Good news everybody! 1998 interview from Space Age Bachelor

[Moebius]

Tracked down quite an old interview which may very well be their first print magazine interview ever published. Space Age Bachelor magazine published this interview (conducted via email) in the winter of 1998. A short one, but chock full of meaty quotes.

The magazine is now defunct, but the editor was generous enough to provide me a copy and permit me to share it with you. Some other articles (including an excellent Aphex Twin interview) are still online. His new project is Efeele.com, check it out.

The interview is up on the wiki now: [wiki]Space Age Bachelor 1998 interview[/wiki]. No transcription yet (anyone want to make one?), but here' s the scan:

[747Music]

awesome! thanks man!

[hungry_manweaselbeast]

Nice Definitely not the first printed interview though.

[thedisavowed]

I'll transcribe it this afternoon.

[turquoise70]

"because everybody wants to rue the whirl"

ha ha ha

[The Friendly Stranger]

"music is maths"

Was in interesting read though not the best article ever. Presented in a bit of a confusing way or is it just me?

Thanks for the upload

[bioluminescence]

Yeah, it's the Hoodoos Lookout in Banff Springs on the cover of MHTRTC. Beautiful place.

[thedisavowed]

Are we sure? I've heard this before, but the lookout looks like stone to me on the album cover.

Seems strange they'd remove stone to install wood.

[thedisavowed]

Ah.. I've been transcribing never mind me. I was referring to the photo in particular. Perhaps it's a different lookout?

[thedisavowed]

The transcription. I tried to standardize capitalization wherever possible. There are some weird structural moments in this article to be sure.

Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children Warp label debut (North American release by Matador) comes from two Scots. The group name refers to the strong influence of the 70s documentary movies from the Canadian National Film Board. It seems quite strange to me the way that people expect/demand different levels of weirdness from various mediums. It has occurred to me that a lot of music in commercials is very strange, or documentaries, too, and people have no trouble listening to it. But if you present this music in a pop package, people are almost offended by its weirdness, its indulgence. "That's exactly it. That is such a good point to make because all along we've been more interested in the sort of music you find in that context rather than standard rock and pop. The reason some people might be into our music and other experimental artists' music, is because there's a space for it in the public psyche where the way has been paved by film and tv and so on, so why can't bands produce albums of equally original music? (Marcus) Many of these movies were nature films. "Yeah, Banff Springs. the cover for Music Has the Right to Children was taken there. It's funny all these places in Canada have stolen their names from places in Scotland like Banff, Airdrie, Strathmore, etc loads of them around Calgary alone. We're based near a Scottish wildlife reserve now, beside a wildlife sanctuary. (Michael) Particularly affected by it, cause my earliest memories are revisited in this music. One member is born in 1971, and the other is born in 1973. My two older brothers are born in 1970 and 1972 respectively. My family lived in Calgary around 1974, moved east, I was born in 1976, and then the family moved back to Calgary in 1978. But 1980 was my favorite shit. When I was six, I was nostalgic for when I was four. "I suppose we're naturally like that. When I was a fetus I was nostalgic for when I was sperm."(Michael) except we come from one sperm, not many sperm. and I wonder if just maybe our early paths ever crossed. "It's a small world. I stayed in Braeside for a while and I remember a shoot out near the Trade Winds hotel, when I was told to get down on the floor of the car. I also remember getting ski masks to go trick or treating with my friends, and this old guy thought we were going to mug him." (Michael) I feel extra close to the final product, though it's easy for me to say that knowing they're from there. I wonder at what unconscious level this music might have affected me, if I didn't know that? Despite being the current toast of electronica, Music Has the Right to Children doesn't necessarily sound cutting edge. "I think the melodies could have been written anytime but the production couldn't have been done without samplers. It's maybe odd when you think about it because we work hard to downgrade the sound to make it seem dated and worn. But the chopped up vocals and beats can only be done with samplers. As musicians we're capable of producing a good album without all the technology so we approach writing from that angle, as though we want to record a traditional rock record with a band and vocals but then we introduce the technology as we go along to achieve all these impossible things that we'd like to hear an ordinary rock album doing." (Marcus) It has a spooky, transcendental. The melodies are simple, yet irresistible. They sound familiar, yet distant. When I was born, what melodies did I hear in my head, what melodies have I forgotten already in that first second of life, tears drowning out the final notes of a booming womb symphony? "I believe we're all born with the potential to generate all possible melodies. Babies respond to tunes as though they're recognizing something. Music is maths, no matter how messy or atonal it gets, it can always be described by numbers. And there have been all those experiments playing music to unborn babies where they react to it afterwards when they're older. It's in everybody of course so its a shame when someone claims not to be interested in music, because it's a waste of creative power. If you could combine the efforts of every human being to make a super composer, think of the melodies you'd unlock. I sometimes get sad about the future thinking about all the beautiful music which will be written in years to come, because we won't live long enough to witness it." (Michael) The implications of electronic music where any sound in the human head can potentially be harnessed by passing the limitations of physical instruments is enormous. It makes me feel so strange, parts of my body I didn't know i had, a funny feeling in my spine, a little tinglebetweenmytoes. [sic] Emotions, in general, I didn't know I had. "Definitely. It offers you nearly infinite possible sounds, millions of ways of presenting a melody or a sound. By its very nature it can be the most experimental form of music. That doesn't mean that it always is, because we also believe that most electronic musicians become lazy. It's very easy to make mainstream work like dance music once you have a sampler and a sequencer. The technology lends itself to that style, that's where dance music came from. But it's more of a challenge to write original melodic music. It can bring rare emotions to the surface, especially if you have an ear for fine nuances. It doesn't have to sound electronic at all, and once you accept this you can go anywhere with it." (Michael) There's something about "Rue the Whirl" I can't explain. It does my head inside out and in. "That's a simple track. It has a predominate woodwind riff, ascending over and over, which puts you in a trance, but there are some evolving textures in there which may or may not be obvious at first, such as birds and water. It has similar hypnotizing effect to something like the melodies you hear from a rusty swing, needed to be oiled or machinery on a journey, or even a windscreen wiper, the noise it makes over and over. The surrounding environment is continuously moving. I think it works well because everybody wants to rue the whirl." (Marcus) Um, one question I forgot to ask, what does it mean to 'rue the whirl.' I've never heard the expression, though admittedly there remains some gaps in my knowledge.

