Weird, completely unfounded speculation on unreleased stuff

[Jango9]

Have you got bizarre, out there ideas for what might be on those unreleased materials? I know I do. Here's a few of them and my reasoning for them:

Chinook and some known pre-Twoism songs were played at early, unrecorded live shows
There have been rumors of a short snippet of a live Chinook performance being hosted at one point on the old EHX website, though nobody seems to have saved it. At one point I navigated to a directory structure in the Wayback machine that had all the old RM samples, but lost the link. There have been some (unconfirmed) eyewitness accounts that they played all of Play By Numbers at a 1997 performance (which may further suggest the use of their voices on that album or possibly just on stage otherwise how would he/she know that?) and if that's true who knows what else they played?

Chris Cunningham has some of the Geogaddi outtakes and/or live ATP tracks
BoC claimed in an interview that they gave Chris an hour and a half of new material, this was around the Geogaddi era, and the Telecom Italia song appears in the ATP set. Maybe he knows the titles and has the studio versions but isn't saying anything about them because he knows that M&M will break both of his legs if he does? Also, there's the case of whether ATP Track 7 is either Hooper Bay's "Noatak" or a Geogaddi outtake, which brings me to another extremely forced possibility:

Noatak was brought back for more polish to potentially be released on Geogaddi
But then it was later turned down in favor of the tracklisting that ended up being released. Yeah, I haven't really got much reasoning for this one besides that half-connection.

Acid Memories had Mike and Marcus' voices on it at some point
For some reason my brain drifts to Acid Memories when thinking about this theory, though it really could be possible for any of the 5 mystery albums. Could be one of the reasons why they're so apprehensive about releasing them. Think about it, how many times have they allowed for their voices to be recorded and released in the past? I can think of exactly one (the 1999 John Peel interview).

The original Catalog 3, Acid Memories, and Closes Vol. 1 artwork are completely different
It makes sense for Play By Numbers and Hooper Bay to have square, color album artwork since the former was released on CD and the latter on Vinyl, but the first three have all kinds of holes. Catalog 3 and Acid Memories both use the full "Boards of Canada" even though that didn't happen until 1994, Closes Vol. 1 has "97" blurred out of all the spots where it was present in the original PIC photo project, and almost all of their discovered old tapes so far have been black and white photocopies. It's possible they made new artwork for the limited '97 CD reissues or in Acid Memories' case specifically for the purposes of matching the format of the website at the time.

Tomorrow's Harvest has more unreleased material than any of their other albums
MDG has stated that the brothers are never not in the studio and that they're very prolific behind the scenes, and if that lead to 90+ unreleased tracks in the Geogaddi era then how many could have been made for an album with a gestation period that was about twice as long?

Acid Memories tracks were later reformed into Campfire Headphase tracks
People have noted similarities between ATP-09 and a couple of Old Tunes to Tomorrow's Harvest tracks, and if TCH was a sort of return to the "guitars meet electronics" sound that Richard Southern described AM as having then I think you can see where this is going.

Play By Numbers contained vignettes in the style of Twoism
I was pondering "Wouldn't You Like To Be Free?" and trying to think of directions that the track could go in. At 5:40, that's kind of a lot of time to fill. I couldn't really see the track running longer for maybe 4 and a half minutes, but then something clicked. Play By Numbers was their shot at imitating MBV and MBV practically invented musical vignettes, who else thinks there might be slightly more than 5 tracks on that CD? Topping that, maybe these vignettes consisted of little electronic ditties that may explain the "Shifting further into electronics in other [places]" in Richard Southern's description. Maybe that's what some of the shorter R35TT tracks are. (A04, B08, and B10 come to mind)

Fire away, Twoism!

[Jonse]

Thread title is hilarious. Akin to "completely worthless information about BoC".

I can't think of anything right now. I do have my opinions on unreleased material but I have a lot to back up the speculation.

The only sort of speculative theory I have that's "weird" regarding BoC is a conspiracy theory that I don't believe but wouldn't be surprised if proven true: Michael and Marcus Sandison are simply people chosen to represent BoC in a very limited way and may not even have anything to do with the music. This is the reason why not even a single video interview exists and Boards of Canada is so secretive. The albums were made by different people - maybe 10-20 having been involved - and it began life as a collaborative project by Aphex Twin (or someone of that kin) and this is the reason the albums sound consistently different to the point of it being jarring (i.e. Geogaddi to Campfire). That or Boards of Canada is more than just two people (that's the small version of the theory). Mark Garrett does not exist (though that bit isn't actually too farfetched and people have thought for a while that it is an alias for the band - unlikely but possible as far as we know)

It's funny so I keep it around.

