What was your first impression of Boards of Canada?

Kure · Post by **Kure** » Fri May 16, 2014 10:39 am

I believe it was back in 2006, I was browsing through Youtube when I randomly clicked on IABPOITC (the video was uploaded on my birthday, so that was fun), and I was instantly hooked. It reminded me of good old childhood days and to be honest, I still was a child when I found it in 2006, but it somehow all made sense in my ears. I heard a couple of times while letting the warm soothing tunes of BoC inject into my music vein followed up by Roygbiv which I clicked because it sounded funny (again, kid). Afterwards, I stopped listening to them, because, well, I was a kid and I somehow forgot to listen to it again, well, at least not until a classmate showed me Dayvan Cowboy in 2007. Then, I remembered...the soothing warm fuzzy tunes of BoC started flowing once again in my ears, though I was not warned about the music explosion that happens halfway through DC. The result was that my childish mind was immediately blown away.

I still remember what I said to myself when I hear IABPOITC and BoC in generel for the first time:

"This stuff is so cool!.....".

c3tra · Post by **c3tra** » Sun May 18, 2014 1:46 am

...Myriad tbh...but the main one was anger...anger that none of the self confessed musical tosspots i have hung around with in the past sent them my way...i found them through a website that Tycho had lent (i guess) a very early version of PIP to...upon searching, who popped up, yup BOC...needless to say the music IS a drug...there is not a day that goes by without a listen, or a reference...

Najlepsiejszy · Post by **Najlepsiejszy** » Sun May 18, 2014 5:00 pm

2hipster4me

Compound Candy · Post by **Compound Candy** » Sun May 25, 2014 9:45 pm

The first track I heard was "Bocuma", back in late 90's.
I instantly realized someone was creating the music I had in my head since I was 2.
Still stuck and amazed ever since.
(awe)

Iced Cooly Beatnik · Post by **Iced Cooly Beatnik** » Mon May 26, 2014 1:45 am

Like many others, I found out about BoC through that Everything You Do Is A Balloon fan video. I was getting into Aphex Twin and kept seeing it in the related videos, listened to the track, really liked it.
Then downloaded Boc Maxima (because I wanted the album with EYDIAB on it), fell in love with Roygbiv. At first the whole thing seemed really normal, but good electronica, it was only after listening for a lot longer I realised the detail there was in the tracks.

Betterthanyourkids · Post by **Betterthanyourkids** » Mon May 26, 2014 3:07 am

Actually sad to say my first encounter with BoC was when I was a big deadmau5 fan (it was 2010 and I was in middle school, sorry ok?) when he put up a cover of Roygbiv. I didn't think much of either the cover or the actual Roygbiv at the time, though I really love Roygbiv now. It wasn't until I discovered more jazz-oriented stuff like Turquoise Hexagon Sun and hip hop stuff like Julie and Candy that I really came to like BoC. I actually remember the precise moment when I fell in love with Boards' work: I put TCH EP on play and listened to the whole thing through a hour of my algebra class and I was absolutely blown away. So yeah, it feels like their entire discography is a grower so to speak, and I'm really glad I discovered them

Yellow Records · Post by **Yellow Records** » Tue May 27, 2014 7:33 pm

They basically gave me a reason to not kill myself. I pretty much owe them my life.

herxagernsurn · Post by **herxagernsurn** » Tue May 27, 2014 10:30 pm

I first heard BoC in May in of 1999 in Portland, Oregon. I had just moved out to the west coast of the US after moving back from London. I was staying with a friend of mine and he came home one day with a vinyl copy of MHTRTC. I was almost hooked by the cover art alone. It was also on Warp / Matador so it HAD to be good. We had a smoke and I was in that uncomfortably high zone that one can get in sometimes. I was obsessed upon the first listen through. The hazy, halcyon vibe of those synths convinced me these guys were on to something. They had tapped into something downright archetypal it seemed. I then started reading up on them and their interviews and had to go look up the word 'trepanation'. That rekindled my interest in all things esoteric and I've just never been the same since that day.

warphead · Post by **warphead** » Wed May 28, 2014 7:13 pm

frank chipboard wrote:
23degreesdream wrote:A free CD on the cover over NME back in 1998. Alot of the time i wouldn't really listen to these as they'd be full of formulaic indie. Somehow i managed to wade through it and "Roygbiv" jumped out. I had to listen to it about 5 times - i fell in love with it, it reminded me instantly of music i remember from educational TV we watched at school. I bought MHTRTC off the back of that track alone.
Snap! Jurassic 5 were on the same cd.

Good times.

still got that cd lol

solsafari · Post by **solsafari** » Wed May 28, 2014 8:18 pm

I think my very first listen was somewhen around 2010. It was the Everything You Do Is A Balloon video on YouTube (probably found my way from a Richard D. James video).

I remember reading Lord of the Flies at the time and listened a lot to this song while I read. It fitted with the mood of that book perfectly, and I loved the strange pseudo-nostalgic vibes I got from it.