[thedisavowed]

I added the transcription to the WIKI.

I chose for reasons of clarity to divide the interview into paragraphs, identify speakers before quotes, and to standardize capitalization. I left the punctuation alone, though there were some strange moments there. I hope that's not anti-wiki... I just felt like the article needed some help- one big block looks awfully ugly on the wiki.

If someone else would like to compare my transcription to the text (though I was pretty careful to make it accurate) I would appreciate it.

The story about the Trade Winds hotel is interesting. Perhaps it's the story behind Michael Fakesch - Surfaise [The Trade Winds mix by Boards of Canada???

[Moebius]

Nice Definitely not the first printed interview though.

are you sure? there's only 3 other interviews in 1998:

1998-03-25: EHX
1998-04-14: Forcefield
1998-06: Virgin Megaweb

ehx was a website
forcefield was a web-only magazine
virgin megaweb was from the Virgin Megastore France website

now it's possible that the virgin interview was also published in some sort of in-store magazine but I haven't found any evidence of that. this is the earliest interview I know of that was definitely from a print edition. but if you know of another, please let me know.

[Moebius]

Are we sure? I've heard this before, but the lookout looks like stone to me on the album cover.

there was a thread speculating this on watmm some time ago, seems some folks were right about Banff.

[hungry_manweaselbeast]

Nice Definitely not the first printed interview though.

are you sure? there's only 3 other interviews in 1998:

1998-03-25: EHX
1998-04-14: Forcefield
1998-06: Virgin Megaweb

ehx was a website
forcefield was a web-only magazine
virgin megaweb was from the Virgin Megastore France website

now it's possible that the virgin interview was also published in some sort of in-store magazine but I haven't found any evidence of that. this is the earliest interview I know of that was definitely from a print edition. but if you know of another, please let me know.

Well, it's not a straight up Q&A interview, more of a feature so taking that into account there was the Jockey Slut feature April/May 98. That's the earliest one I've personally read but maybe there's even earlier ones? Plenty of magazines hot on the tail of decent electronica around that time

[red moon]

Did I read somewhere the Boards were originally from Banff in Scotland? (Before moving to Canada and then back to Edinburgh?) If so, maybe that is the reason they choose such an album cover - both the Scottish and Canadian connections.

Upon looking up Banff on Google maps I notice that there is a town Buckie near by... Buckie High?

[Moebius]

this is the earliest interview I know of that was definitely from a print edition. but if you know of another, please let me know.

Well, it's not a straight up Q&A interview, more of a feature so taking that into account there was the Jockey Slut feature April/May 98. That's the earliest one I've personally read but maybe there's even earlier ones? Plenty of magazines hot on the tail of decent electronica around that time

heh, oops, forgot to add the jockey slut 98 interview to the [wiki]interviews[/wiki] page, my bad. you're right, though; 1998 was a bubbling time for idm, mhtrtc was a very hot debut album, it wouldn't surprise me if there were more interviews out there. but its hard to find traces online from that era.

[arnold113]

thanks for the scan and transcript.

