- Tomorrow's Harvest · 2013
- Music Has the Right to Children · 1998
- In a Beautiful Place Out In the Country - EP · 2000
- Hi Scores 2014 Edition - EP · 1996
- Music Has the Right to Children · 1998
- Music Has the Right to Children · 1998
- Tomorrow's Harvest · 2013
- Music Has the Right to Children · 1998
- Music Has the Right to Children · 1998
- The Campfire Headphase · 2005
- Geogaddi · 2002
- Treat Em Right (Boards of Canada Remix) - Single · 2021
- Treat Em Right (Boards of Canada Remix) - Single · 2021
Essential Albums
- Four years after their 1998 breakthrough, Music Has the Right to Children, the Scottish duo pushed even further with Geogaddi. Zigzagging between found-sound sketches, out-of-body ambient floaters, and murky instrumental hip-hop, it’s darker and more adventurous. On “1969” and “Music Is Math,” their trademark breaks are bathed in a vivid swirl, while their synth programming takes the lead on the tabla-laced “Alpha and Omega.” Most impressive is its kaleidoscopic churn: In the spirit of '70s planetarium soundtracks, it’s less an album than a state of mind.
- Despite their electro roots, the Scottish brothers’ sound gradually adapted to their pastoral surroundings. The title of this EP is self-explanatory: The synths drift like wind-kissed groves, and the beats are as lazy as a lakeside summer day. Three tracks highlighting their trademark elements—wistful chord progressions, tape-warped textures, skeletal hip-hop beats—are as immediate as anything in their catalogue, while “Zoetrope” lives up to its namesake with flickering chords and Tungsten glow—a closed-lids movie for the mind.
- Michael and Marcus Eoin Sandison's 1998 debut hit with the force of an idea fully formed—and beamed from a distant galaxy, at that. The sources of their crackling ambient tracks—the boom-bap beats of '80s hip-hop, the eerie synths of '70s nature documentaries—are familiar, but the overall effect is as strange as an out-of-body experience. Melodies warble like warped tape, and disembodied voices dart through the murk like auditory hallucinations. It's a spellbinding balancing act between childlike wonder and grown-up dread.
Albums
Music Videos
- 2006
Artist Playlists
- This mysterious duo revolutionised electronic sounds with their haunting melodies.
Singles & EPs
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