Boards of Canada

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About Boards of Canada

Boards of Canada’s music feels like a transmission from a parallel universe: The reference points (ambient, hip-hop, shoegaze) are recognizable enough to be familiar, but the signal has gotten garbled on the trip between dimensions, lending a mysterious, uncanny cast to the duo’s sound. Born in Scotland in the early ‘70s, brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin began making music together as teens in Edinburgh, and for their first official release, 1996’s Hi Scores, they named themselves in homage to the National Film Board of Canada, whose nature documentaries influenced their music’s washed-out colours and warbly sonics. Since Music Has the Right to Children, bliss and paranoia have struck an uneasy truce in Boards’ productions, which are shot through with murky samples and cryptic references—evidence, fans say, of hidden mysteries just waiting to be decoded.

ORIGIN
Edinburgh, Scotland
FORMED
1986
GENRE
Electronic
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