Boards Of Canada - Hooper Bay (1994)

Boards Of Canada's earliest website included a list of their albums, many of which are shrouded in mystery. They included 'Catalog 3', 'Acid Memories', 'Closes Vol 1', 'Play By Numbers', and finally 'Hooper Bay', and these albums were claimed to have around100 copies, or less, made and distributed to friends and family. 'Hooper Bay' is the band's fifth known release, issued on 12" vinyl and cassette in 1994. It introduced the use of children's voices, a technique which would remain a staple of the band's style through the release of 'Geogaddi', and is named after the Alaskan village of Hooper Bay, which is a Cup'ik Eskimo settlement. Of the EP's five tracks, only a 35-second excerpt of 'Circle', posted on the EHX website in the late 1990's, has ever been heard by those outside of the band's friends and family. In the years since, many fakes have gone up online claiming to be these albums, in particular a set of mp3's labelled 'Hooper Bay' but with significantly shorter track times than the actual EP, can be found on P2P networks, but like most of these, this set is mis-labelled and is not music by Boards of Canada. There's always a slight air of legitimacy considering that three additional albums, 'A Few Old Tunes', 'Old Tunes Vol 2', and 'Random 35 Tracks Tape' have been found (see previous posts here), and confirmed by "mdg", the mysterious user who's friends with the brothers, and who comments on matters for the band on the fan-forum Twoism. Recently someone tried to upload a record to the Discogs database, a website cataloguing every piece of physically released music in history, and although initially his submission was rejected, he provided a backstory, additional details, as well as three videos. One of the videos was the snippet of 'Circle' that we know about, but the other two videos were of side A and side B of the 12" vinyl being played. While the quality is poor (a potential strike into the fake column), it's also coming hot on the heels of last year's 25th anniversary of their debut big label album 'Music Has The Right To Children', so did the band leak this as part of the celebration? Here are those two videos, split into individual tracks, and 'Circle' does sound very similar to the clip that we already have, so it's now up to BOC mega-fans to let us all know if this is real or not. The only thing I'll say is that I can't hear the children's voices which are supposed to be an integral part of the music.  

Track listing

01 Seward Leaf 
02 Geiser 
03 Circle 
04 Noatak 
05 Point Hope 

Boards Of Canada - Old Tunes (Volume 2) (1996)

Time for some more old tunes from the emergent Boards Of Canada, recorded onto cassette some time in 1996 and sent out to record labels as demos. Once again it's a really nice collection of early work from the brothers and should be enjoyed by any fans of the band.

Track listing

01 We've Started Up
02 Jimbo Rehearsing
03 Staircase Whip
04 Statue Of Liberty
05 Dave (I'm A Real Traditionalist)
06 Peace/Tony/Devil
07 To The Wind
08 Iraq Says
09 Nine-Rubber Wisdom
10 On A Rolling Sea
11 Iced Cooly Beatnik
12 David Came To Mahana'im
13 Sir Prancelot Brainfire
14 North Sea Arbeit
15 Mushyz
16 Heysanna Hosanna
17 Fly In The Pool
18 Mukhinabaht
19 It's A Whole 'Nother Year
20 Kiteracer 2
21 BMX Track
22 Hiscores
23 Geometric Piss
24 Zander Two
25 Magic Teens
26 Apparatus
27 Music For Pylons
28 Alpha Rainbow
29 Northern Plastics
30 Buckie High
31 I Love My New Shears
32 Solarium
33 Breaking Nehushtan
34 Orange Hexagon Sun
35 Lick
36 Powerline Misfortune

Boards Of Canada - Trails (2009)

I found an intriguing Boards Of Canada post on Youtube recently, which purported to be a rare releases mixtape, and as I didn't recognise most of the titles then I believed them. On further investigation, I found that these were indeed rare tracks by the band, from compilation albums, b-sides, bonus tracks from Japanese re-issues, a track from a Peel session, a number from their own website, before it closed down, and a two live renditions of tracks which only survive in studio form as short snippets. In tracking down this information I also found the original sources of all of these tracks, so rather than just upload the video, this album is made up of the raw material used for the mixtape, allowing me to make some small edits here and there for a better listening experience. As the many comments from the video attest, this is a great compilation of rare BOC tunes, and so I'm grateful for Lilly's Domain for bringing them to my attention, and thereby giving me the opportunity to introduce them to a wider audience of fans. If you want to listen to the mixtape and watch the excellent accompanying visuals on Youtube, then check it out here.

