However, there's a pretty good chunk of info available straight from Hexagon Sun officials as well as the brothers themselves that a lot of people seem to be unaware of and the band's early years really aren't quite as mysterious as people make them out to be if you put all the publicly available info together. So that's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna attempt to take as many of the confirmed OG sources of info about the band's early days as possible and condense them all into one timeline. As many confirmed details as possible as well as the places those details initially came from. Hopefully this can help to dispel some of the bogus rumors that have been clogging up the internet for years and show no signs of stopping anytime soon!
Sources Cited:
- Spoiler: show
- (Note: These are just the sources I go back to repeatedly. Others are cited in-line.)
Official Biographies:
[1]. 1998 matador/iMusic biography
[2]. 2001 Warp Records biography
[3]. 2005 Warp Records biography
All three of these cite Peter Iain Campbell and Simon Goderich for providing details, the third one also cites an "A. Wilson".
Tape Liners:
[4]. A Few Old Tunes Liner Notes
[5]. Old Tunes Vol. 2 Liner Notes
Officially Sanctioned Websites:
[6]. Oldest available BoC website discography
[7]. EHX Boards Of Canada "sounds" page (and the clips that used to be hosted there)
Interviews/Other:
[8]. 2005 Pitchfork Interview
[9]. 2000 Jockey Slut Interview
Alright, here we go! Particularly important details are in bold, more speculative bits are italicized.
Part 1: Absolute Beginnings (1980-1983)
- Spoiler: show
- 1980
-Both brothers had already been playing music for about 3-4 years by this point[1][2], apparently mostly self-taught[3]
-"Mike was making his own home recordings on old worn-out cassette tapes."[3]
-"The sci-fi paranoia and flawed TV soundtracks of that era were a big influence on the duo, as were the early arcade videogames of the time." [3]
-"Mike and Marcus had begun writing tracks that imitated the warbling, damaged-sounding music found on the soundtracks of 16mm educational documentaries made by the National Film Board of Canada, and they later named their band as a nod to this early influence."[3]
-Mike & friends form the first iteration of the band which "sounded like video game tunes repeated to infinity"[1]
-Marcus wasn't involved with Mike's band yet[2] but was indeed writing music[3].
"Around 1981"
-Mike & Marcus start producing things on Super 8 film[2]. The 2007 biography[3] says they also soundtracked these themselves. It's unclear whether or not Marcus is recording his music at this point.
1983
-"Michael made his first super-8 movie with schoolfriends. the film included special lighting effects created by damaging the film in various ways. "[1] (Use of the term "movie" implies that maybe whatever this was referring to was a larger project than the ones that came before it? Possibly not, 1983 is technically "around 1981" so this might be the same thing as what the later biographies were referring to).
1984
-"Michael's first visit to a recording studio (arranged by a music teacher) yields three or four multi-tracked synth tunes, which he later performs at school with the aid of a reel-to-reel accompaniment (no sequencers available to him). Both Michael and Marcus were at this time recording found sounds from television and punching them into sequences of a very basic household tape-recorder. The duo began a crude form of multi-tracking by bouncing tracks back and forth between the tape recorder and an old hi-fi. Instruments used included pianos, voices & schoolbags!" [1]
-"Marcus began programming multi-tracked melodies on his BBC Microcomputer. He composed mathematically, once notably writing an entire tune as a mathematical palindrome." [1]
-"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."[2]
-"Aged thirteen, Mike was already visiting a local recording studio and making rough demos. Mike and Marcus were by now producing more structured songs with any instruments they could lay their hands on, as well as completely abstract tape collages of found sounds from radio and TV." [3]
-Only recordings we've heard possibly from this era are R35TT tracks. A04 in particular matches the descriptions given here, even that one might actually be from later on though.
Part 2: Early Recordings (1985-1989)
- Spoiler: show
- 1985
-Someone "began making the first of many tapes of experimental tunes, mostly very melodic but instrumental."[1], but the one biography that mentions this doesn't say who. (Marcus's involvement is unclear, supposedly he didn't join the band until the year after this but also he might've contributed solo pieces?)
-Oldest tracks on Old Tunes Vol. 2 start here[5], this is by far the earliest era of BoC that the public currently has access to.
