Boards of Canada, Mystery Codes, and the Perfect Tease

Time stamp:  This article was completed at approximately 9am, 4/29/13, hours before news of the album broke.

by Raptor Jesus

Boards of Canada are Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin, two Glasgow natives who released Music Has the Right to Children, the definitive and unassailable statement of an influential genre known at the time as Intelligence Dance Music (IDM). On that album, and over the course of their other releases, they created a sonic world that was alternately soothing and treacherous, crafting electronic music that was textural in a new way. They were also (unlike so many of their peers) unafraid of silence, and their production style feels anything but dated in 2013.

Now, like Sarah McLaughlin, only not completely terrible, Boards of Canada are building a mystery.

On April 20th when thousands of music fans rummaged through racks of vinyl in record stores around the world, a few chosen individuals discovered a rabbit hole. Shaped like a vinyl record, when played, a static transmission emanated and a voice uttered the following six numbers: 9 3 6 5 5 7

This is the record cover that has infested my brain:

Five sets of six hyphens separated by forward slashes and after the third forward slash a set of six X’s. It seemed to make sense that the X’s represented the numbers recited on the recording. It started to make more sense when variations of this logo were echoed as follows:

• Monday: The BoC YouTube page updated and sent devout fans through different links that ended with another transmission. A new set of numbers and a similar image as the record cover flashed on the screen. This time the X’s were in the 3rd slot.
• Tuesday: BBC radio broadcasted another transmission, again with new numbers. The video description had the hyphen/X’s pattern, but this time the X’s were in the 6th slot.
• The same day as the BBC broadcast, NPR played a transmission with new numbers. However, no image or description was provided. The numbers were set aside and left out of the sequence.
• Later: The BoC YouTube page was updated with a new image and a Twoism video was placed at the top of the playlist. Fans found their way to a BoC fan page with a new banner. The banner was investigated (in other words, the source coding) and contained information for two audio samples. When combined, another transmission was uncovered with a new set of numbers. Hints from the audio files and information in the banner led genius fans to discover another image. Once again, a set of hyphens and X’s but in a new position. Another key to the puzzle had been found in an extraordinary manner.
• Thursday evening there was a buzz at Rough Trade East in London. Images were projected onto the windows and a flash of the all too familiar image of BoC with hyphens / X’s appeared. The X’s were in a new place and many devout fans recorded a transmission coming from within the building. Upon closer analysis, the numbers were the same as the NPR numbers broadcast earlier. Except now they had a placement.
• Over the past weekend, a commercial aired on [adult swim] containing images seen on Rough Trade East days earlier, along with the transmission audio and mystery sequence image. Once again, the NPR numbers were repeated, but now as a crystal clear message.

Now, if you go to any finger-on-the-pulse BoC fan site, you will see an image with the following number combination:

699742 / 628315 / 717228 / 936557 / —— / 519225

So you see, we have ourselves a mathematical mystery. Six sets of numbers, each set containing six digits. Personally, the mystery took me over mid week as more numbers were revealed. I decided to go to what appeared to be the best source of new information: r/boardsofcanada. Leave it to reddit to be on top of this mystery with breaking updates of any new findings and all sorts of speculation.

The first thing I noticed was some speculation on the numbers that sent me to wikipedia searching for “The Conet Project”. This led me to click on “numbers stations” that has the lead-in description as follows:

“A numbers station is a type of shortwave radio station characterized by their unusual broadcasts, which consist of spoken words, but mostly numbers, often created by artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters, tunes or Morse code.”

Talk about hitting the nail on the head! Reading on I found numbers stations were used to send coded messages to soldiers. They’d interpret the messages with a “one-time pad” that acted as a key to interpret the broadcasts. So even though it seems Boards of Canada are relaying this number sequence via “unusual broadcasts,” we still don’t have a key to interpret the numbers.

What do we know? There are six sets of six numbers a piece. The number six! It came as a revelation to me, so much so I created an account on reddit identifying Boards of Canada’s obsession with the number six.

Crazy, right? Regardless of its importance to the overall message, I started to use that information to predict a date. The general consensus is that a new album is on the horizon, so these numbers may hold the key to a release date. If you ask me, that date is in the month of June, June being the sixth month of the year and also right around the corner.

