3 - Everything You Do is a Balloon

We go further down the Boards of Canada rabbit hole with the ultra-rare BOC Maxima compilation and the EPs that started it all: Twoism and Hi Scores.

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Hello and welcome Boardsians to this week’s episode of Turquoise Hexagon podcast, a For Tune Telling series. I’m your host Elroy Biv. Last week we took a look at the origins of the band and their catalog of lost, early music. Today, we’ll dive into their first widely available EP releases, their transition to Skam records, right up to the edge of their groundbreaking debut.

The year was 1995 and Boards of Canada (at this time collaborating with their old school-friend Chris Horne) were just starting to really put their music out into the world, sending albums to prospective record labels and artists they admired (such as Autechre). In addition to the Old Tunes compilations of early work selected from their already considerable archives, this included a new EP titled “Twoism.” 

Like the so-called “lost” albums, Twoism was initially printed in very limited numbers, with only 100 copies on vinyl and cassette distributed among friends, family, and associates by the band’s own Music70 label. However, unlike the earlier work, EHX webmaster Cosmic Crofter was given permission to sell remaining copies of Twoism via the IDM Mailing List, created by fans of Warp Records artists to share obscure and scarce electronic music. Even so, Twoism remained extremely rare - almost on the same level as the mythical Hooper Bay and Play By Numbers albums, and until its 2002 repress, copies would exchange hands for high prices, sometimes in excess of $1000. The cover of the record is a still image taken from the 1980 sci-fi B movie “The Killings at Outpost Zeta,” showing two of the last surviving astronauts (two? Twoism?) sharing a final embrace before one attempts to lure away the murderous alien monster. While generally poorly rated the film features an atmospheric and eerie synth score from director Robert Emenegger. 

Marcus referred to Twoism as “music to dream to” in a 2005 interview, saying “If your life's shit and you hate your job, you put on a record, the melodies move you, you can forget everything.” In this way, he was comparing it to the then-newly released Campfire Headphase, which the band called an “escapist soundtrack.” Twoism mostly eschews the bizarre samples found in force on the earlier Old Tunes tracks, opting instead for a heavy focus on melody and atmosphere, evoking feelings of bittersweet nostalgia and opposing the heavily dance-oriented sound dominating electronic music at the time. In a 2018 article for Pitchfork, music historian Simon Reynolds wrote:

“While BoC were honing their sound, the IDM community was scrambling to catch up with the rhythmic innovations of jungle, which had come as an ambush out of the lumpen left-field. The dominant sound was a controlled paroxysm of percussion, with micro-edited breakbeats densely layered and texturized with digital signal processing… Boards of Canada stood aside from all this pell-mell puerility. Where jungle and its not-so-early adopters in IDM’s first division were reversing conventional musical priorities by turning the drums and the bass into the focal foreground, BoC reversed that reversal and restated the primacy of melody and mood. “

The opening track of the EP is the melancholy Sixtyniner, with a darker feel than implied by its title, featuring a hip-hop beat and a barely-audible cut from the 70s porno "Summer of 72" about halfway through (a very early example of what would eventually become a common technique for the band - burying nearly subliminal samples deep in the mix). This clip is the same used in the Old Tunes track "Sir Prancelot Brainfire" and consists of a young man waxing philosophically about having sex in a beach hut. Good for him. Next up is Oirectine, frequently mislabeled as “Directine” on filesharing networks, and probably my favorite track off Twoism if I had to pick one, with hauntingly nostalgic decaying synths over another simple yet compelling hip-hop influenced beat. 

Iced Cooly feels like proto-vaporwave, evoking 70s commercial music heard through the distorted lens of an imperfect memory, the bouncy melody pulled through a flange effect in the intro. It also shares most of a title with the completely-different-sounding “Iced Cooly Beatnik” vignette from Old Tunes Vol. 2. 

The follow up to Iced Cooly is Basefree, closer to industrial music than the ethereal and dreamy trip-hop found elsewhere on Twoism, with a driving, mechanized rhythm propelling the track forward under floating, icy synth tones. Basefree (a permutation of freebase?) is closer to an Autechre or an AFX track than anything else in the Boards catalog at the time, perhaps intended to attract attention from the artists who'd be receiving copies of Twoism. 

