Boards Of Canada have announced plans to release their first album in 13 years – check out full details below.
‘Inferno’ the Scottish duo’s fifth studio album is set to drop on May 29 via Warp and will feature 18 tracks.
The follow up to 2013’s ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest‘ will be released in a special edition limited red translucent 2xLP vinyl in a triple gatefold sleeve with a 16-page booklet, a standard black 2xLP vinyl, as well as CD and digital formats. You can pre-order/save it here.
News of their return was picked up by way of a poster campaign featuring designs similar to the artwork of 1998 debut album ‘Music Has The Right To Children’, spotted by fans around London, New York, California, and Shibuya last week.
The band have displayed brief signs of activity in the 13 years since their last album came out, in the form of random remixes, archival reissues, and an NTS DJ mix.
Another sign of life came when a Boards of Canada fan worked out that a website once used for their clues that had been suffering 404 errors for a prolonged period had been – revived with the following message: “nobody home…” and then a repetition of that phrase in Morse code – ” /// -. — -… — -.. -.– / …. — — . .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.-“.
At the beginning of the month, fans reported across social media and Reddit that they had been receiving VHS tapes bearing Boards of Canada’s hexagon-mesh logo. According to archivist page BoC Pages, the tapes contain audio for an ad for a Christian bible school magazine that stopped publishing in 1991.
Then they dropped a mysterious new track called ‘Tape 05’, an ambient piece of music whose main melody comes from a harp, with subtle shoegazey textures behind it.
Boards Of Canada’s tracklist for ‘Inferno’ is:
‘Introit’
‘Prophecy At 1420 MHz’
‘Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan’
‘Age Of Capricorn’
‘Father And Son’
‘Somewhere Right Now In The Future’
‘Naraka’
‘Acts Of Magic’
‘Memory Death’
‘The Word Becomes Flesh’
‘Into The Magic Land’
‘Blood In The Labyrinth’
‘Deep Time’
‘All Reason Departs’
‘Arena Americanada’
‘The Process’
‘You Retreat In Time And Space’
‘I Saw Through Platonia’
‘Tomorrow’s Harvest scored four stars in an NME review in 2013, which described the band as the “anti-Daft Punk“.
It added: “While the Parisian robot duo’s ‘Random Access Memories’ is full of sunshine, light and high-profile collaborations, ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ is a dark, often uncomfortable affair, more nuclear winter than summer anthem.”
