Boards of Canada BOC interview MS Jul/Aug 2013

[Guest khrimson]

Hello,

 

the Italian music magazine Mucchio Selvaggio published in the last issue an interview with BOC. Since it cited WATMM in one of the questions to the Sandisons (that made me chuckle when I read it), I made the effort to translate the text. The weird wording is partly my fault not being a native english speaker, partly due to the interviewer trying to be cool by placing dramatic full stops in the middle of a sentence. I attached the scans from the magazine, there's some press photos in it and the original text if you can read italian. Enjoy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking from a side, mistery can be interesting. A mystery made of absence, rare interviews and even more rare live performances. On the other hand, a few years ago, we happened to pass almost an entire afternoon with Marcus and Mike Sandison, discovering two friendly and very pleasant people. This time, the only way to reach them is via e-mail. But we feel the same attitudes, ideas, ways of doing and thinking, and a linearity of thought that really makes a mockery of unnecessary complications or annoying superficiality of all that is (too) contemporary. There is lot of talk about them lately and most of it is about their latest effort that just come out, Tomorrow's Harvest.

In short, I would say that the matter of "What the hell you did in all these past years since the last album?" will have become an unbearable torment by now. Of course, I have the temptation to ask this question aswell but but let me ask instead, is there something that you wanted to do in all these years that you failed to do?

MARCUS Hmmm. Sleeping, I'd say.

Last time we met it was just after the release of Campfire Headphase (yes, I'm one of those boring guys who does that boring profession of writing about music). For the release of that album there, you accepted to do interviews face to face, which is a rare thing for you. I sense that we must have amused and impressed you, if you have now returned to the policy of the a mail-only interview ...

MARCUS Haha, no, come on, it's not like that. It's simply that choosing to do it trough mail we are not obligated to spend days and days listening to ourselves always repeat the same concepts.

On the other side, one thing that always amused you is to bypass offers to play live.

MIKE True, we get lots of requests. Especially from festivals. But we decided that if we chose to perform live we want to make something special. We must confess that lately we have begun to think of it as a feasible hypothesis, and yes, we started to work on it.

If you look back, are there elements of Campfire Headphase that doesn't fit your standards of today? I ask this because it seems to me that Tomorrow's Harvest is a definite turning point from its predecessor, both in the atmosphere and sound choice.

MARCUS To say the truth every time we work on a new record we tend to concentrate on different sounds and atmospheres as compared to the previous one .. or at least that is what we try to do. It is a deliberate choice. We want to give you an idea of change, we want to let the public hear clearly that it is a new chapter. Having said that, I still believe that in Campfire Headphase there are some highly successful tracks and it is one of the best things we have ever done. Making a new album that is different from the previous one is not to discount its predecessor, right?

Let's take a track from Tomorrow's Harvest as White Cyclosa: it definitely borrows elements from Carpenter, it really has a flavor of - how to say? - urban retro-futuristic paranoia (... ok, ok, excuse us, we as musical journalists are very bad people and we have to talk like that). Listening to a track like that, the statement that could summarize the album might be "The world has gone mad." But since most of the album is permeated by melancholia I would opt for "The world is saddened." Does it make sense? Which of the two possible claims is less stupid and foolish?

MIKE Actually, I think that both could fit properly. But if I have to describe our music I'd say something like: "Music to listen through headphones that allows you to alienate from the world for a moment and then to observe it in a different light". I don't know, did you get it? Returning to Tomorrow's Harvest, if from one side it is true that in this record there are some links to the world political context, on the other, however, we have never been interested in that kind of theatrical and boisterous rhetoric that artists put in their work when they want to communicate political messages. We wanted to act in another way. We have worked to create a dark gloomy cinematic atmosphere.

In all honesty, and I'm not (only) speaking of music: does it make sense to be nostalgic? Did we live better in the 90's than, to say, we live today?