If you read down in the comments on that reddit article, I reference Supreme Mathematics as taught to me by The Wu-Tang Clan.

5 Fingers + 5 Fingers – 2 thumbs + 1 thumb + 1 thumb = Shaolin

Long story short, any number larger than a single digit is added together until it is simplified to a number between one and nine. For instance the year 2013: 2+0+1+3 = 6. Each number represents something different. The number six represents equality. Keep that in mind.

Lately, I’ve backed away from a lot of detailed speculation in hopes of finding a simpler message. I felt the urge to contribute, but now I feel like observing and pondering. I now have two new hypotheses (dreamed up yesterday while suffering through a screening of Oblivion):

1. The numbers are a URL extension. When we get the final number, maybe you can go to a web site, type in the sequence of numbers after the address and it will take you to new music. I say this because when dealing with what we’ve been given, the forward slashes seem important. Since all of this is going down on the Internet, it doesn’t seem farfetched that these numbers are simply an address.
2. Boards of Canada are teaching us a valuable lesson on equality. In this Internet age we live in where very little needs to be left to the imagination, isn’t it impressive that NOBODY knows what the hell these numbers mean? If I want to know just about anything about anyone, I can search the Internet and find the answer to my query. Not the case here. By creating a mystery with sets of numbers, they’ve effectively stirred 2013’s indie music community into a frenzy. All the while revealing nothing at all. Whether or not that was their intention, it is definitely an element of this whole game that should be remembered and discussed once we have a resolution.

That is all I can figure at the moment. I’m trying not to over think this; as with most things in life, the answer is probably incredibly simple. When the final number set in the sequence is revealed, I plan on running the mean, median, mode, range, etc. of all the numbers in various forms. Why? Because I’m a huge math nerd and Boards of Canada are giving me one of the greatest toys any math nerd could ask for: random numbers. I’m almost too embarrassed to detail how many math functions I’ve run these numbers through (Cosecant being one of them, to no avail).

Finally, these numbers have done something amazing in my brain. They’ve made me analyze everything I’ve loved about Boards of Canada, but also everything number related in my life (so basically everything). These numbers have given me a temporary purpose, something to look forward to and something to ponder. When studying Plato in college, I learned that one step below “The Forms” was mathematics. Meaning mathematics was the closest you could get to fully understanding this life (short of forever pondering “The Forms” in heaven). Socrates often drew shapes in the dirt to demonstrate how even poor men see the same thing rich men see when viewing numbers. Numbers are an equalizer.

I leave you with a quote from my favorite movie Blue Velvet.

“I’m seeing something that was always hidden. I’m in the middle of a mystery and it’s all secret.”

Basically, I’m ready to hop inside of a closet inside Hexagon Sun Studios and observe. Because, just like David Lynch, I love a good mystery.

Raptor Jesus eats demon babies for breakfast.

A New Track from Baths – "Ironworks"

There’s something effortless and cosmic about Will Wiesenfeld’s 2010 debut Cerulean. It’s a record you can float around inside of, drifting from window to window to look out onto scenes washed in blue. The follow up, Obsidian (released next week), already feels darker, but no less alluring. Check out the second track he’s released, “Ironworks” below. Reference…?

 

Daft Punk and a New Kind of Album Anticipation

Last night there appeared on the Huffington Post’s website an article with the following headline: “Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ Leaked as Full Song With Pharrell Williams Appears Online”. I clicked over to the link immediately and had my my brains blown out of the back of my head. “Get Lucky” is a masterpiece. It’s the kind of groove that comes along once in a generation. Niles Rodgers‘ guitar figures are clean, percussive and funky as all hell. Pharrell gives a vocal performance perfectly smooth and sexy. The mix is impeccable; everything in its right place, at the right volume. All-in-all it’s the best song I’ve heard this year.

But I’m not even sure it’s the real song.

My trepidation is founded. That original HuffPo article was amended quickly to include the following disclaimer: “There is no official confirmation that this is the album version of the song. A radio station posted an earlier, loop-only version of the song and said it sounded ‘pretty damn close’ to the official version. The version below has more instrumentation and added vocals, the latter of which some have said seem unmixed and flat.” As of this writing a search for “Get Lucky Daft Punk” on Youtube yields 553,000 results, and like hot buttered snowflakes, no two versions are quite the same.

