Will BOC Release A New Album?

^not half bad, if not my thing. sounds super 80's electronic-pop, but that's a good thing in a way. cheesy and a little kitschy and fun. 

not that any of this has shit to do with BoC releasing or not releasing anything. Warp would likely quickly rearrange almost anything else on their release schedule to make space for a new BoC if needed, the brothers are a cash cow at this point i have no doubt.

Perhaps they are waiting until they become obscure again and then release something...

  On 4/5/2021 at 6:52 PM, MIXL2 said:

New fb profile pic..

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=4112277235478702&id=246255955414202&substory_index=0 

Expand  

(Hell Interface fb)

  On 4/5/2021 at 6:53 PM, MIXL2 said:

(Hell Interface fb)

the faces on twoism when the new BOC album is a Hell Interface album

  On 4/5/2021 at 7:40 PM, MIXL2 said:

this was posted as well

https://fb.watch/4H0PNQgohR/ 

also

http://www.hellinterface.com/

we don't know if this fb is official or not but this sure is interesting..

edit: it is most likely official , check the other thread..

I'd love some more Hell Interface stuff, some of their finest work.

Maybe they are leaving Boards behind to become HI (scores) from now on...

  On 3/24/2021 at 6:36 PM, Friendly Stranger said:

They did suggest the album after THs wouldn’t take 8 years to come out, which gives us a couple months here. But of course life happens, so it’d be hard to blame anyone if they couldn’t uphold it. 

id be over the moon just to see something in 2021. Hopefully about the planet healing. Or something more escapist and pastoral. Another apocalypse album would be too dour. Wonder what kind of mood the brother have been in these past couple years!

The problem I have with BoC is that they basically feed their fanbase statements like that in their rare interviews, declaring things like they have six albums worth of material, that they intend to release another album and it won't take as long as TH... bla bla bla... then they disappear for 7 more years and come off as men with no integrity, just riling up the fanbase with false hope for nothing. What's the point of that? I can understand not putting out an album in a decade, or ever again. But don't go out to the public and declare another one is coming and then not deliver. That's not fair and demonstrates an infuriating lack of integrity. What they do owe the fanbase is an update; even if it's via their label, even if it's bad news. "Look we know we said 8 years ago we were intending to put another album out, we also said we're rehearsing in our live space, but you know what, it's not going to happen, guys. We're literally not working on anything." or "We want you to know we're definitely still intending to release new material... we just can't put a timeframe on it except to say it will be this decade... oh and forget it, we're never doing a live show" or whatever. Saying you'll deliver something, then not delivering, makes them owe the fanbase an update. If they remained radio silent or said back then that "you know what, it might take us another 10-20 years if ever... we're more than happy to call our career a day with the most depressing, melancholic, nihilistic album we've ever created", then yes, I agree, they owe the fans nothing. That's the way to do it.

Or, it could be that the big take-away here is that caring about shit like this doesn't matter, and that we should each go on to make our own things, find other new cool things, study the natural world, think about what we really value, etc., and not hold our breath for their output. It's all a matter of perspective, I suppose. 

Also, if you've come to boc fandom expecting timeliness, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. Doesn't matter what they said: anyone who's worked on large-scale projects that they really care about knows that projected timelines for intermediate goal-setting very often gets set back. Cut them some slack, dude: they're humans. But we all know it's worth the wait, so just wait a bit more, eh? 

BOC are never going to say anything like that - I honestly think it's not on their list of priorities to keep the fans appraised of their activities...

WARP isn't going to say anything like that as it might impact record sales, which from a business perspective isn't good business.

  On 4/9/2021 at 6:17 AM, spectoral said:

The problem I have with BoC is that they basically feed their fanbase statements like that in their rare interviews, declaring things like they have six albums worth of material, that they intend to release another album and it won't take as long as TH... bla bla bla... then they disappear for 7 more years and come off as men with no integrity, just riling up the fanbase with false hope for nothing. What's the point of that? I can understand not putting out an album in a decade, or ever again. But don't go out to the public and declare another one is coming and then not deliver. That's not fair and demonstrates an infuriating lack of integrity. What they do owe the fanbase is an update; even if it's via their label, even if it's bad news. "Look we know we said 8 years ago we were intending to put another album out, we also said we're rehearsing in our live space, but you know what, it's not going to happen, guys. We're literally not working on anything." or "We want you to know we're definitely still intending to release new material... we just can't put a timeframe on it except to say it will be this decade... oh and forget it, we're never doing a live show" or whatever. Saying you'll deliver something, then not delivering, makes them owe the fanbase an update. If they remained radio silent or said back then that "you know what, it might take us another 10-20 years if ever... we're more than happy to call our career a day with the most depressing, melancholic, nihilistic album we've ever created", then yes, I agree, they owe the fans nothing. That's the way to do it.

Expand  

I think it's as simple as they have real lives and families and just like anyone else, reprioritize based on what's happening in their lives. Shit happens and they don't really owe anyone an explanation. I'm just as thirsty for new music or even an update as anyone else, but I don't blame any musician or artist for putting other priorities first. My job sometimes isn't my #1 priority, and my hobbies are sometimes not my #1 priority. I took the whole '8 years' thing in stride and never felt like they had to be held to that statement. 