MIKE The world is in constant evolution, I think it is also very easy to look at the past as something more beautiful than the present ... whatever present you're experiencing. It's true, I will not hide it, today it happens me frequently to have the impression of living in a world that is darker and more complicated than the world of a few years ago. But I believe this is a consequence of the fact that when you're younger you do not care much about what happens in the world, you're focused on your life, on your goals. By becoming older, it becomes almost physiological to become more disillusioned, more skeptical.

Are you guys still blissfully confined to the countryside, like the good old British gentlemen of the past?

MARCUS Oh yes, we are. Although we tend to not dress in tweed and we don't hang stuffed deer heads on the walls.

Tomorrow's Harvest plays in every way like a typical Boards Of Canada record, beyond the differences that there may be between one album and another. Ok. But before or during the recording, have you been influenced by music by other artists?

MIKE When we work on a record, we deliberately decide not to listen to any kind of contemporary music. The reason is very precise: we want to avoid that elements that may link our music to a specific timeframe would enter in our new tracks, even unknowingly. I can tell you that during the processing of Tomorrow's Harvest we listened to many 70's and 80's soundtracks, mostly from rather depressing films. To list some composers, many are Italians: Fabio Frizzi, Stefano Mainetti. Riz Ortolani. From the international scene, the first to be mentioned are John Harrison, Mark lsham. Paul John and Wendy Carlos. But we could add to this list even someone like Michael Nyman.

We are talking about a rather long records with many many tracks, seventeen. A rather solid record, I must say. How much material have you discarded before completing the final tracklist?

MIKE A lot. Perhaps enough to make another album or two, even if most of the discarded material is not polished stuff that still needs work. This is absolutely normal for us, you know, the same thing happened with the previous albums. We do not exclude that maybe part of this unused material will see the light sooner or later.

I could not resist the temptation to take a look to the forum We Are The Music Makers, a stronghold of IDM and a place to find your most intransigent fans. One of the most funny posts commented the appearance of an article about you on Rolling Stone: "I never thought that Boards Of Canada would become so mainstream can end up on Rolling Stone. A new low point, if you want to know my opinion". In short, do you think that ending up in the mainstream media can hurt you? And does it make sense to be so jealous of music and groups you love?

MARCUS Let's put it in this way, we'll never be like Genesis, U2 or something like that. Never. That said, I can also understand the spirit in which certain things are written or thought, but in general I believe that hating something just because the same thing is loved by others is a fairly insane way to deal with life ...

Ok, since we have already touched point about jealous, manic and maybe a little nerd fans , let's ask their fundamental question: "which gear did you use to record the disc, which did not and why."

MIKE A pair of old synths we loved died during the recording. At that point we opted for what any person with insight, intelligence and reasonableness would do: we replaced them with even older and even more shabbier synths. Smart, right? In general, for instruments we researched gear commonly used for movie soundtracks of the 80's ... and we can say we put a lot of effort on it. We have exaggerated a bit, we almost lost our mind, perhaps even becoming a bit too manic. Instead of software we wanted to rely only on hardware sequencer: you would not believe what a relief was to break free from following grids on a monitor that tell you what to do and when you must do it.

As a last question, is Tomorrow's Harvest a good album? And if it is, why? I realize that this sounds like a silly question. But maybe it is not. Maybe.

MARCUS One thing is for sure: it came out exactly as we wanted it. If this means that the record is good or not, is not for us to say. But we started to work on it having a direction in mind that was maintained till the end and the result reflects our original view.

 

 

[Fredd-E]

I'm afraid you just reinvented the wheel. :D

 

https://www.facebook.com/bocpages/posts/10151671964224774:0

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

[yshf]

"We must confess that lately we have begun to think of it as a feasible hypothesis, and yes, we started to work on it."

boctour

[goDel]

Thanks for translating!

 

I'm kinda surprised about watmm being mentioned in the first place and secondly the way it is mentioned: pull some quote somewhere and immediately attach huge amounts of jealousy and hate to it, as if that's what it's all about. ... So you're taking a quote from a place where people just have some conversation like you can have in a bar, and suddenly this consistent image gets pulled out of thin air putting a stamp on all conversation ever made at this bar. Well, I kinda get why they don't enjoy hanging around at this bar...

