As Boards of Canada launch their new album, ‘Inferno’, diehard followers keep in mind the time after they trekked out into the Scottish countryside looking for the band’s so-called “Pink Moon Get together.”
ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
Earlier this spring, followers of the reclusive Scottish band Boards of Canada began getting VHS tapes within the mail.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Inaudible).
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FLORIDO: The followers pored over the brief, distorted video for secret clues about what the band is perhaps cooking. Yesterday, they came upon when Boards of Canada launched “Inferno,” its first album in 13 years.
The band has at all times saved its followers captivated by dropping cryptic bread crumbs. NPR Music’s Noah Caldwell brings us this story a couple of time 20 years in the past, when a picture the band posted on its web site led its followers on an enormous hunt is remembered because the Pink Moon Incident.
NOAH CALDWELL, BYLINE: In early April 2006, a picture appeared on the Boards of Canada web site.
DOUGIE BYRUM: It was only a black display. Heart of the display was a picture of the moon washed in a type of orangy purple shade.
CALDWELL: Dougie Byrum was residing in Manchester on the time. He glided by DJ Todos on the Boards of Canada web boards, which, predictably, freaked out.
BYRUM: That is when the carrot first began to be dangled.
CALDWELL: Written throughout the Pink Moon was a line of numbers – 100606 – and under that, a protracted string of numbers and letters, a code. The boards set to work. The primary line regarded like a date, 10 June 2006, and the purple moon itself was a clue. The 2 members of the band, brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, had as soon as talked about gatherings they used to throw within the Scottish countryside below a blood moon. The longer code was trickier, however theories flew round, led by a couple of of the diehards.
BEN SATTERFIELD: I’m Ben Satterfield, identified on the discussion board as Lincolnshire Poacher.
CALDWELL: Satterfield was residing in Southern California.
SATTERFIELD: Everybody’s creativeness, together with mine, went actually out of bounds (laughter).
CALDWELL: Then Satterfield put parts of the code right into a British army mapping system and located a grid within the Pentland Hills exterior of Edinburgh.
SATTERFIELD: Proper, OK, like, we’re on to one thing.
CALDWELL: There’d been a rumor that the brothers had a secret studio within the space. So now that they had a date and a location, so it have to be a reside occasion. And at this level in 2006, Boards of Canada hadn’t performed a live performance in 5 years. After which one last clue popped up on the map – an deserted observatory.
SATTERFIELD: Like, oh, my gosh, a telescope. Come and see the Pink Moon occasion right here, you realize? At that time, we had been like, let’s purchase airplane tickets.
BYRUM: We grabbed the automobile keys and a tent and drove as much as Scotland.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOARDS OF CANADA SONG, “CHROMAKEY DREAMCOAT”)
MARK RICHARDSON: Embedded of their music is this concept of secret transmissions and voices coming by means of the ether.
CALDWELL: Right this moment, Mark Richardson is the rock and pop critic on the Wall Avenue Journal, however on the time, he coated Boards of Canada for Pitchfork and noticed this cat-and-mouse dynamic up shut.
RICHARDSON: That form of invitations the listener to say, like, hey, the place does this come from, and what does it imply?
CALDWELL: Plus this was a sure technology of digital music followers.
RICHARDSON: They did have a connection to rave music within the late ’80s and ’90s, and it’s fascinating to keep in mind that loads of these raves would occur in out of doors areas. And so one thing in regards to the Pink Moon Incident that made me consider, in a manner, returning their music to its roots.
CALDWELL: By the weekend of June 10, a couple of dozen individuals on the boards had dedicated to searching down the Pink Moon occasion. Ben Satterfield flew from California, and Dougie Byrum picked him up on the airport.
BYRUM: All of us went in convoy all the way down to the positioning, and we bought there early afternoon.
SATTERFIELD: And we lastly discover the observatory, and at this level, different individuals begin displaying up.
BYRUM: Most likely bought to six o’clock, 7 o’clock, and you’ll have anticipated if one thing was going to occur, it most likely would have occurred by now.
SATTERFIELD: Are we flawed? Did we get this flawed? We mentioned, right now, if the – no one exhibits up, we’re placing the music on, and we will blast it.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOARDS OF CANADA’S “HEY SATURDAY SUN”)
SATTERFIELD: And so it finally ends up simply turning into a celebration. After which the campfire dies down, and it is – the solar’s beginning to come up. And we’re identical to, OK, I assume we both bought it flawed, or perhaps this was the true takeaway, that we bought to hang around collectively. Like, it was adequate for us.
BYRUM: Whether or not they had been over the hill with some binoculars laughing their heads off – I do not know. I would wish to suppose they had been.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOARDS OF CANADA’S “HEY SATURDAY SUN”)
CALDWELL: Twenty years later, Boards of Canada has by no means acknowledged the Pink Moon Incident. We reached out to their label, Warp, however by no means heard again. Possibly it was a check. Seven years later, the band did lead followers to a listening occasion within the Mojave Desert by means of one other secret code. Ben Satterfield made it to that one.
SATTERFIELD: However the thriller stays, proper? I might like to get a solution.
CALDWELL: However he and Dougie Byrum additionally appear to have made peace with not understanding.
BYRUM: Would not change a factor – the entire thriller about them, there is a little bit of magic type of interlaced with that.
SATTERFIELD: A lot about artwork is the unknown, anyway. And when you have all of the solutions, perhaps you do not lengthy for no matter’s subsequent. I do not know.
CALDWELL: Noah Caldwell, NPR Music.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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