Introit To Left Hand Drive

Boards Of Canada's forthcoming album Inferno- out at the end of the month- has been preceded by a new track, or two tracks, or maybe three new tracks more accurately, because it seems to be three separate parts segued together. Introit/ Prophesy At 1420 MHz moves the Boards Of Canada sound again- all their albums seem to be connected but distinct too (the long gaps between releases gives plenty of time for the Sandison brothers to come up with a new approach, to shift the sound and feel, and to allow their influences to fully percolate). 

The Introit part is thirty seconds long (or ninety seconds possibly) starting with analogue synth oscillations and hand drums. At thirty seconds this fades out and something more ominous takes over, something more typically Boards Of Canada, the threat of something existential coming this way. Then at one minute thirty it changes again, becoming very different- a goth or darkwave guitar part, as if The Cure on downers or Berlin artist Curses suddenly turned up in the studio. The slow crawl of the drums and the gothcore sounds roll on and then a voice starts speaking, a deep, distorted voice claiming to be God and talking of subconsciousness and power, nature and super density. The long ending that follows God's part feels like the long slow fade out of a star going supernova (not that I have first hand experience of that). The visuals of the video suggest something along those lines. 

It's all pretty intriguing. 

 

In 2006, twenty years ago, Boards Of Canada released an EP called Trans Canada Highway, six tracks long (five BoC tracks and a remix of the first track on the EP, Dayvan Cowboy, by Odd Nosdam, an underground US hip hop producer/ visual artist). The two sides of vinyl of Trans Canada Highway are a fine way to spend half an hour, the tracks gradually revealing themselves with ambient, backwards guitar, loops of feedback, slowed down drums and heavy synth drones, all surrounded by that Boards Of Canada spaciousness. There's a less than a minute long ambient piece attached to the end at the end which suggests things heading elsewhere- but don't. The EP is intended to soundtrack a journey across part of Canada and it's a very floaty and abstract way to travel. 

Left Hand Drive

Tape 05

The return after a thirteen year gap of Boards Of Canada last week caused a ripple in the internet continuum. It began with some VHS tapes and cryptic posters and then continued on Thursday with Tape 05. 

Boards Of Canada have often dealt with a certain sense of unease and Tape 05 fits in with that- ghostly synth sounds, the rattle of TV static, voices that you can't quite hear clearly, the feeling that something's not quite right, the ghosts of the recent past lingering- cults, 70s TV preachers, adverts for obsolete products, railway stations where trains no longer stop, news radio broadcasts from thirty or forty years ago somehow returning to the airwaves. Nostalgia, hauntology, psychgeography, a promised future that never arrived, all wrapped up in a three minute piece of ambient music. 

Back in 2005 Boards Of Canada released The Campfire Headphase. The Japanese edition of the album contained one extra track, Macquarie Ridge. It is ridiculously beautiful and affecting in a specific way that electronic music can be- waves and shimmers of synth, backwards drums, piano, the hint of choral voices- a kind of ethereal, psychedelic, elemental music.   

Forty Minutes Of Music For Sunday

Today's mix is just some music that seemed to fall together well. I was rediscovering some tunes from five years ago, some of them by ambient/ Balearic duo Seahawks*, and started weaving them and some much more recent tracks into one piece. No theme, just some music, mainly ambient or in the ambient area, I like and that strikes a chord with me right now. 

Forty Minutes Of Music For February 2026

• Seahawks: Islands
• Kevin McCormick: Passing Clouds
• Hawksmoor: Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer
• Le Carousel: Echo Spiegel (Psychedelic Mix)
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Thurston Moore: Asperitas
• Boards Of Canada: Olson Version 3 (Peel Session)
• Olodum: Farao Divindade Do Ogito (Pandit Pam Pam Deep Into The Bowel Of A Dub)
• Maria Somerville: October Moon

Islands is from Seahawks 2014 album Paradise Freaks, a beautiful piece of music that comes in at under two minutes long but which says and suggests so much in that time. It's the final track on Paradise Freaks, a short closer after an hour of longer tracks that seems to sum the whole album up. 

Kevin McCormick is a guitarist from Manchester, who should be better known than he is, whose early 80s recordings were recently re- issued and who plays on the 12" from Arrival that came out on Before I Die last month, a highly recommended release. Passing Clouds is from October 2024, a guitar meditation on sky watching.

Hawksmoor's Am I Conscious Now? will be out on Before I Die soon and is going to be one of the best ambient releases of 2026. Last year a two track EP called Life Aboard The International Space Station came out, reprising two unreleased tracks from 2021- one of them was this one, named after a JG Ballard short story. Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer is several guitars, acoustic and electric, playing together.  

Le Carousel is Phil Kieran from Belfast. Next month he's going to release one of 2026's best post- Weatherall/ electronic albums, The Humans Will Destroy Us. Last year's WE're All Gonna Hurt was a big tune round Bagging Area way and Echo Spiegel came out right at the end of last year. Phil's own Psychedelic Mix is an ambient/ psychedelic journey, four minutes of beatless, floaty, slightly trippy synths that spin further and further with each passing bar.

Private Agenda are a duo split between London and Amsterdam. Their six track mini- album Submersion came out in May 2021- remixes of material from their Ilse de Reve album. Seahawks created something spectacularly otherwordly with their remix of Malanai Ascending. Malanai it turns out is a gently cooling breeze found in coastal parts of Hawaii which makes perfect sense when you listen to the music. 