Basefree is also notable for the short interlude attached to the end, a cheerful flute melody believed to be titled "It's Too Orangey" that also showed up on the Random 35 Tracks Tape. Short vignettes added to longer tracks, which would eventually become a hallmark of BOC, is possibly something they picked up from shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine, of whom they’ve spoken very highly over the years (see for example the reversed guitar outro to To Here Knows When). The flutes are highly reminiscent of those found in vintage psychedelic folk acts, which were a major influence on the band. Mike said in 1997:

“We have also heard a lot of folk-music from the 70s, such as Incredible String Band or Joni Mitchell, who also sound very organic and natural by their choice of instruments such as flutes. These sound sources we have increasingly sampled.”

It also gives the impression of a public television ending jingle that might accompany a sponsor logo or station ID.

The two songs that follow, the title track of Twoism and Seeya Later, feature memorable, bittersweet, slightly eerie melodies over hip-hop beats. After that is Melissa Juice - the most cheerful tune on the EP, and the only one on which Chris Horne is listed as co-writer on copyright databases such as EasySong. 

The last listed track is Smokes Quantity, which Mike mentioned was titled after a “friend’s nickname” (man, I wonder why they call him that…). Simon Reynolds said in a 2018 BOC retrospective:

“A shoegaze inheritance lingers right through to… tracks like ‘Smokes Quantity,’ a gaseous quality that recalls MBV at their most indistinct and tonally warped.” And gaseous is right - even though it has a sort of sinister feel about it, the layers of droning analog synths make you feel like you’re floating.

Finally, it closes off with a hidden track, the beautiful ambient vignette 1986 Summer Fire, understated yet brimming with emotion, high-frequency pitches subtly building in the background throughout to subtly create dissonance and unsettle the listener. 

A clue to this song’s title might possibly be found in a 2000 interview printed in Jockey Slut magazine. Marcus said:

“One time we were out in the woods on a really wet day… my friend bet me I couldn't start a fire using only one match. But I managed to get this meagre little flame going in this damp little patch of ground. Then when we were about a mile down the road, we looked back and it was like, 'whoosh!' - the whole wood was on fire! I love the countryside… I hate the idea that animals or trees or anything might get hurt. I had dreams about it for months afterwards.”

In 1986 Marcus would have been about 15 years old.

At some point after Twoism, Chris Horne parted ways with Boards of Canada. The reasons were never made public, with Horne's only comment being "I was in a band with some talented school friends, we made some cool stuff, and went out separate ways." (Check quote). In a (1998?) interview, mention was made of the group losing a member to "chemical shenanigans," with Mike commenting that their psychedelic experimentation "got to the point where it was no longer recreational." What does this mean? Were Mike and Marcus dancing around Chris shouting "nightmare! nightmare! nightmare!" Was this anecdote even referencing him? Remember, Richard Southern mentioned at the time of Acid Memories, the band was "six-strong." Regardless, the split seems to have been at least somewhat amicable, as the liner notes of the first official Christ. release, the ethereal 2001 EP Pylonesque, include an acknowledgement thanking Boards of Canada.

Around this time the band also compiled a number of tracks into the ultra-rare album BOC Maxima. A sort of grab bag, it contained some tracks that had appeared in the Old Tunes or on Twoism (Rodox Video, Nova Scotia Robots, Sixtyniner), and quite a few others that would later be released officially in one form or another. 

Only four tracks are exclusive to BOC Maxima - the interlude Niagara, a plunderphonics mashup combining background music from BOC’s favorite porno, Summer of ‘72 (also sampled on Sixtyniner, P.C. and Sir Prancelot Brainfire), documentary narration footage, and a Sesame Street clip; the expansive Red Moss (potentially named after the Red Moss Balerno Nature Reserve in Scotland’s Pentland Hills), the dark vignette Concourse, which ends with a bizarre, nonsensical conversation constructed with samples from home improvement show Bob Vila’s Home Again, and the, the closer Whitewater, setting vocal clips of a child talking in Sesame Street, distorted to sound like an adult, to building and cascading beats and synth patterns that impart the feeling of a rushing river. BOC Maxima was broadcast in its entirety on French Radio program Helter Skelter in 2002 but to this day has yet to see a wide release.

In early 1996, Boards sent out copies of Twoism to a few of their favorite artists, and Sean Booth from the electronic group Autechre hooked them up with the underground Skam Records label. Soon after, Skam published the Hi Scores EP, the band’s first non self-released work, featuring a turquoise sleeve and an expanded, colorized version of the photo on the Old Tunes Vol. 1 cover. 