Anyways, I don't think Noatak was recreated to be on Geogaddi. I think it was just performed. People tell me that they think the drum programming is too complex to be that old and that is the lamest reason I've ever heard. Go listen to Mukinabaht, Pete Standing Alone, etc. - far before Geogaddi.

[Jonse]

Also, if that's possibly true with Tomorrow's Harvest then that baffles me. If there were 180 tracks in total then given the tracks that actually made the cut, the others must suck really badly. Or maybe they're awesome and should have been on the album instead. I know they have some outtakes at the very least and wish they'd release them, along with older outtakes in proper form, such as a full studio version of Spiro. That track is so fucking great that I can only think it was removed from Geogaddi because Sunshine Recorder fills that same sort of space on the record. Aside from Nlogax, Spiro has the best choppy vocals of any BoC track.

[clearcut]

Sometimes I think that the old albums and EPs like play by numbers dont actually exist, they are just made up by boards of canada to add to their mysteriousness.

Although I really, really hope this isn't true.

[Jonse]

Sometimes I think that the old albums and EPs like play by numbers dont actually exist, they are just made up by boards of canada to add to their mysteriousness.

Although I really, really hope this isn't true.

I'm 100% positive that some exist. Play By Numbers exists. I'm 50% positive that at least two of its tracks are on the R35TT.

Does Acid Memories exist? Maybe not. That name, that artwork, that year...and under the BoC moniker? Though they could have put all those things up on their site under their discography when they re-pressed them to CD (where they would add the Boards of Canada name in revision), it seems otherwise odd. That release sticks out like a sore thumb so much compared to all the others.y a

We may also not know of all the old releases as some may not have been distributed, i.e. Catalog 1/2.

[Jango9]

Thread title is hilarious. Akin to "completely worthless information about BoC".

It does exactly what it says on the tin.

Anyways, I don't think Noatak was recreated to be on Geogaddi. I think it was just performed. People tell me that they think the drum programming is too complex to be that old and that is the lamest reason I've ever heard. Go listen to Mukinabaht, Pete Standing Alone, etc. - far before Geogaddi.

That idea possibly comes from people comparing it directly to Twoism, which has comparatively simple percussion throughout. Compare, say, Seeya Later to ATP-07 and you'll see what they mean (and even that's a stretch when you consider how complex Basefree's percussion gets).

If there were 180 tracks in total then given the tracks that actually made the cut, the others must suck really badly.

Mike and Marcus are notorious perfectionists, most of the unreleased tracks would probably sound good to a casual listener or hardcore fan but don't live up to the brothers' standards (Maybe there really do exist some tracks that they didn't release on account of being legitimately shite)

Does Acid Memories exist? Maybe not. That name, that artwork, that year...and under the BoC moniker? Though they could have put all those things up on their site under their discography when they re-pressed them to CD (where they would add the Boards of Canada name in revision), it seems otherwise odd. That release sticks out like a sore thumb so much compared to all the others.y a

We may also not know of all the old releases as some may not have been distributed, i.e. Catalog 1/2.

If Acid Memories doesn't exist, someone's got some explaining to do:


I personally think that Closes, PBN, and Hooper Bay are also pretty surely real (PBN and Hooper Bay have their samples, Closes has some connections to the R35TT [especially 5D/A06]), but Catalog 3 gives us the least to work with. The "Catalog" series, if it even exists, has by far the most mystery surrounding it. Also, call me crazy, but I think B14 is a truncated Acid Memories track.

Someone with connections to the band or possibly the band themselves said at one point that their musical output extends as far back as 1983, the existence of 2 other Catalog albums seems plausible in that case.

[Opothecary]

Good observations, I love these types of threads. I take an Occam's razor approach to those releases, what's to be gained by lying about their existence when later down the road, 3+ hours of unreleased music makes it into the wild via OT/R35TT, not to mention all the unreleased music they played live? Why make up releases when you've got hours of other music that you hadn't disclosed up until that point?

R35TT especially has music that is very similar to what I'd expect to hear on those releases. Just like Play by Numbers, we can easily validate a couple of songs from Hooper Bay too, Circle is the next step in House of Abin'adab's revolution (I'd even argue that Uritual is version 3.0) and Noatak was (probably) played live. Someone pointed out that B12 could be Geyser, it really does sound contemporary with the songs on Twoism.

Acid Memories is definitely the only artwork that seems "off" but it wouldn't surprise me if it was put to CD at the same time as Closes Vol. 1 and Catalog 3. Those last 2 entries were added to the discography later on so maybe mentioning a possible CD reissue of Acid Memories when the rest of the discography first went up was an oversight that no one ever bothered correcting.