Thurston Moore's Asperitas came out last Monday, a ten minute guitar instrumental with drum machine taken from a six track album of instrumentals based on the skies as seen in England, wales and Ireland. All six tracks are named after types of cloud. Asperitas is a total joy, thudding primitive drum machine and Thurston's chilled, repetitive and evocative guitar parts. 

Now I'm looking at the tracks I've chosen for this mix and wondering if there is a theme after all, one I wasn't even aware of as I was pulling the tracks together- islands, clouds, skies, storms, breezes... 

I've been on a Boards Of Canada binge recently and their Peel Session, released by Warp in 2019 but recorded for Peel back in 1999, has been on repeat. Olson is one of four tracks from the session, the one that made the most sense in this mix.

My friend in Sao Paulo Eduardo records as Pandit Pam Pam and has been featured at this blog several times. Last month he sent me two new tracks, one out at the end of the month and also this one, an edit of a song celebrating the Pharaohs and deities of ancient Egypt. Eduardo said his wife was listening to it and his kids loved it too and it drew him in, and with carnival approaching he did a new version, something dark, danceable and dubby. Mardi Gras is on Tuesday next week, 17th February, and the carnival started over this weekend- it seemed apt to put it into this mix.

Maria Somerville's album Luster came out last year and I slept on it a bit, not really appreciating it, or just giving it enough time, until recently. It's an album inspired by the mythic and the real, the wild coastal landscape of Connemara, Ireland, a mystical swirling record that blurs ambient, early 80s 4AD and dreampop. Another subliminal nature nature- how strange that this only became apparent after pulling the tracks together and I began writing about them.

* Maybe this was subliminal influence from the Superbowl, not a sporting event I take any interest in, but Seattle Seahawks were in the Superbowl- the final I think we call it in most other sports- and they beat the New England Patriots 29- 13. I didn't know that until I looked it up. The main interest in the Superbowl from my end over here was that trump didn't go 'because it was too far away', and the half time entertainment was by Bad Bunny who sang entirely in Spanish (he's from Puerta Rico) and this was widely viewed as an anti- Trump, anti- MAGA performance especially when he announced 'I love America' and began listing countries from South, Central and North America while his dancers carried their flags. Trump predictably said that it was, 'absolutely terrible, one of the worst EVER!' and added 'no one understands a word this guy is saying'. Trump is a cunt.

Dawn Chorus

As noted on Saturday I've somehow manged to go over fifteen years of daily blogging without ever really writing about Boards Of Canada (apart from a mention in a post about a remix EP of The Sexual Objects back in 2018), a mystery to me really because in the period from the mid- to- late 90s to the mid 00s they made some startling and wonderful electronic music and two albums- 1998's Music Has The Right To Children and 2002's Geogaddi and two EPs, In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country from 2000 and Trans Canada Highway from 2006- that are among the best from that time and since. 

Boards Of Canada were two brothers, Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin (Sandison) born in Scotland and for a period in their childhood they lived in Calgary, Canada. The family returned to Scotland and both went to Edinburgh University. They made music from a young age, playing with tape recorders and found sounds from their early teens, layering their own samples recorded from short wave radio over of music they made. In 1986 they formed a band, Boards Of Canada, and released small quantity recordings among friends. In 1996 they sent a tape to Skam and signed to the label and then in 1998 released Music Has The Right To Children jointly with Skam and Warp. 

Music Has The Right To Children is a fully realised album, short pieces and longer tracks, made using tape to tape experiments, loops, analogue synths, drum machines, some super slowed down hip hop drums, samples from North American 1970s television, found sounds, the blurred guitar sound feel of My Bloody Valentine and some weird 90s nostalgia for a 70s childhood. It's futuristic and modern but aching for a past that maybe never existed- a feel that has become known as Hauntology. The vocal samples all seem to mean something but it's not obvious or evident where the answers are. 

By 2002 the brothers had recorded a follow up, the twenty two song Geogaddi. It was a darker, more ominous record, paranoia and mistrust added to the mellower sounds of the first album. This was partly a response to the geopolitical world of the early years of the 21st century- the 9/11 attacks and subsequent war on terror. Geogaddi like it's predecessor has short, one minute tracks, often just loops and samples that buzz into life for a minute or two, and longer ones that unfold at their own pace, never quite conforming to expectations. It's a wonderful album, one that works best taken in one sitting. Among its highlights is Dawn Chorus-

Dawn Chorus

Circling loops of off kilter sounds, slo mo drums, woozy synths and 70s kids TV melodies, some voices and vocal sounds- at times Dawn Chorus seems to be three or four different songs playing at once, each one slipping slightly out of time. It's magical and a little unsettling, like the solar flare you get when you accidentally stare at the sun on a summer's day, the grass all bleached, and the sense that time is getting on a bit, the day is running away with you. 

Sometimes

Almost a year ago The Sexual Objects put out a 10" single on Fife's Triassic Tusk label. I played it quite a bit at the time and then it got mixed up in a pile of records- I like 10" singles but they're easy to misplace and can get lost between the sleeves of others. When I found it again last week I also realised that I'd hadn't blogged about it. The single was a four track comprising the original version of the song Sometimes and some remixes, with one each from Boards Of Canada and Andrew Weatherall. The Weatherall one is a stripped back, dubby treat, riding on the bass, an echoed guitar chord and some repeated vocal lines. Nine minutes of head nodding and a repeated 'get my kicks' vocal part.

The Boards Of Canada remix is also a keeper, with washes of synth and organ eventually joined by piano and some lovely musical box melodies. Voices fade in and out, before the whole thing swells into something really beautiful at two and a half minutes, a mini-epic. The vinyl sold out along time ago but you can buy the four tracks digitally at Bandcamp and listen to them all on the player below.