[hungry_manweaselbeast]

this is the earliest interview I know of that was definitely from a print edition. but if you know of another, please let me know.

Well, it's not a straight up Q&A interview, more of a feature so taking that into account there was the Jockey Slut feature April/May 98. That's the earliest one I've personally read but maybe there's even earlier ones? Plenty of magazines hot on the tail of decent electronica around that time

heh, oops, forgot to add the jockey slut 98 interview to the [wiki]interviews[/wiki] page, my bad. you're right, though; 1998 was a bubbling time for idm, mhtrtc was a very hot debut album, it wouldn't surprise me if there were more interviews out there. but its hard to find traces online from that era.

Yeh. I guess the older fans have either lost touch and moved on, lost their copies of magzines or whatever. I can remember having already heard of BoC via articles when buying the Jockey Slut magazine with that feature in it (the original, not the anniversary reprint). I'm guessing French publications may have been on the pulse too, they shared a similar outlook on a fair bit of electronica back then. All hazy guesswork of course. I'll see if I can unearth anything else

A nice concise read here, though nothing new really -

http://www.atpfestival.com/archive/line ... 4&view=159

Boards of Canada originate around 1976 when Michael and Marcus were children. Both learned to play various musical instruments while moving and relocating between northern Scotland, southern England and Alberta in Canada. Around 1980 on the north-east coast of Scotland the first version of the band was formed, not yet including Marcus Eoin in the line-up. For the next few years Mike and cohorts created experimental music using borrowed synths, drums and tape machines.

Around this time the band were starting to create home movies with a Super-8 camera. Educational television documentaries and film soundtracks were becoming a big influence on the group and the crossover between their musical creations and their film creations was becoming more blurred. The documentaries of the National Film Board of Canada were regular viewing for the young collective, and they were later to name their band as a nod to this early influence.

By Spring 1984 Mike had produced various multi-tracked works at a professional recording studio by his home on the coast. Mike, Marcus and other friends spent the early eighties making music near the beaches of north-east Scotland. They blended real instruments and voices with the sounds of home computers and found sounds from radio and television.

In 1986 Marcus joined Mike's band, as a bassist. They were the only live band in their area performing hard, minimal electronic music; (showcase gigs in their rural hometown saw them billed alongside an endless procession of glam-rock covers bands who played New York Dolls and Poison). With frequent line-up changes, by the end of the eighties Boards of Canada eventually had comprised as many as fourteen different members.

In the late eighties the band and their surrounding collective were making longer films and extensive photographic projects. The films were soundtracked by Boards of Canada. The group's work utilised brooding imagery and cryptic, psychedelic pictures and texts to achieve feelings of nostalgia, confusion, and loss.

By 1989 Boards of Canada had embarked on the creation of their own studio. The band began putting on occasional outdoor happenings. They used projections, films, monitors, and played tapes of bizarre recordings including television themes with reversed vocal messages mixed over the music.

From 1992 to 1994 various small musical and visual projects took place, whilst the band's collective Hexagon Sun began regular Redmoon nights at a ruin near their own studio in Scotland. Large bonfires were lit and guests found themselves listening to, among other things, old children's songs being mixed over steady electronic pulses. In the summer of 1995 the band and their friends officially christened their studio in the Pentland Hills Hexagon Sun, and the collective have continued their work on recordings, films and gatherings from this location. (Every year in the spring and summer Hexagon Sun hosts various small rural music gatherings, which attract many local heads.)

For some time Boards of Canada had been recording EP's and "albums" by financing the manufacture themselves, on their own label Music70, but the first of these to be released outside the band's own circle of friends was Twoism, a limited-edition collection of grainy, melancholy melodies over slow, dry electronic rhythms.

In early 1996 a copy of Twoism reached the headquarters of the electronic label Skam in Manchester, England, and within a day Autechre's Sean Booth had contacted the duo. Mike & Marcus recorded the Hi Scores EP for Skam Records. BOC brought their full live show including Super-8 and video visuals when they played alongside Autechre, Panasonic & Cylob in London in July 1996.

Skam Records and Munich's Musik Aus Strom teamed up in 1997 to release a series of very limited compilation EP's under the name MASK, the first of which included an exclusive track by Boards of Canada. The second MASK instalment contained a track by one of the band's alter-egos, "Hell Interface." From now on Boards of Canada's music was being licensed for appearances on compilation albums all over the world.

At this time Boards of Canada gave a few performances around the UK, notably including a performance at the Phoenix Festival in July 1997, using onstage video visuals which cut from Super-8 movies to "blipvert"-style subliminal messaging. BOC once again supported labelmates Autechre in Scotland, and Seefeel in London, as well as headlining for Skam in Manchester. Meanwhile they released new music under the pseudonym Hell Interface, and obliged with remixes for a handful of artists.

