Opening the Mouth

An auction for a couple of ludicrously rare Boards of Canada cassettes came up on ebay yesterday. I have to confess I did consider for a few brief moments that I might put a bid on them, despite the starting price of $799! Such is the madness BoC can inspire. The same madness that led me to spend 30 quid on a kaleidoscope last week. Still, it says 'Boards of Canada' on it, and I love it!




Thankfully the auction was pulled, so I have been able to cancel my reservation with the backstreet kidney donor 'clinic'. Apparently the tapes were stolen or something... I dunno, the whole tedious saga has been played out on the We Are The Music Makers forum.

What was interesting, is that Hexagon Sun (AKA something to do with Boards of Canada) posted the following message on the forum:

"OK The reason it was jumped on was this: Warp and BOC have been in talks for a long while about putting out a box set of old tracks from these tapes and others, with new packaging and art, to be released sometime after the forthcoming record. The tapes were private comps given out to close friends a few years ago, long before the band imagined there would be this kind of interest, and long before the likes of Soulseek etc existed.

The tracks are out there now, nothing can be done about that, they've been circulating for a while and fans have them, so the decision was taken to at least consider tidying them up and repackaging them with decent exclusive artwork & more rarities. BOC never wanted these tracks presented this way, mislabelled and as poor-quality MP3 files.

There's no 'hype', these comps were never listed on any old discogs as they were never intended for mass release in the first place. Now the intention is still to get round to scheduling a release of these tunes and other rare comps, but unscrupulous people like 'prince murat' are obviously stealing the thunder of the proposed releases, whilst trying to make a tidy profit in the process (a starting price of $799 speaks volumes about 'prince murat's true intentions. who is trying to profit from hype here? if any money is going to be involved, surely the artist who wrote those tracks should be receiving the royalties, and not this person? there's no difference between this kind of profiteering and someone trying to sell a bootleg CDR of Beck's new album months prior to release.)

Anyway, now you know, we hope the intervention hasn't caused too much negative feeling, after all the concern that Warp and BOC have is that basically it's going to spoil the impact of a nice release that hopefully will be enjoyed by the fans."

So not only is there a new BoC album in 2005, but possibly A BOX SET OF ALL THEIR EARLY UNRELEASED ALBUMS!!!

I think i've just come.





In the meantime, they have a remixed a Beck track, due for release on March 29th. Let's hope the album finally appears not long after that........eagerly anticipated just doesn't cover it.

All I need now is for them to headline Glastonbury!!! (PLEASE!)


Boards of Canada - 1969


As a bonus, this is from the aforementioned tapes... a cover of the Colonel Abrahams classic! If you're one of the lucky 100 people to have a copy of the Mask 100 EP (or have ever fired up Slsk) you will know they did a slightly different version on that 12" under their Hell Interface alias. I prefer this one though...

Boards of Canada - Trapped


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