Some interesting Hooper Bay related comment from Nov 8, 1999

[bakedsodium]

http://music.hyperreal.org/lists/idm/archives/

I've been looking through the IDM Mailing List forums a shit ton recently. And today I found a guy who claims to own Hooper Bay on "12. Here is his comment:

------------------------------------------------

From: AeOtaku@aol.com
Message-ID: <0.2471db3b.2557ddbe@aol.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 03:03:10 EST
To: idm@hyperreal.org
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Windows AOL sub 41
Subject: (idm) Re: Untidy Piles of Desktop Music

My disorganized pile in front of me:

Mask Limited 100 12"
Mask Limited 200 12"
AFX: Analogue Bubblebath 5 12"
B12: B1215 and B1216 test pressings 12"
Lego Feet 12"
Plaid: Mbuki Mvuki 12"
Plaid: Scoobs In Columbia 12"
Black Dog: BDP03EP 12"
Boards of Canada: Hooper Bay 12"
Boards of Canada: Twoism 12"
Techno: The New Dance Sound of Detroit 12"
Q-Chastic 2x7"
IG88 12"
Aphex Twin: Melodies From Mars MC
B12/ART Project test pressing 12"
Stasis 12" on Time Is Right

It was quite a day at the .99 pile.

Matt

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Coupled with that is this picture from a magazine on BoC from (the early 2000s, i think?)
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... nknown.png

It reads "People pay small fortunes for copies." under the section describing Hooper Bay. Which to me, strengthens his claim.

I normally try to remain skeptical about stuff like this, but it's from an old forum post from November of 1999, that is only accessed by some very old archives. I see no reason for him to bullshit in this scenario, especially because he's not even drawing much attention to Hooper Bay or Twoism, it's piled in with a fuck ton of other shit.

I highly doubt the email still works, but it's worth a shot if anyone trusted would like to ask him if he's still got it and could rip it or something. I'll search for more of this guy's posts, see if there's any way to contact him nowadays maybe.

[ROYGBRUH]

SPICY IF TRUE.

[bakedsodium]

my girlfriend found a mail archive link to a bunch of his old posts as well: https://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=3 ... AeOtaku%22
seems to be in detroit or something? talks about going back to school, maybe university? he says he's been internet trading for 5 years, since 95.

[NorthSaturnian]

I always wondered why Catalog 3 wasn't listed on that magazine. From all the early releases, that's the one I believe the most to not exist.

Anyway interesting find. Let's hope that guy is still alive

[funnnnpng]

This could actually lead to something good!!! im excited even if this isnt much.

[funnnnpng]

Nevermind, address is inactive. As expected for a 20 year old AOL email.

[Jango9]

The EHX site that mentioned the infamous old albums was already online by the date this was posted, the OP could've got the info from there and easily made this up. Also the old BoC site we have archives of never mentioned anything about Twoism being pressed on a 12", so that part's almost certainly bogus too.

I think this is just a sarcastic post, no way in hell did that guy find all those famous "holy grail" recordings (including two absurdly rare AFX albums and one of the most famous early techno compilations of all time) on the same day in the same .99 bin at the record store more than a year after MHTRTC came out lmao

Quite possibly the earliest recorded example of "I totally gots me the hooper bay, honest!" on the internet.

I see no reason for him to bullshit in this scenario

[fefor]

Q-Chastic and Melodies from Mars... sure

[Roswell]

interestingly enough, the guy who runs Technical Equipment Supply in Ypsilanti Michigan has copies of Old Tunes Vol. 1 and BoC maxima on cassette. that’s only a 30 minute drive from Detroit.

[mthrndr]

The EHX site that mentioned the infamous old albums was already online by the date this was posted, the OP could've got the info from there and easily made this up. Also the old BoC site we have archives of never mentioned anything about Twoism being pressed on a 12", so that part's almost certainly bogus too.

I think this is just a sarcastic post, no way in hell did that guy find all those famous "holy grail" recordings (including two absurdly rare AFX albums and one of the most famous early techno compilations of all time) on the same day in the same .99 bin at the record store more than a year after MHTRTC came out lmao

Quite possibly the earliest recorded example of "I totally gots me the hooper bay, honest!" on the internet.

Even if the guy was full of shit, keep these posts coming! I love finding these kinds of old tidbits and clues. Even though the internet is supposedly where you can never get rid of something, it can be SURPRISINGLY difficult to find things pre-2000, when a lot of us middle age fucks had by that point already spent at least 6 years deep in message boards and other sites that are now lost...I have to believe if AM, HB and PBN actually exist, that they'll be outed eventually. Just like i believe there is someone out there who brought a minidisc recorder to one of those shows before Warp 10.

