts, DJs playing library music, rural primary school choirs and Adam Curtis documentaries? You can just as easily imagine them not wanting all that fuss.

Looking for clues online seems like a fruitless idea too. Remember the Hexagon Sun website that just had a mirrored piece of text that said “the internet is evil – wake up”? [here] The group’s lack of accessibility is clearly part of their charm and Warp’s campaign for ‘Geogaddi’ made it difficult for people to hear the new album before it’s general release. Is there a church in the middle of nowhere that’s had a psychedelic reel playing on a loop with the new BoC album playing over and over for the past three years and no-one’s bumped into it yet? Or is there just no new material?

A few years ago, Sandison said: “We’re too busy to give a shit – either working in our studio or being out in the fresh air with our friends somewhere. We put pressure on ourselves more than anything. Marcus and myself are pretty ruthless to one another, musically. That’s the toughest criticism we get, which is another reason the album took a long time.”

The fact is, there’s no news of a new LP, there’s no murmur of action and we certainly don’t have an ‘in’ with anyone related to them or their record label. We too wonder if any new music would be a salve for the soul in these turbulent times, or whether they’d make something sinister to reflect what’s going on. Would it be a folk LP? Would it be more of what we love? Is there already music out there under a different name that we’re cruelly ignoring because we didn’t take a chance on a small band on Bandcamp while waiting for a big name to return?

All we have for certain is the albums they’ve released and that’s a body of work that matches just about anyone’s, so for that, we should be thankful. We’re still going to live in hope though…