On March 2nd, an unexpected “teaser ad” appeared on Saturday Night Live containing approximately 15 seconds of (ostensibly) a new Daft Punk song, accompanied with a stylized drawing of the band’s famous robot heads and the title “Random Access Memories”. Then the next week another 15-second snippet appeared in a similar ad. To say these two snippets were enticing would be a huge understatement. The idiosyncratic Daft Punk groove was there, but the sound was richer, more organic, everything popped and glistened.

Since then there have been thousands of homemade “remixes” cropping up on Youtube. These remixes usually contain a portion of one of the snippets, looped out and augmented with some flange or reverb. Many of them sound great and even further whet the appetite for the real thing.

Then at Coachella last weekend the band debuted an extended 1:40 video for a portion of the song, which shows Daft Punk’s two members (in especially-shiny robot regalia) performing the song on a sound stage with collaborator Niles Rodgers and a theretofore unannounced collaborator, vocalist Pharrell Williams. The clip included a portion of Pharrell’s verse along with a prechorus and refrain of “we’re up all night to get lucky”. The snippet was promising, though Pharrell’s vocals did sound a bit undermixed and flat (hmmm….) and there wasn’t a real sense of song structure or continuity yet.

Yesterday a Dutch radio program claimed to have the “real, leaked version of the song”, and the internet vomited on itself in excitement.

And for good reason. This “full” version contained structured verses and choruses, along with an outro and some tip-top production flourishes. When I sent the song to a recording engineer friend of mine (during the course of sending it to literally everyone I know) he responded “I’m listening in my control room… even the MP3 stream sounds better than 99% of records that have come out in the last ten years. It’s like a warm bath for your ears.” Needless to say the song sounded great. It’s everything I was hoping it would be and more, and hearing it was accompanied by a sense of pure cathartic joy I haven’t experienced since the first time I heard “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” a decade ago.

But here the plot thickens.

When MTV tried to contact Columbia Records to confirm the song’s authenticity, they got a “no comment”. Not a denial, not a confirmation, not a “hey, where the hell did you get this? give it back!”, just a “no comment”. It seems odd that Columbia wouldn’t swiftly dismiss the claim out of hand. But that’s part of the mystique, and I’m fairly confident that Daft Punk are in on it the whole way.

In 2013, one can grab a snippet of audio, loop it out, mix it down, add in some effects, alter tonality, adjust the balance and more. And one can do all this on a website found by typing “music editing” into Google. Daft Punk knew what they were doing when they released those teaser snippets. They knew the clips would be snatched up by a hungry audience and chewed on with abandon until something bigger and tastier came along. They knew when they released the Coachella video that people would be encouraged but not blown away. They knew that the “full version” that was “leaked” yesterday was great enough that even if its authenticity came into question nobody would love it any less.

They knew all this when they announced this morning that a truly “official” version of the song would be released and available for download tonight at midnight, cutting through all the noise and shining a spotlight on a hatch that will open in approximately 8 hours. It’s a move that takes all the disparate strands of anticipation flapping in the wind and collects them into a kite string we’re all holding together. I haven’t been this excited for an album release. That’s not a sentence fragment. I have never been this excited and anticipatory of a record coming out, and the actual album doesn’t come out for another 5 weeks.

“The Robots”, as even their close collaborators refer to them, are utilizing this moment in technological and musical history to create a new kind of album anticipation, one that feels compulsorily modern and wonderfully nostalgic all at the same time. Just like “Get Lucky”. Just like the sound of the music they’re creating.

As I write this I discover that the original flash file on the HuffPo site is now listed as a “file not found”. The white whale slips away again.

Update: It WAS the real version!

Daft Punk and a New Kind of Album Anticipation

Last night there appeared on the Huffington Post’s website an article with the following headline: “Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ Leaked as Full Song With Pharrell Williams Appears Online”. I clicked over to the link immediately and had my my brains blown out of the back of my head. “Get Lucky” is a masterpiece. It’s the kind of groove that comes along once in a generation. Niles Rodgers‘ guitar figures are clean, percussive and funky as all hell. Pharrell gives a vocal performance perfectly smooth and sexy. The mix is impeccable; everything in its right place, at the right volume. All-in-all it’s the best song I’ve heard this year.