Curious about this band's other work I listened to the rest of Hi-Scores. I worked my way upward from there.

green calx · Post by **green calx** » Wed May 28, 2014 11:16 pm

saw EYDIAB video while listening to Richard
then
surprisingly I'm from Poland too.

machinea · Post by **machinea** » Fri May 30, 2014 6:00 am

It was 2001 and I had been hearing about Boards of Canada for a little while..not sure where just the interwebs grape vine..words revolutionary, new, etc. I downloaded some stuff off of Napster. Everything you do is a Balloon was in the bunch and the only one that really grabbed me. I listened to that one on and off for years and but thought they were just a one off for me. Didn't pay much attention until 2009. I was living in the drab midwest with a 120 mile commute one way. I decided to really give aphex twin and Boc the listening they deserved and downloaded the entire catalog for both. Roygibv and Pete Standing Alone, Rue the Whirl bam just smacked me upside the head. I quicked groked the whole thing and promptly bought all of it.

seanandcandy · Post by **seanandcandy** » Fri May 30, 2014 7:17 am

i thought they were horseshit and i still do

mc10101 · Post by **mc10101** » Sat May 31, 2014 12:25 pm

MHTRTC in 2000. The cover image is what grabbed me first, and I remember wondering if the music could possibly live up to the deliciously disturbing feeling it gave me. It did.

AFX.NL · Post by **AFX.NL** » Sat May 31, 2014 12:58 pm

The song I first heard was 'dawn chorus' and i was intrigued.

lewwatt · Post by **lewwatt** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:55 pm

In 2012 I first began to properly involve myself in my music listening, I started out with recommended listening from some subreddits and even charts from /mu/ and of course Boards of Canada would show up often as a classic artist. After a while of putting off listening to them I decided to click a link on reddit of Everything You Do is a Balloon..

It was everything that I wanted from music and had been searching for. As soon as the synths kicked in after the intro I knew that I was going to love this band. The atmosphere, emotions and sense of nostalgia that the music gave off really drew me in and I quickly consumed their discography and became fascinated with the enigmatic nature of them.

Fast forward to now; I have the repressings and consider them by far my favourite artist. I'm not one of those 'wrong generation' teens but I really wish that I could have been old enough to appreciate their music as it was released years ago.

petina · Post by **petina** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 7:26 am

lewwatt wrote:In 2012 I first began to properly involve myself in my music listening, I started out with recommended listening from some subreddits and even charts from /mu/ and of course Boards of Canada would show up often as a classic artist. After a while of putting off listening to them I decided to click a link on reddit of Everything You Do is a Balloon..

It was everything that I wanted from music and had been searching for. As soon as the synths kicked in after the intro I knew that I was going to love this band. The atmosphere, emotions and sense of nostalgia that the music gave off really drew me in and I quickly consumed their discography and became fascinated with the enigmatic nature of them.

Fast forward to now; I have the repressings and consider them by far my favourite artist. I'm not one of those 'wrong generation' teens but I really wish that I could have been old enough to appreciate their music as it was released years ago.

Duuude I'm like the exact same. I somehow found my way to the Everything You Do video in 2012 and now here I am in 2014 with all the vinyl represses, alongside some CDs and a couple of rarer records. BoC pretty much acted as a gateway band into a better music taste for me. They really have changed my life.

mechanismj · Post by **mechanismj** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 3:42 pm

First impression... holy shit!

Dogboy73 · Post by **Dogboy73** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 10:18 am

I bought Music Has the Right to Children just after it was released. I was blown away. I thought it was the most perfect music I'd ever heard in my life. Definitely the best album I've ever heard even after all this time. Still sounds perfect.

Jonse · Post by **Jonse** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 1:58 am

My first impression of BoC was actually not BoC, it was BMSR making a track that sounded like BoC leading me to seek out "related" bands and musicians. In retrospect, Start A People is an oddity and BMSR sounds nothing like BoC, but the tracks I heard were "From The See" and "Count Backwards to Black" which are very much so like BoC.

One of the comments on BoC's last fm page was something like "AT last! I've found them! Thank you Adult Swim."

I had been trying to find the source of music for a particular AS bump for a while at the time, which I would later find out was Constants are Changing (MUCH later, didn't get around to TCH for nearly a year after I got into BoC). With that in mind, I started listening to BoC, and I started chronologically with Hi Scores (ignored Twoism first because it wasn't released officially until 2002). The first track that I remember really stood out to me was Nlogax. It became one of my favorite EPs, even if not every one of the tracks chalks up to that quality. It just had a certain "deserted" kind of sound to it, and it's really hard to describe what that means.

From that point on I continued on (chronologically) until IAPOITC. By then I had stopped listening to them that way, that often. I ended up listening to TCH and the other TCH first when I'd found Constants are Changing (skimming through tracks) and that's the reason that the previous discography release/album that's tied for my favorite of all time was the last official thing I'd heard from them until last year in something I'd like to call the great BoC depression.