Track listing

01 Website Intro (from the boc website 1990)
02 Echus (live at All Tomorrow's Parties 2001)
03 Korona (from the Various Artists 'Mask 100' EP 1996)
04 Gann (from the boc website 1990)
05 Last Walk Around Mirror Lake (from the Boom Bip remix album 'Corymb' 2004)
06 Time Apple (from the boc website 1990)
07 Spiro (live at Warp Lighthouse Party 1999)
08 From One Source All Things Depend (from the Japanese edition of 'Geogaddi' 2002)
09 Macquarie Ridge (from the Japanese edition of 'The Campfire Headphase' 2005)
10 Trails (from the boc website 1990)
11 Orange Romeda (from the Various Artists album 'We Are Reasonable People' 1998)
12 Chinook (b-side of 'Aquarius' single 1998)
13 XYZ (from the 1998 John Peel Session)
14 Circle (the only known sample from the ultra-rare album 'Hooper Bay' 1994)
15 Seven Forty Seven (from the Various Artists album 'Warp20' 2009)

Based on a track listing compiled by Lilly's Domain Youtube channel

Boards Of Canada - A Few Old Tunes (1996)

This is a second collection of early tunes from Boards Of Canada, which they compiled onto cassette tapes in the mid 90's and passed around family and friends, and very few original copies of the tapes are known to exist. One dealer claims to be close friends with a family member and has posted photos of his copies, while another owner spectacularly increased the value of his tape by destroying one of them in a Vine clip. There are a few others around, with one online commenter telling all about a second generation 'A Few Old Tunes' / 'Boc Maxima' rip he managed to get his hands on via Uni connections. These tracks have leaked online more than once, with a poor quality copy being the most common for some time, while a second rip has the best sound quality, but annoyingly it is only partial, missing the final seven tracks. This rip have been lovingly pieced together by the rareboc.ax.lt site, and they've done a cracking job, with these tracks now sounding as good as the previous 'Boc Maixma' album, and it's a great way to hear the nascent band developing their talents prior to recording their early albums. A couple of tracks feature samples, so 'Trapped' uses quite a lot of the Colonel Abrams song of the same name, and 'The Way You Show' incorporates a loop from Kool And The Gang's 'Celebration'. I hardly need mention that 'Blockbusters' samples the TV quiz show.

Track listing

01 Spectrum
02 Light, Clear Hair
03 P:C:
04 Trapped
05 Rodox Video
06 Happy Cycling
07 House Of Abin'adab
08 Finity
09 Forest Moon
10 Skimming Stones
11 Carcan
12 Devil
13 Mansel
14 She Is P
15 Davie Addison
16 Sac
17 Blockbusters
18 I Will Get It Tattooed
19 The Way You Show
20 I Love U
21 King Of Carnival
22 M9
23 Original Nlogax
24 Sequoia
25 Boqurant
26 5.9.78
27 Wendy Miller
28 Paul Russell's Piece
29 Up The March Bank
30 Nova Scotia Robots

Boards Of Canada - Boc Maxima (1996)

The Boards Of Canada first came to most people's attention with the release of their 'Music Has The Right To Children' album in 1998, but Scottish brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin had been recording their electronic music for some years before that album appeared, and quite a few of these tracks have leaked out in recent years. Their first EP 'Twoism' was recorded in 1995 and was privately pressed in a limited quantity, mostly for family and friends. A few copies were available to the public, and these now command extremely high prices on the collectors market, even though the EP was repressed in 2002. In 1996 the duo released a cassette album entitled 'Boc Maxima', which was a semi-private release and was notable for being a full-length album, and was the precursor to 'Music Has the Right to Children', with which it shares a few tracks. Of the early tapes that I've heard from the band, this one seems most like an actual album, and so it's worth posting so that you can hear the fledgling band coming up with pieces that would later define their sound.  

Track listing

01 Wildlife Analysis
02 Chinook
03 Rodox Video
04 Everything You Do Is A Balloon
05 Boc Maxima
06 Roygbiv
07 Nova Scotia Robots
08 June 9th
09 Niagara
10 Skimming Stones
11 Sixtyniner
12 Red Moss
13 Concourse
14 Carcan
15 Nlogax
16 M9
17 Original Nlogax
18 Turquoise Hexagon Sun
19 Whitewater
20 One Very Important Thought