I never thought those were the "original" covers of those early releases anyways, especially when you look at the quality of the Maxima and OT sleeves when they were getting more serious about their work. They were passable but amateur, its not like they would be progressing from decent CD shaped artwork to amateur as their music got better. People made a big deal about the date being blurred off the Closes cover photos, but I always thought it was probably art they cooked up around the time of the CD reissue anyways.

[orion]

Does Acid Memories exist? Maybe not. That name, that artwork, that year...and under the BoC moniker? Though they could have put all those things up on their site under their discography when they re-pressed them to CD (where they would add the Boards of Canada name in revision), it seems otherwise odd. That release sticks out like a sore thumb so much compared to all the others.[/quote]
the way i see it is, maybe it WASNT boc who recorder that album, maybe it was made by their previous name, and they just thought "hey this fits what we want to convey in our music, let's release it as boc instead."

[orion]

Does Acid Memories exist? Maybe not. That name, that artwork, that year...and under the BoC moniker? Though they could have put all those things up on their site under their discography when they re-pressed them to CD (where they would add the Boards of Canada name in revision), it seems otherwise odd. That release sticks out like a sore thumb so much compared to all the others.

the way i see it is, maybe it WASNT boc who recorder that album, maybe it was made by their previous name, and they just thought "hey this fits what we want to convey in our music, let's release it as boc instead."[/quote]

[orion]

Does Acid Memories exist? Maybe not. That name, that artwork, that year...and under the BoC moniker? Though they could have put all those things up on their site under their discography when they re-pressed them to CD (where they would add the Boards of Canada name in revision), it seems otherwise odd. That release sticks out like a sore thumb so much compared to all the others.

the way i see it is, maybe it WASNT boc who recorder that album, maybe it was made by their previous name, and they just thought "hey this fits what we want to convey in our music, let's release it as boc instead."

[orion]

they probably released it as another band and then decided they would like it better as a boc release instead.

[Opothecary]

While I am a believer in the existence of those early releases, I think the Catalog/Closes "volume" titling is probably an attempt to appear more...I'm not sure the word for it, not mysterious exactly but a little vague or academic. I'm sure there's music of theirs from that time that doesn't appear on any release that we know about, but I don't see them churning out hours and hours of music as teenagers either.

[Zentai]

Every track on tomorrow's harvest is a reprise of an existing boc song. For example telepath and the devil is in the details.

Geogaddi and in a beautiful place form a complete set and the track listings are not in order. The track we believe to be sunshine recorder is actually In a beautiful place out in the country. All the other tracks are jumbled too. Magic window is a different track on the album or ep.

There is a secret code presented on the back cover of each release don't you all see it? I just don't understand the significance yet.

[ParticleGhost]

There is a secret code presented on the back cover of each release don't you all see it? I just don't understand the significance yet.

You mean the "LC02070" right? I highly doubt it's a "secret code" at all.

[ParticleGhost]

There is a secret code presented on the back cover of each release don't you all see it? I just don't understand the significance yet.

You mean the "LC02070" right? I highly doubt it's a "secret code" at all.

In fact, it's just the label code. (sorry for double post!)

[Zentai]

No that's not what I am referring to.

[Berselius]

Because of the Scaruffi site, I always thought that the last 3 tracks on Catalog 3 were just bonus tracks on the 1997 re-release.

[Generalchesty]

I think the R35TT is a collection from the hundreds(?) of unused tracks from albums up to Hi Scores, sort of like the Old Tunes tapes. The only tracks BoC seem to re-purpose are the interludes like A11, B17, and The Color of The Fire. Sometimes they resample old works, but my guess is R35TT doesn't contain anything straight from their unreleased albums.

[Jango9]

Because of the Scaruffi site, I always thought that the last 3 tracks on Catalog 3 were just bonus tracks on the 1997 re-release.

I dunno, I think that Piero was lying like a fuck when he published reviews of the first 5 albums. You'd think that if he actually heard them he'd mention something really significant like the MBV influences on Play By Numbers, the fact that he didn't means that either he reviewed them all based on speculation or he's just a lazy music critic. Not to mention that until around 2001 all he had on his site was a fairly dismissive review of MHTRTC, and then the pre-Twoism reviews just suddenly appeared alongside IABPOITC.

I think the R35TT is a collection from the hundreds(?) of unused tracks from albums up to Hi Scores, sort of like the Old Tunes tapes. The only tracks BoC seem to re-purpose are the interludes like A11, B17, and The Color of The Fire. Sometimes they resample old works, but my guess is R35TT doesn't contain anything straight from their unreleased albums.

It's generally believed that the R35TT was compiled by some random insider, not Mike and Marcus themselves. The connections between A06 and 5D are just too strong to ignore, who knows what else could be on there?

[PlacentaSand]

where do these mysteries end?

when do they begin?