[delet...]

Yeah the watmm quote was totally not representative of the watmm BoC subforum group think. It sounds more like he threw that in there as a diss, to make us sound like whiny pricks to the boys. Perhaps the reporter is from twoism ;-p hehe

 

Also, thanks for taking the time to translate, appreciate mate ;-]

[Plarkreluke Banloboh]

Yes thanks for doing a translation!

[qnio]

thanks a lot

[markedone]

Is the press photo new? Ive seen it used for Tomorrows Harvest in a few places but the photo style and band look very similar to their older photos

[psn]

Grazie!

[NI64]

With each interview they seem to be inching more towards confirming:

 

a) that they will play live again.

b) that they will release some unreleased material.

 

This makes me happy.

 

Edit: Side note - do British people use the phrase "inching towards"??

[Guest khrimson]

I attached a rar to the opening post but I don't see a link to the archive, you can find the interview scans here (some nice photos to look at)

[phudoshin]

Nice little interview... prego

[MadameChaos]

Thanks a lot fumi, you have brought the forum into (even more) disrepute.

 

[Guest]

Bravely translated

 

I salute you!

:DDD

[jules]

Thanks a lot fumi, you have brought the forum into (even more) disrepute.

 

lol

[Roj]

Firstly, props to the dude for the translation, nice one. It's an interesting interview and gives us more than a glimmer of hope for future material or maybe even live appearances . Just think too, all that discarded material, some (most) of which would be of great interest to many of us.

 

Nice of the interviewer though to trawl through watmm for several weeks to find a brush to beat us with. That really was a bit ridiculous and totally unnecessary. I think you'll find the BOC group on watmm to be generally pretty level headed.

[Alzado]

I don't think it paints watmm one way or another. He's using the quote as representative of the kind of weird, emotionally fueled fervor that many boc fans exhibit.

 

 

Also, live tour!!!!!!!!!!1111<3boc<3boc<3boc B====D~~~~~~~

[Rubin Farr]

I attached a rar to the opening post but I don't see a link to the archive, you can find the interview scans here (some nice photos to look at)

Thanks for the photo scans, new pics of the brothers are harder to find than current Aphex.

[Npoess]

Whoever made that "boc is 2mainstream4me comment", is a fucking moron.

[goDel]

Stuff that's been said in the internet

[poblequadrat]

No Twoism hate involved but I'm sort of curious about what would they answer if the question was about that "a present for the brothers" thread...

 

Also, aren't TH interviews a bit lame? They just give vague answers which amount to "everything is a secret" and then throw a pair of bits in about how nihilistic they are. To be fair most of the questions are usually bad too, but I'm beginning to think they wouldn't give a straight answer to good ones either...

 

Thanks for the translation, anyway.

[xyrofen]

No Twoism hate involved but I'm sort of curious about what would they answer if the question was about that "a present for the brothers" thread...

 

Also, aren't TH interviews a bit lame? They just give vague answers which amount to "everything is a secret" and then throw a pair of bits in about how nihilistic they are. To be fair most of the questions are usually bad too, but I'm beginning to think they wouldn't give a straight answer to good ones either...

 

Thanks for the translation, anyway.

 

I kind of like how a lot of their answers on the "goodness" of anything revolves around them not thinking its their place to say.

Their answer about living out in the country was pretty funny though.

[KovalainenFanBoy]

So, who said that?

[Ivan Ooze]

Stuff that's been said in the internet

lol

[beerwolf]

 

Nice of the interviewer though to trawl through watmm for several weeks to find a brush to beat us with. That really was a bit ridiculous and totally unnecessary. I think you'll find the BOC group on watmm to be generally pretty level headed.

 

 

I'd dispute that (in a friendly way). I've read loads of shit being hurled at them over the last 3 years on this forum. One poster once said (I presume he was in a drunken state) saying that he'd like to bump into The Sandisons after consuming 6 pints of Theakstons Old Peculier and then have a ruck with them!!! Hahah lol. I wonder who that was? Mmmm.

 

All is forgiven now