"Late 1980s" (actual year unclear)
-"Unrewarding day-jobs funded the purchase of audio gear and a variety of exotic acoustic musical instruments, and with the acquisition of samplers the band began producing do-it-yourself garage demos on their own label ‘Music70’ which they distributed mainly amongst friends. Soon the band was producing cassette EP’s and even entire albums of demo material, some of which have since gone on to become legendary collectors’ items. It was during this period that the name ‘Boards of Canada’, initially an EP project title, became the name of the band."[3]
1986
-"Michael formed a new band, this time with a full line-up of drums, bass, guitars, vocals. Once played a cover of "L.A." by The Fall"[1]
-"At this point the band had a fairly traditional live set-up; guitars, bass, keyboards, drummer and occasional vocals, but the emphasis was on minimal, atonal electronic songs" [3]
-"At one point in the mid-80s Marcus was in a really trashy heavy metal band and I wasn't into their music at all. So I invited him to play with my band. We then started to play around with synths. We were the only group at our high school to use synths." -Mike[8]
-Marcus joins the band playing bass[1][2] but "soon emerged as co-writer and co-conspirator for what the band was later to become"[3]
-The early band has a sort of revolving door membership, multiple biographies mention as many as 14 different members joining and leaving around this time[2][3].
1987
-"The full band (then a five-piece) performed at an all-night music marathon where a stage invasion resulted in members of the audience playing some of the keyboard parts."[1] In the 1998 bio Mike described it as "One person for every key on my synth. It was chaos. We just left the stage and watched"
-The infamous "Pro-Plus Drum Solo"! According to legend, Mike took a massive amount of pro-plus supplements (presumably these or something similar) and "performed a six-hour drum solo onstage from 1am to 7am" as a direct result[1].
-The initial small-scale Catalog 3 cassette tape release happened sometime during this summer with catalog number CANC19[6] (unclear whether the catalog number was assigned later or not)
1988
-"Michael bought what he now describes as the band's "secret weapon" synth from a friend for £100 whilst travelling on a bus."[1] (Take note, the secret weapon is something used since very close to the beginning and was almost certainly featured prominently on OTV2 which contains tracks from around this time)
-Production on the film side of things begins to step up, the brothers and the collective surrounding them make what's been variously described as "unusual films (...) mostly on super-8 or video."[1] and/or "longer films and extensive photographic projects"[2]
-"The tone of the imagery of the band's filmmaking & photography at that time was nostalgic, minimal and electronic; portraits of electric pylons, coupled with music that might have been written by electric pylons; a sinister story of a road journey into the patterns on a peacock's tail."[1] (The former of the two descriptions here very closely matches OTV2's "Music For Pylons", the latter may have inspired at least the name for TCH's "Peacock Tail")
1989
-Acid Memories was completed sometime this year and given the catalog number CANC27 (again, unclear whether or not this part happened later)[6]. It's described as an "Absurdly rare, cassette-only release from the barely teen Boards, then six-strong. Guitars meet electronics in embryonic but recognisably Boards-ian melodicism"[9] by the one BoC interview that contains brief descriptions of a few pre-Twoism albums. Take the given description with caution since the "six-strong" bit is questionable (see below), but if this is indeed the case then it would be stylistically close to some R35TT tracks and also the These Trails song included on the SXT. One 26-second clip of the opening track "Duffy" was featured on the old BoC EHX site's "sounds" page[7], and it's the only 100% confirmed trace of the EP available to the public.
-"Two band members left and the remaining three of Michael, Marcus and Chris decided to carry on by borrowing money to purchase more electronics."[1] (This contradicts the "six-strong" bit from [9], no idea where it even came from in the first place)
-"The trio began recording at a professional studio, whilst putting on occasional nights for friends where they played tapes of television themes with horrific reversed vocals mixed over the music."[1] (Unclear whether this refers to the one they were building at the time or a different one)
-"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."[2]
- Spoiler: show
- 1990
-"A series of collaborations with various friends took place, resulting in multi-layered guitar songs with a dark, orchestrated feel."[1]
-"Around 1990 Mike and Marcus, frustrated by the traditional line-up and the lack of commitment of other band members, started to mould the band’s performances into something altogether more bizarre. Every summer Mike and Marcus collaborated with friends under the name ‘Hexagon Sun’ to throw late-night outdoor parties in the countryside near their studio in Scotland, where bonfires were accompanied by electronic music, processed television themes, films, projections and reversed speech tapes to create an exciting, if slightly threatening, atmosphere. These nights, which the band still occasionally organise to this day, became known as ‘Redmoon’ nights after an early event which was dramatically backdropped by a blood-red full moon."[3]
1991
-Oldest tracks on Old Tunes Vol. 1 start here[4]
-"Marcus left university to concentrate on the construction of a powerful recording studio, which mixed old, cheap technology with new."[1]
1992-1994
-"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[2].
-The initial limited Closes Vol. 1 cassette release happened sometime in 1992[6] with the (again possibly retroactive) catalog number of AOMC16. No 100% confirmed excerpts available from this one, though some R35TT tracks are very highly suspected to be from here (particularly since a copy of A06 was added to an official BoC youtube playlist as "5D" [entry #60] and copies of A14 were supposedly circulating on P2P networks as "Godever" a few years before the other R35TT tracks). According to some supposed correspondence with mdg, apparently these cassettes had no artwork and the "cover art" from the old website was made retroactively.