They really don't do much riling up, so much as the BoC fanbase riles themselves up.

  On 4/9/2021 at 6:17 AM, spectoral said:

The problem I have with BoC is that they basically feed their fanbase statements like that in their rare interviews, declaring things like they have six albums worth of material, that they intend to release another album and it won't take as long as TH... bla bla bla... then they disappear for 7 more years and come off as men with no integrity, just riling up the fanbase with false hope for nothing. What's the point of that? I can understand not putting out an album in a decade, or ever again. But don't go out to the public and declare another one is coming and then not deliver. That's not fair and demonstrates an infuriating lack of integrity. What they do owe the fanbase is an update; even if it's via their label, even if it's bad news. "Look we know we said 8 years ago we were intending to put another album out, we also said we're rehearsing in our live space, but you know what, it's not going to happen, guys. We're literally not working on anything." or "We want you to know we're definitely still intending to release new material... we just can't put a timeframe on it except to say it will be this decade... oh and forget it, we're never doing a live show" or whatever. Saying you'll deliver something, then not delivering, makes them owe the fanbase an update. If they remained radio silent or said back then that "you know what, it might take us another 10-20 years if ever... we're more than happy to call our career a day with the most depressing, melancholic, nihilistic album we've ever created", then yes, I agree, they owe the fans nothing. That's the way to do it.

Expand  

I reckon you should make an ultimatum thread. Probably best to make it on twosim though, not here.

@spectoralyou should be used to it by now mate

  On 4/9/2021 at 6:17 AM, spectoral said:

The problem I have with BoC is that they basically feed their fanbase statements like that in their rare interviews, declaring things like they have six albums worth of material, that they intend to release another album and it won't take as long as TH... bla bla bla... then they disappear for 7 more years and come off as men with no integrity, just riling up the fanbase with false hope for nothing. What's the point of that? I can understand not putting out an album in a decade, or ever again. But don't go out to the public and declare another one is coming and then not deliver. That's not fair and demonstrates an infuriating lack of integrity. What they do owe the fanbase is an update; even if it's via their label, even if it's bad news. "Look we know we said 8 years ago we were intending to put another album out, we also said we're rehearsing in our live space, but you know what, it's not going to happen, guys. We're literally not working on anything." or "We want you to know we're definitely still intending to release new material... we just can't put a timeframe on it except to say it will be this decade... oh and forget it, we're never doing a live show" or whatever. Saying you'll deliver something, then not delivering, makes them owe the fanbase an update. If they remained radio silent or said back then that "you know what, it might take us another 10-20 years if ever... we're more than happy to call our career a day with the most depressing, melancholic, nihilistic album we've ever created", then yes, I agree, they owe the fans nothing. That's the way to do it.

Expand  

hi. it looks like you might be quite young and missing a bit of perspective.

reading through your post, i can definitely relate to this sentiment - this is exactly how i felt way back in 2009. it seemed reasonable enough - if they don't intend to release new material, they should inform us so that we don't expect anything and so we can feel more secure. at the time this made perfect sense, but now i understand there are some major problems with that reasoning:

firstly, what do you tell fans who make a request like this, when you do actually want to release an album you have been working on for years? in the lead up to TH, the brothers clearly knew their project would take a long time. and since there was an album being made, that rules out "we're finished no album tegrity love mike and marcus xx". there are interviews and study pieces out there which show that TH was a very long, elaborate and ambitious project - both technically and aesthetically - and this makes it very hard to judge when a creative work is "ready". from their point of view, it would not have been safe to engage with their fanbase until they knew the album was (or was nearly) complete - the risk is that they give a release date, or album details etc which turn out to be wrong, because of some failing of their very complicated project, and that would be bad for everyone.

basically, why would they take such a risk, just to give some exclusive pre-release info of something that is not complete? imagine working under that kind of pressure - imagine trying to reach your ideal aesthetic with a badly stretched-out photo of a mushroom cloud in the back of your mind because WARP decided they needed it on the website to show something was happening.

secondly - and this is something that took a long time for me to understand - Boards of Canada did not cultivate an image that they have tonnes of unreleased material. WE did. a big part of the problem comes from the "unreleased tapes" that appeared online at a very early stage in their career, which suggested to many people that there were lots and lots of albums that sounded like the ones in those tapes. their fanbase has always fixated so much on these tapes - they are no different from mixtapes that novice musicians casually pass around to each other, yet we all have this image of the brothers wearing top hats and sitting on a mountain of solid gold tapes that no-one is allowed to hear.

it is true that BoC maintained a website in 1999 - at a point where they had only released one album and two singles. whether it was a good idea or not, they decided to pad it out with album titles of their early tapes - it was the 1999 equivalent of putting your early audacity experiments up with your bandcamp albums, except in those days you couldn't put albums of music on a website and it only served to make their discography look bigger to the few thousand or so people who had heard of MHTRTC.

what happened after that was outside their control - all of those early album listings have essentially been canonized by fans as albums by Boards of Canada which they are not allowed to hear. so many BoC fans cannot get past this simple misunderstanding and it's infuriating. BoC themselves removed the listings as early as they could, but when four albums' worth of bootlegged material made it onto the web and one of the titles matched an album on the list, there was no turning back. they were all completely real albums and the brothers were stopping us from buying them.

even in 2013, TH had to be shipped to retailers like this...

