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Music

Machinedrum Painstakingly Recreates A Rare Classic From Boards Of Canada

This is far more than a remix. It’s archaeology.

Boards of Canada’s first few albums had a distinct influence on the modern generation of beatmakers. Partly in their density of synthetic sounds made to sound organic, and partly in the juxtaposition of those sounds against sharp, funky drum programming. When you hear someone like Shlohmo, Teebs, or Machinedrum jamming together ambience and rhythm, often Boards of Canada is just a thought away.

So it’s nice to see one of these newer guys geeking out proper and meticulously recreating a rare gem from Boards of Canada. Machinedrum said this on his Soundcloud page along with the track.

I’ve always been a massive fan of Boards of Canada, if its not obvious already! Ten or eleven years ago I stumbled upon a bootleg recording of one of their extremely rare live performances at the Warp 10 Birthday party in 1999. The closing tune at this show has always remained a mystery to me. As far as I know it has no title and has never been released. It’s quite possibly one of my favorite things they have done and really is a shame it never came out. You can hear the original bootleg recording (quite bad quality) here.

Fast forward to Summer 2012. Since I am a huge nerd, I decided to take this bootleg recording and reproduce it for fun. Using the recording, I laid new drums over the existing drum patterns (almost 100% accurate to original), replayed some synth parts and the bass line. The only thing I didn’t try to re-create was the original vocoder parts and some random samples, so I used the original bootleg recording for that. I was tempted to make a shorter four or five minute version, but I figured I should preserve the original piece in its intended length.

What reverence for the classics! Machinedrum certainly did a bang up job with it, and the reproduction is a refreshing listen after struggling with the bootleg for a couple of tries. Perhaps next he can tackle this live version of Telephasic Workshop.