-Play By Numbers was released sometime in 1994 with the catalog numbers AOMC43 for the cassette release and AOCD43 for the CD release[6]. Described in the Jockey Slut article as a "Five-track CD from what was now a trio, boasting a My Bloody Valentine influence in places, shifting further into electronics in others"[9]. One confirmed 58-second excerpt of track 2 "Wouldn't You Like To Be Free?" was on the old EHX site[7] and does indeed sound more MBV-like than any of BoC's other publicly available works (though some R35TT tracks come close). The only other time they've publicly explored this sound is a couple of Societas X tracks such as the Killing Joke demo and the as-of-yet-unidentified guitar drone.
-Hooper Bay was also completed sometime in 1994, this one given the bizarre catalog number of "ths012"[6]. The only semi-credible summary of this one (again from the Jockey Slut article) describes it as "Closer still:: the use of kids' voices was a hint of what was to come"[9]. It also mentions that "People pay small fortunes for copies" but this was written back 21 years ago so there's no actual records of this happening (if it ever did in the first place) and to this day no full copies have appeared in public. The only confirmed clip of this one is a 38-second clip of the third track "Circle" from the old EHX sounds page[7]. If any tracks from this one appeared on the R35TT, they would have to have been significantly cut for time.
1995
-"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.)"[1][2] (This bit is actually copied word-for-word between the 1998 and 2001 bios lmao. Also apparently prior to this point the people themselves were Hexagon Sun as opposed to the studio space? I dunno man, I dunno!)
-"The band recorded their first vinyl EP by financing it themselves. the result is "Twoism", a limited edition collection of grainy, melancholy melodies over slow, dry electronic rhythms"[1]. It was "essentially a well-produced demo, and the intention was to mail it out to record companies and artists that the group were listening to at that point"[3]. It's initially given the catalog id "board1"[6].
-"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"[2]
-At some point before the end of the year, A Few Old Tunes is compiled. It wouldn't be leaked (or even known) to the public until a few years later, making BoC Maxima the only way to experience any of it for quite a while. Also, one track ("I Love U") would later end up on MHTRTC as "The Color Of The Fire" and the track "5-9-78" would later be licensed for use alongside an instrumental version of I Love U/TCOTF in a Nissan ad from 2000. Apparently they agreed to this because Mike drove a Nissan at the time[9].
- Spoiler: show
- 1996
-"Chris left the band."[1]
-"At the beginning of 1996 a copy of ‘Twoism’ arrived at the headquarters of Skam Records in Manchester, England, and within a day of hearing it, Autechre’s Sean Booth had contacted Boards of Canada. Mike and Marcus recorded the ‘Hi Scores’ EP for Skam and it was released later that year."[2][3]
-At some point later in 1996 BoC Maxima was completed with catalog number "ths 017"[6], bizarrely putting it in the same 'series' as Hooper Bay rather than Twoism. At the time only about 1/4 of the tracks on it were available to the public, which means the other 15 were entirely new to most listeners (16 if you count Sixtyniner since copies of Twoism were still absurdly rare). Most of the songs on this release are now available elsewhere, but as of 2021 it still contains four exclusives (namely Niagara, Red Moss, Concourse, and Whitewater).
-The track "Korona" is also featured on Skam and Musik Aus Strom's "MASK 100" compilation which is released at some point this year
-BoC played live alongside Autechre, Panasonic, and Cylob at The Reach, King's College London Students' Union on 1996-07-19 and apparently "brought their full live show including Super-8 and video visuals"[2]. All that survives of this show is a ticket stub.
-On December 6th 1996, BoC Maxima was aired in its entirety on the Disengage FM radio show hosted by Autechre. This is how most early bootleg copies of it got into circulation (and also may be the reason why BoC Maxima never ended up getting a proper release on Skam).
-Old Tunes Vol. 2 was also compiled sometime before the end of the year[5], but again wasn't leaked to the public until much later. As a result, the newest songs on OTV2 may actually be newer than some of the ones on Twoism and/or Hi Scores. Unlike the first Old Tunes, no tracks from this one were re-used elsewhere.
1997
-BoC did another live show at Versivo, there's a surviving account of this one from M.A.J. Huffman on an old IDM forum that describes it as follows:
(Note: SKA08 refers to Hi Scores and Disengage refers to BoC Maxima)"From: M.A.J.Huffman ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: Feb 17, 1997
Subject: (idm) Versivo - Boards of Canada
Finally Versivo appeared after 2 cancellations.
Quite an odd venue (The Phoenix) but the usual suspects had no
trouble finding it.
Boards of Canada unassumingly took the stage at 1.25am, the only
visual distraction being some random images on portable tellies.