I also think Catalog 3 exists, but I bet it was no more than a couple copies of a memorex tape that they have kicking around their studio.

[NorthSaturnian]

Found this comment on the same forum, it has nothing to do with Hooper Bay, but I couldn't resist posting it lol

MYSTERIOUS CEREAL BOX SEEN ON BOARDS OF CANADA WEBSITE SHOWS UP IN EBAY AUCTION
Hungry BoC fans want more

Spoiler: show

Edinburgh, Scotland (REUTERZ) -- September 27, 1999

"Like 'says lad, eat yuir bock-o's or I'll clip yuir ear, ya daft cunt. I dinnae want people thinkin' yuir a wide-o."

Thus opens the flashback in Chapter 53 of Irvine Welsh's Filth, as Bruce Robertson's surrogate father berates him at the breakfast table. But what are these mysterious "bock-o's" that have kept humanities grad students
drinking lattes and arguing long into the night?

Surprising clues were found published yesterday on EHXs new Boards of Canada website and on the famed auction site Ebay in the form of pictures of a bowl, a spoon, a bottle of milk, and a cereal box.

Across the front of the box screams 'BoC-Os' in cartoonish, turquois-coloured text, above a pair of what appear to be Boards of Canada
members Mike Sandison & Marcus Eoin standing with looks of glee and
anticipation over a bowl of breakfast cereal.

The cereal itself appears to be a crunchy, corn-puffed variant of the
eye-and-two-legs logo of the National Film Board of Canada, with blue-ish marshmallow hexagons strewn throughout.

One hundred cases of the cereal were being auctioned off the Ebay website as an ultra-rare release from the BoC crew. Before going to press, the bidding reached as high as $53,000 US. It is presumed up to two hundred cases were distributed to friends and family of the two artists.

One IDM fan, known only as "B.", questions the existence of this release:

"I've heard no confirmation/report of it anywhere else before or since -
200 cases is a pretty sizable run, [and] you're telling me Skam, Autechre, Kellogs, Weetabix, General Mills, these people well involved with BoC, even they didn't know?

"So where would the cases go? Friends/family. Okay. None of them are on this mailing list? And yet they appreciate IDM and a delicious, nutritious breakfast nonetheless. This is a box of cereal, not a 12". That requires
significant costs, and a run of 200 would be expensive (the cost, as people who put out cereal can tell you, isn't in the number of boxes but in the diecasting/pressing/packing/etc. of the crunchy, sweet goodness, which is why under 500 costs about as much as 500)... Bizarre."

In response to these claims, the EHX/BoC website administrator, who will identify himself only as "Yum-Yum", released this official communique:

"BoC's decision never to mention these items before is their own. But I will say that there is definitely NO financial gain here, and there is no particular timing in the announcement, particularly as "hype" for their new line of yummy breakfast bars... I find it a pity that some people view the
discography as simply a mechanism to artificially pump interest in BoC's food products prior to their release; this is NOT the case.

"As for my "disclaimer" on the discography page about sharing cereal: this is totally out of necessity. I too have a full and busy life, and it is totally true that I do not have any time to distribute BoC's cereal.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I'm feeling a little peckish. Anyone got milk?"

Most 'Boards fans were thrilled about the surprise release and were looking forward to gorging themselves on the next batch of gastronomical delights from the two Scotsmen.

"At least this means the next Skam release won't be chopped haggis, like the last one," says list member "A.", licking his fingers impatiently.

[mechanismj]

It's comforting to know that, even all the way back in 1999, BoC fans were batshit crazy!

[portiss]

Boards of Canada cereal, hahahaha nice.

[ZosoCon]

Coupled with that is this picture from a magazine on BoC from (the early 2000s, i think?)
discordapp unknown.png
It reads "People pay small fortunes for copies." under the section describing Hooper Bay. Which to me, strengthens his claim.

Yeah that's from the Dec. 2000 Jockey Slut article famous of course for its published confirmation of most of their early discography along with the rare short descriptions of each release.

[niknak]

I don't believe any of these albums exist. At best, they were homemade compilation tapes they made to pass around very close friends made of the materiel we have heard on the various old tunes leaks. Most likely, in their early days they invented them post-hoc to give the band an obscure, enigmatic past.

[ZosoCon]

I don't believe any of these albums exist. At best, they were homemade compilation tapes they made to pass around very close friends made of the materiel we have heard on the various old tunes leaks. Most likely, in their early days they invented them post-hoc to give the band an obscure, enigmatic past.