But I’m not even sure it’s the real song.

My trepidation is founded. That original HuffPo article was amended quickly to include the following disclaimer: “There is no official confirmation that this is the album version of the song. A radio station posted an earlier, loop-only version of the song and said it sounded ‘pretty damn close’ to the official version. The version below has more instrumentation and added vocals, the latter of which some have said seem unmixed and flat.” As of this writing a search for “Get Lucky Daft Punk” on Youtube yields 553,000 results, and like hot buttered snowflakes, no two versions are quite the same.

On March 2nd, an unexpected “teaser ad” appeared on Saturday Night Live containing approximately 15 seconds of (ostensibly) a new Daft Punk song, accompanied with a stylized drawing of the band’s famous robot heads and the title “Random Access Memories”. Then the next week another 15-second snippet appeared in a similar ad. To say these two snippets were enticing would be a huge understatement. The idiosyncratic Daft Punk groove was there, but the sound was richer, more organic, everything popped and glistened.

Since then there have been thousands of homemade “remixes” cropping up on Youtube. These remixes usually contain a portion of one of the snippets, looped out and augmented with some flange or reverb. Many of them sound great and even further whet the appetite for the real thing.

Then at Coachella last weekend the band debuted an extended 1:40 video for a portion of the song, which shows Daft Punk’s two members (in especially-shiny robot regalia) performing the song on a sound stage with collaborator Niles Rodgers and a theretofore unannounced collaborator, vocalist Pharrell Williams. The clip included a portion of Pharrell’s verse along with a prechorus and refrain of “we’re up all night to get lucky”. The snippet was promising, though Pharrell’s vocals did sound a bit undermixed and flat (hmmm….) and there wasn’t a real sense of song structure or continuity yet.

Yesterday a Dutch radio program claimed to have the “real, leaked version of the song”, and the internet vomited on itself in excitement.

And for good reason. This “full” version contained structured verses and choruses, along with an outro and some tip-top production flourishes. When I sent the song to a recording engineer friend of mine (during the course of sending it to literally everyone I know) he responded “I’m listening in my control room… even the MP3 stream sounds better than 99% of records that have come out in the last ten years. It’s like a warm bath for your ears.” Needless to say the song sounded great. It’s everything I was hoping it would be and more, and hearing it was accompanied by a sense of pure cathartic joy I haven’t experienced since the first time I heard “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” a decade ago.

But here the plot thickens.

When MTV tried to contact Columbia Records to confirm the song’s authenticity, they got a “no comment”. Not a denial, not a confirmation, not a “hey, where the hell did you get this? give it back!”, just a “no comment”. It seems odd that Columbia wouldn’t swiftly dismiss the claim out of hand. But that’s part of the mystique, and I’m fairly confident that Daft Punk are in on it the whole way.

In 2013, one can grab a snippet of audio, loop it out, mix it down, add in some effects, alter tonality, adjust the balance and more. And one can do all this on a website found by typing “music editing” into Google. Daft Punk knew what they were doing when they released those teaser snippets. They knew the clips would be snatched up by a hungry audience and chewed on with abandon until something bigger and tastier came along. They knew when they released the Coachella video that people would be encouraged but not blown away. They knew that the “full version” that was “leaked” yesterday was great enough that even if its authenticity came into question nobody would love it any less.

They knew all this when they announced this morning that a truly “official” version of the song would be released and available for download tonight at midnight, cutting through all the noise and shining a spotlight on a hatch that will open in approximately 8 hours. It’s a move that takes all the disparate strands of anticipation flapping in the wind and collects them into a kite string we’re all holding together. I haven’t been this excited for an album release. That’s not a sentence fragment. I have never been this excited and anticipatory of a record coming out, and the actual album doesn’t come out for another 5 weeks.