On for about an hour, they played only a couple from SKA08 and those
they did had been tweaked. Not an improvement, I thought. Still
good, though. There were lots of Phils and new stuff which has been
aired on Disengage. The crowd weren't rocking, but it wasn't really
rocking music. I think perhaps they need to think more carefully
about which tracks to put in a set. Perhaps the PA was a
bit lacklustre."
-BoC continued supporting Autechre on tour at various shows, including one at The Venue in Edinburgh where they were named as "Bawds Of Canada" in the newspaper ad that exists as the only surviving evidence of this show.
-In March (the exact date is unclear) BoC did their remix of "Surfaise" by Michael Fakesch.
-At some point in 1997 they played Chinook at one of their live shows. There used to be a clip of it available on the EHX sounds page[7] but it's since been lost to time.
-On July 20th 1997 BoC played live again at the Phoenix Festival at Long Marston Airfield in Stratford-Upon-Avon, where they apparently "brought their anachronistic sounds and Super-8 visuals to play alongside various luminaries of the electronic music scene"[3]. Their performance is also said to have used "onstage video visuals which cut from Super-8 movies to "blipvert"-style subliminal messaging"[2]. The only surviving proof of this show is a poster with BoC's name placed among all the other acts in a very easy-to-miss fashion.
-They were also slated to play at the Sunflower Festival in Regensburg six days later, but it seems as though this date never actually panned out since the show was scuppered by bad weather. This is corroborated by a post from a few days later on the idm-l forums:
-Another show from around this time that actually happened was Blech 01 at The Powerhaus in London, where BoC played live again on Halloween 1997 (10-31). M.A.J. Huffman recounts this one as well:From: Alexander Reynolds ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: Aug 1, 1997
Subject: (idm) bad vilbel, sunflower festival
sunflower was an absolute mess. it's been raining a *lot* in germany these
past weeks, and the festival should have been called 'woodstock iii' or
some such, due to it being held in some poor farmer's sunflower patch. a
lot of warp and skam acts should have shown up, according to the schedule,
but i guess due to the rain they decided to opt out -- including autechre,
unfortunately -- and i don't blame em a bit. this would have been a great
event, with acts like mike paridinas , andy maddocks, freeform, autechre,
and boards of canada. i'd have asked for my money back but i had an
alright time, i suppose, even though the festivaal was held twenty km
northwest of regensburg, itself a good two hour trip away from muenchen. i
had to perform heroic juggling acts to schedule this part of my trip --
wish i'd lived in europe instead of the states.
so, no autechre review. sorry, gang.
-This year also marks the first appearance of the Hell Interface name attached to some of BoC's more "out there" works, those being the "Trapped" remix which appeared on Skam's MASK 200 (Take note of how this version seems to have been finished much later than the Old Tunes version) and "Soylent Night" on V/Vm's Whine & Missingtoe."From: M.A.J. Huffman ( [EMAIL REMOVED] )
Date: Nov 4, 1997
Subject: (idm) Blech last Friday
At around 11.15 Boards appeared to perform a half-hour set. They had three TVs showing their own cut-up
style material. This was okay but I've seen so many of those things that it didn't really make any impression.
However, the music: firstly, I should point out that there was nothing from Hi-Scores. There were 3/4 main songs with a few fills inbetween. I recognised one of the fills and one of the songs. No radical departures
from what you will have heard but the beats were a little more incisive timbrally. Lots of nice pad sounds as you'd expect. Not a set you could really let go to, but that's not necessarily a criticism. I don't think their music will ever drive a crowd wild. It was the same when I saw them in Manchester earlier this year. Shame the set was so short though."
1998
-On January 5, 1998 the Aquarius single was released, marking the first appearance of Aquarius (original Hair sample intact and all!) as well as the first full-length appearance of Chinook.
-At some point in February, BoC signed with Warp Records[1][2][3]
-On April 20th 1998, Music Has The Right To Children is given its initial release in Europe
-On April 25th BoC performed an as-of-yet-unrecovered DJ set at Test One Festival in Sheffield, documented only by their name on back of the ticket stub and this recollection of it on an old IDM forum by Adam Huffman:
-On July 21st, BoC's famous Peel Session is played for the first time on John Peel's radio show (including the original "Bad Day" version of Happy Cycling as well as XYZ and the only known recording of BoC's ordinary speaking voices)Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 13:18:01 +0100 (BST)
From: Adam Huffman <adam@larynx.shef.ac.uk>
To: idm@hyperreal.org
Subject: (idm) Test one thoughts
[...]
Mike and Marcus (Boards) were excellent DJs, this being mainly manifest in
their deft mixing of John Denver and The Byrds over today's tunes (or
possibly last week's).
[...]
-On August 20th 1998, Music Has The Right To Children was re-issued in other countries with a newer, slightly more polished version of Happy Cycling added onto the end.
)