The opening track, the eponymous Hi Scores, shows off a more traditionally electronic style than most of Boards’ discography, with brooding synths over crunchy drum patterns, and very high pitched drones - almost like the sort you hear in so-called “binaural beats,” designed to alter consciousness using sound - fading in and out in the background.

Turquoise Hexagon Sun, which first appeared on BOC Maxima, officially saw the light of day for the first time on Hi Scores and has become one of Boards of Canada’s most iconic tracks. Sharing a title with the Hexagon Sun artistic collective and the band’s studio, it features a melancholy synth melody, sampled chatter, and a simple drum pattern that also appeared in Old Tunes Vol. 2’s Orange Hexagon Sun.

Speaking about the references to hexagons, Marcus said in 2002: 
“The hexagon theme represents that whole idea of being able to see reality for what it is, the raw maths or patterns that make everything. We've always been interested in science and maths. Sometimes music or art or drugs can pull back the curtain for you and reveal the Wizard of Oz, so to speak, busy pushing the levers and pressing buttons. That's what maths is, the wizard. It sounds like nonsense but I'm sure a lot of people know what I'm talking about.”

Next up is Nlogax, which appeared previously in much-shortened form on BOC Maxima but is given full room to breathe and develop on the EP. Nlogax - named after the logarithmic statement n log x, continuing the mathematics theme, it’s somewhat controversial among fans because it starts with a thumping bass and snare that continues unchanging for about 30 seconds straight, then goes double time and remains unchanged again for another 25 seconds before an unassuming synth line starts in. From there it morphs into a strange dance tune before going completely off the rails, with rising and falling patterns and chopped vocal samples cutting in and out. Boards spoke of this track in a 1998 interview, when asked about what they’d previously described as their “psychedelic approach” to music:

"We sometimes make a tune metamorphose as it plays. An example is ‘Nlogax’ from the "Hi Scores" EP on Skam, which begins like an old electro or disco track but halfway through it suddenly becomes something nightmarish, like your brain is starting to malfunction in the middle of the tune. Psychedelics make music sound entirely different. Tiny details become massive, a five-minute track can feel like it's five hours long on psychedelics. You know when you're on a ride at a fairground, the pitch of the music rises and falls because of the Doppler-Effect? That's another thing we love to do in our tracks, and it's a fairly psychedelic-sounding effect too."

June 9th previously appeared on BOC Maxima as well, and uses a slower version of a drum loop that first appeared in Audiotrack A08 on the Random 35 Tracks Tape; the title is another 69 reference. Nice. Thanks to this track June 9th is a minor holiday for BOC fans. 

Then, after Seeya Later - originally hailing from Twoism - is the penultimate track, the iconic Everything You Do Is A Balloon. Said to be titled after “a realization made long ago in the forest,” Everything You Do Is A Balloon turns the normal Boards style of main-track interlude on its head, beginning with a short vignette of a painfully beautiful, delicate synth melody, seeming to float in space, exuding bittersweet nostalgia, evoking imagery of a balloon floating away into an empty sky, before launching into the main track, which develops from gloomy and oppressive to uplifting and triumphant, contrasting with the brief and ethereal intro, the ups and downs of life’s adventures with the fading memories they leave behind.

What does the title mean? What is the “realization made long ago in the forest” they referenced? Balloons are colorful, fun, the delight of children, but they’re also fragile, and temporary. When you get a balloon you know it won’t be around long. It will eventually pop or float away. And as much as our lives mean to us right now, in the moments we live, everything we do will eventually drift away into the past, first remembered only through photos, home videos, distorted recollections, before finally being forgotten completely.

This theme is echoed in probably the most iconic Boards of Canada fan video on the net, which is set to this song. The video became popular enough it was acknowledged by the band on their official video playlist, and even used in the lead-up to the 2013 release of Tomorrow’s Harvest. It takes footage from One Got Fat, an old bicycle safety video, where a group of children riding bikes, and wearing unsettlingly realistic monkey masks, are cartoonishly killed off one by one, making explicit the transition from childhood to death implicit in the song’s title and mood.

After the release of Hi Scores, Boards of Canada played around Europe, opening for their friends Autechre on a few occasions - and it was, in fact, these performances that first brought them to the attention of Warp Records, with whom they signed in 1998. And they quickly got to work on their first proper studio album - the impact of which they couldn’t even begin to imagine, at the time.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of Turquoise Hexaogn Podcast - a For Tune Telling series. Next time we’ll be covering Boards of Canada’s seminal 1998 debut Music Has the Right to Children. Until next time.