“The Robots”, as even their close collaborators refer to them, are utilizing this moment in technological and musical history to create a new kind of album anticipation, one that feels compulsorily modern and wonderfully nostalgic all at the same time. Just like “Get Lucky”. Just like the sound of the music they’re creating.

As I write this I discover that the original flash file on the HuffPo site is now listed as a “file not found”. The white whale slips away again.

Update: It WAS the real version!

Stream the Full New Daft Punk Song and Try to Not Listen to it Five Times in a Row

I can’t even write about this right now, it’s too damn good and I’m too busy dancing. Click this and listen to this song.

Stream the Full New Daft Punk Song and Try to Not Listen to it Five Times in a Row

I can’t even write about this right now, it’s too damn good and I’m too busy dancing. Click this and listen to this song.

Stream New Albums from Charli XCX and The Flaming Lips, Along With a Spring Update

2013 is turning into a very good year for music. In the past few weeks we’ve heard solid new work from CHVRCHES, Phoenix, Iron & Wine, Kurt Vile, James Blake, The Knife and Phosphorescent (click on the band to link to a stream). And we’ve still got Vampire Weekend and Daft Punk (among others) to look forward to before summer hits.

Today we can add two more to that collection of solid spring time releases. The first is the debut full length from English synthpop singer-songwriter-sexpot Charli XCX. She’s released a few successful club bangers and was featured on the soon-t0-be-ubiquitous “I Don’t Care” by Icona Pop. The LP True Romance pops with confidence and inspiration. Stream it below.

The Flaming Lips have also returned in the wake of some, um, weird career choices. Full disclosure, I kind of wanted this album to be bad. Rumors are flying around that Wayne Coyne is deeper than ever inside his own weird psyche lately, I’ve gotten a little put off with the misanthropy inherent in some of his recent behavior. I figured the result of such an odd run might sound stilted or overwrought, but The Terror sounds almost disturbingly realized. One gets the image of Coyne in an amniotic sack surrounded by his own victories and fears feeling content to work through some shit by himself.

Stream New Albums from Charli XCX and The Flaming Lips, Along With a Spring Update

2013 is turning into a very good year for music. In the past few weeks we’ve heard solid new work from CHVRCHES, Phoenix, Iron & Wine, Kurt Vile, James Blake, The Knife and Phosphorescent (click on the band to link to a stream). And we’ve still got Vampire Weekend and Daft Punk (among others) to look forward to before summer hits.

Today we can add two more to that collection of solid spring time releases. The first is the debut full length from English synthpop singer-songwriter-sexpot Charli XCX. She’s released a few successful club bangers and was featured on the soon-t0-be-ubiquitous “I Don’t Care” by Icona Pop. The LP True Romance pops with confidence and inspiration. Stream it below.

The Flaming Lips have also returned in the wake of some, um, weird career choices. Full disclosure, I kind of wanted this album to be bad. Rumors are flying around that Wayne Coyne is deeper than ever inside his own weird psyche lately, I’ve gotten a little put off with the misanthropy inherent in some of his recent behavior. I figured the result of such an odd run might sound stilted or overwrought, but The Terror sounds almost disturbingly realized. One gets the image of Coyne in an amniotic sack surrounded by his own victories and fears feeling content to work through some shit by himself.

Stream the new Phoenix album, Bankrupt!

Following the sweeping success of 2009s excellent — if maybe-just-a-little-overrated —Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Phoenix has returned with a new album title Bankrupt! I haven’t had the chance to dig in yet, but wanted to get this up here as quickly as possible. Check out a stream below.

Stream the New Kurt Vile LP Wakin on a Pretty Daze

Kurt Vile is funny. There are moments on his last album, 2011’s understated and outstanding Smoke Ring for My Halo that nearly make me laugh out loud sometimes. But you’d never assume Kurt Vile is funny because he sounds oh. so. serious. His deadpan morosity is cut through with self deprecation and  tongue-in-cheek nods to the sullen songwriter archetype. Now Vile’s back with Wakin on a Pretty Daze, another slice of dreamy downtempo jangle, but with each of the last couple releases Vile has taken huge steps forward in the production department, and that crisp warmth adds texture and color to the music.

Steam Waking on a Pretty Daze below.

Stream has been pulled but I’m on the lookout…