In February 1998, much speculation preceded the announcement that Boards of Canada had signed to Sheffield's Warp Records. In the spring of 1998, after a remix for Mira Calix on Warp Records, and a limited edition 7" release of Aquarius on Skam Records, the duo completed an album for a joint release between Skam & Warp Records. Music Has the Right to Children was released on 20th April 1998.

The BOC debut album received excellent reviews in many music publications in the UK and Europe. "Album of the Issue" - Jockey Slut, April/May 1998, "Album of the Month" - Wax magazine, May 1998.

Boards of Canada recorded an exclusive session for the John Peel Show on Radio One in June 1998, and performed live on the John Peel Show, during the recording of the session. Peel described it on air as an "excellent session."

In July 1998 BOC landed a licensing deal in the USA with New York's Matador Records. Music Has the Right to Children was set for a September 1998 US release. That summer BOC commenced work on their second album for Warp Records, while Music Has the Right to Children was released in the USA. Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto approached the band, and BOC remixed his single Prime Audio Soup.

In January 1999 the BOC album Music Has The Right To Children became one of the most highly acclaimed albums of 1998 in magazine end-of-year polls; "No.16" - NME, "No.3" - Jockey Slut, "No.5" - The Wire, "No.8" - DJ Magazine, "No.19" - Muzik. In the same month Warp Records released a single of the BOC Peel Session that had aired the previous year on the UK's Radio 1.

Music Has The Right To Children returned to the UK Independent Chart Top 20 in February 1999, and after staying around for three weeks it peaked at number 7. Simultaneously the Peel Session single hung around the Top 10 of the Independent singles chart for several weeks.

In May 1999 NME included Boards of Canada in its "Top Ten Nu-Psychedelic Bands," alongside Mercury Rev & The Beta Band.

In the same issue, NME ranked Boards of Canada's debut album 'Music Has The Right To Children' in its Top 25 Psychedelic Records of All Time: "..... 1 The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows 2 The Byrds - Eight Miles High 3 13th Floor Elevators - Slip Inside This House 4 Pink Floyd - Interstellar Overdrive 5 Electric Prunes - I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night 6 Country Joe & The Fish - Electric Music For The Mind And Body 7 The Beach Boys - Vegetables 8 Jimi Hendrix - The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice 9 Can - Mother Sky 10 Happy Mondays - 24 Hour Party People 11 The Stone Roses - I Am The Resurrection 12 A Guy Called Gerald - Voodoo Ray 13 The Butthole Surfers - Hurdy Gurdy Man 14 My Bloody Valentine - To Here Knows When 15 Primal Scream - Higher Than The Sun 16 The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds 17 The Boo Radleys - Giant Steps 18 Mercury Rev - Racing The Tide 19 Spiritualised Electric Mainline - Electric Mainline 20 The Chemical Brothers - The Private Psychedelic Reel 21 Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk At Cubist Castle 22 Super Furry Animals - Radiator 23 The Beta Band - Three EPs 24 Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children 25 The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin ....."

From 1999 onward various tracks from the BOC back-catalogue were being licensed for compilation albums, TV synchronisation and film soundtracks all over the world.

Throughout the summer of 1999 Boards of Canada continued to work on their second album, and in August 1999 they contributed two tracks to Warp Records' 10th Birthday celebration albums, for release later in the year.

In November 1999 Boards of Canada performed live at Warp Records' 10th Birthday Party in London alongside Autechre, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Mira Calix. The BOC live visual show, produced by the band themselves along with contributions from Hexagon Sun collaborators, was by now incorporating more finely-honed experimentation with subliminal text and imagery.

In October 2000 Boards of Canada performed live at The Incredible Warp Lighthouse Party, an electronic showcase event at a lighthouse on the River Thames in London, alongside various luminaries of the electronic music world including Autechre, Plaid, Aphex Twin, Skam artists, Schematic artists from the USA, Prefuse 73, and various others.

In November 2000 Boards of Canada released a four-track EP In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country.

In April 2001 BOC headlined at All Tomorrow's Parties, a festival on the south coast of England with an esoteric line-up including Lambchop, Television, Yo La Tengo, Tortoise, Broadcast, Sun Ra Arkestra, and many others.

In February 2002 Boards of Canada released 'Geogaddi', the long-awaited follow-up to 'Music Has the Right to Children'. Described as a darker partner to the previous album, with it's swirling psychedelic melodies and multiple layers of beautiful sonic detail, 'Geogaddi' immediately entered the Top 20 Album Chart and stayed there for several weeks.

Biographical details by PIC & Goderich, summer 2002.