Well according to the 2005 GoMag interview They themselves confirm they exist:

They do exist,
maintains Sandison.
In their first incarnation they were cassette tapes, and we re-recorded some of them on CD, but the releases were very limited and they only circulated among our friends. We took great care to give them to the right people, in whose hands they would be safe; we never gave anything to people unless we knew them very well. If some of those releases have leaked on the Internet it's because we placed too much trust in someone, or because we distributed more copies than we needed to, there are twenty, thirty copies of some releases, but up to a hundred copies of others.
In all these years,
continues Eoin,
only 'BoC maxima' and the two compilations of 'old tunes' have circulated widely on the Internet. But it wouldn't surprise me if, this coming year, we started seeing the complete 'Acid memories' appear out there. In any case, the fact that our tapes remain unreleased is a miracle; when we made them, we had no idea that anyone would invent this thing called MP3.

[niknak]

So you're saying the people I am proposing invented them to embellish their mystique subsequently didn't own up to inventing them?

Five different releases, up to 100 copies of some of them, virtually priceless and not even a single plausible photo of one has ever been seen. Do you know 100 people from 30 years in your past that would never have been tempted to sell something so valuable in the intervening time? Or even just post a bragging picture? Have you ever met young musicians who weren't keen to put their music in the hands of virtually ANYONE who would listen to it? Like they spent a decade intentionally limiting and curating who they gave their tapes to, and swearing them to secrecy for 30 years because they knew they would have an enigmatic reputation to uphold decades later.

Honestly, the entire thing is preposterous.

[mechanismj]

So you're saying the people I am proposing invented them to embellish their mystique subsequently didn't own up to inventing them?

Five different releases, up to 100 copies of some of them, virtually priceless and not even a single plausible photo of one has ever been seen. Do you know 100 people from 30 years in your past that would never have been tempted to sell something so valuable in the intervening time? Or even just post a bragging picture? Have you ever met young musicians who weren't keen to put their music in the hands of virtually ANYONE who would listen to it? Like they spent a decade intentionally limiting and curating who they gave their tapes to, and swearing them to secrecy for 30 years because they knew they would have an enigmatic reputation to uphold decades later.

Honestly, the entire thing is preposterous.

Your hardline skepticism is refreshing! Thank you!

[ZosoCon]

So you're saying the people I am proposing invented them to embellish their mystique subsequently didn't own up to inventing them?

Five different releases, up to 100 copies of some of them, virtually priceless and not even a single plausible photo of one has ever been seen. Do you know 100 people from 30 years in your past that would never have been tempted to sell something so valuable in the intervening time? Or even just post a bragging picture? Have you ever met young musicians who weren't keen to put their music in the hands of virtually ANYONE who would listen to it? Like they spent a decade intentionally limiting and curating who they gave their tapes to, and swearing them to secrecy for 30 years because they knew they would have an enigmatic reputation to uphold decades later.

Honestly, the entire thing is preposterous.

I get where you're coming from. It's crazy that not one of these pre-twoism releases have shown up yet and yeah, you would think at least 1/100 would have uploaded at least a photo or something by now. I mean I don't personally know these guys so I don't really know their intentions, but do they really seem to be the type that would flat out lie about it on record? If anything I would guess the record label would be more inclined to embellish their mystique than BoC themselves.

[funnnnpng]

So you're saying the people I am proposing invented them to embellish their mystique subsequently didn't own up to inventing them?

Five different releases, up to 100 copies of some of them, virtually priceless and not even a single plausible photo of one has ever been seen. Do you know 100 people from 30 years in your past that would never have been tempted to sell something so valuable in the intervening time? Or even just post a bragging picture? Have you ever met young musicians who weren't keen to put their music in the hands of virtually ANYONE who would listen to it? Like they spent a decade intentionally limiting and curating who they gave their tapes to, and swearing them to secrecy for 30 years because they knew they would have an enigmatic reputation to uphold decades later.

Honestly, the entire thing is preposterous.

Yeah, I think it's weird how even the MASK compilations have surfaced but not stuff like Hooper Bay or Play By Numbers, but then again... maybe the majority of people who own those old BoC albums now just don't care. Maybe they don't even know BoC has such a devout fanbase on the internet. A lot of people who own these, just see Mike and Mark as friends or distant relatives. Maybe they can't find them either, or threw them away long ago. It would make much more sense for the MASK compilations to surface earlier because those comps were specifically targeted to IDM fans and I can guarantee you everyone who bought them knew how rare they were and knew they were IDM relics of gold. That's not the same with these early BoC releases. No one around the Board Bros even knew that they would have such a crazy fanbase, 20-25 years later. That's why they haven't bothered ripping, or listing on Discogs, because they simply don't know the significance of it. It was probably just "my friend's crazy old band" or something.