Is Boards of Canada about to end its 13-year-long hibernation? If a cryptic poster run by Warp Records is anything to go by, maybe.
The beloved British independent label dropped a bombshell for BoC’s long-suffering fanbase, with a string of puzzling images that raise more questions than offer answers.
The posters, which are captured in a post shared on Warp’s official social channels, without comment, depict zombified children, an image that ties in with the artwork for BoC’s magnum opus from 1998, Music Has The Right to Children. And each image is stamped with a brand that invokes the electronic act’s Hexagon Sun logo.
The easter eggs don’t end there. New York and London phone numbers can be seen among the images, the edge of a “City of Westminster” street sign is visible in one, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame can be spotted on another.
What it all means, only time will tell.
Boards of Canada is the Scottish electronic music duo of brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, a universe-building pair that is both enigmatic, secretive and adored by connoisseurs of minimal electronic music.
The siblings rarely give interviews and have performed only a small handful of live shows, mostly in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Their fourth and most recent album release was 2013’s Tomorrow’s Harvest. That collection peaked at No. 7 in the U.K., for their first top 10 entry, and at No. 13 on the Billboard 200, their first appearance on the all-genres U.S. albums chart, and top 40 debut on Australia’s ARIA Chart. That release, too, enjoyed a subtle promotional push with a string of clues drip-fed for fans to gobble up.
In 2019, a comeback of sorts with “XYZ,” a previously-unreleased tune from their Peel Session of July 1998, which appeared on a new Warp Records 30th anniversary package, WXAXRXP Sessions.
BoC’s impact, however, can’t be measured in hits, or streams.
Warp’s teaser could allude to a Record Store Day exclusive, appearing just days out from the annual celebration of vinyl record stores. BoC’s most recent Instagram post dropped 34 weeks ago, announcing the 30 years anniversary of their first publicly-available vinyl mini album Twoism and a new batch available on wax.