I can understand why newer younger fans might be impatient. As a long time fan/old bastard this gap has been a walk in the park compared to the last one. Now I expect the gaps between albums to increase exponentially. They probably will put out another record in the next 5 years, and it will probably be a bit crapper than TH, this seems to be the trajectory for most artists/humans.

 I think they have the best of intentions to be more productive, but a combination of perfectionism and setbacks usually seems to scupper these plans.

Now / soon would make a good time 

  On 4/11/2021 at 2:06 PM, Key said:

I can understand why newer younger fans might be impatient. As a long time fan/old bastard this gap has been a walk in the park compared to the last one. Now I expect the gaps between albums to increase exponentially. They probably will put out another record in the next 5 years, and it will probably be a bit crapper than TH, this seems to be the trajectory for most artists/humans.

 I think they have the best of intentions to be more productive, but a combination of perfectionism and setbacks usually seems to scupper these plans.

Yupp, think the same. Even other examples as mbv or slowdive, took 22 years to release more material... hope that's not inspirational for the bros

the wait will be worth so lets be patient

Makes you wonder. Last time during radio silence there was a few years of massive tension and infighting. Nowadays no one seems to give a fucking shit. Probably because their fan base has also grown up (apart from Dork HQ twoism) and got things/life to deal with. I doubt the same meltdown will ensue as it did with Tomorrow’s Harvest. Unless of course they really out out something mythical. This thread is about as dead and interesting as anything to do with the latest Burial project. A massive snooze fest. How the fuck can you get excited about about a ‘tweet’ from Marcus. I’m more excited about shaving my ball-sack and having a midnight wank.

imo their mainline albums kinda have this narrative trajectory to them

MHTRTC: first decade of life, very warm & nostalgic

Geogaddi: teenage years, kinda dark & edgy but still in this very warm/analogue style

Campfire: college years, more "real world" associations. things are a bit cleaner, there is this feeling of reaching adulthood but still quite optimistic about the future

Harvest: being in your 30s, suddenly much less nostalgic sounding. this lingering tension & awareness of complex real world/political themes

I kinda hope the next one continues this progression in a way that also affectively kills nostalgia culture

  On 5/21/2021 at 9:46 PM, Cryptowen said:

imo their mainline albums kinda have this narrative trajectory to them

MHTRTC: first decade of life, very warm & nostalgic

Geogaddi: teenage years, kinda dark & edgy but still in this very warm/analogue style

Campfire: college years, more "real world" associations. things are a bit cleaner, there is this feeling of reaching adulthood but still quite optimistic about the future

Harvest: being in your 30s, suddenly much less nostalgic sounding. this lingering tension & awareness of complex real world/political themes

I kinda hope the next one continues this progression in a way that also affectively kills nostalgia culture

Expand  

in another thread (opn?) you commented on a shift in age from perceptions and expectations about things following a kind of narrative or meaningful order into an older viewpoint where things are accepted as more ambiguous, amorphous. I find these ideas of yours quite interesting. 

  On 5/21/2021 at 9:53 PM, Alcofribas said:

in another thread (opn?) you commented on a shift in age from perceptions and expectations about things following a kind of narrative or meaningful order into an older viewpoint where things are accepted as more ambiguous, amorphous. I find these ideas of yours quite interesting. 

thanks! it's something i'd like to develop further, maybe write a proper thing on.  a very common complaint about artists' careers/life in general is "you get older, magic is lost to complexity, you become cynical & bureaucratic"; but i think there's a way of reframing it as a continuous process of evolution. you lose the naive magical frame of youth but you open up the possibility of affirming some higher-level narrative of Becoming which incorporates that process of "loss" without simply ruminating on it

Excellent posts Cryptowen

*ignores thread*

  On 5/21/2021 at 9:46 PM, Cryptowen said:

imo their mainline albums kinda have this narrative trajectory to them

MHTRTC: first decade of life, very warm & nostalgic

Geogaddi: teenage years, kinda dark & edgy but still in this very warm/analogue style

Campfire: college years, more "real world" associations. things are a bit cleaner, there is this feeling of reaching adulthood but still quite optimistic about the future

Harvest: being in your 30s, suddenly much less nostalgic sounding. this lingering tension & awareness of complex real world/political themes

I kinda hope the next one continues this progression in a way that also affectively kills nostalgia culture

Expand  

guys, wouldn't the possibility of a Hell Interface album be perfect for the spot after TH

  On 5/21/2021 at 10:58 PM, Dragon said:

guys, wouldn't the possibility of a Hell Interface album be perfect for the spot after TH

Depends - HI's main focus was covers, so unless it was an album of cover songs...