Boards Of Canada Break 13-Year Silence With New Song

After 13 years of near-total silence, Boards of Canada are stirring again — and doing it in the most Boards of Canada way possible: cryptic, analog and just unsettling enough to send their cult into overdrive.

Last week, fans started posting about mysterious VHS tapes arriving in the mail, reportedly sent out by the duo’s longtime home Warp Records. No new music, no explanation — just grainy, retro weirdness. Then, posters started showing up in Tokyo, London, New York and Los Angeles. Now comes something more tangible: the pioneering U.K. electronic music duo has quietly released the three-minute piece of music “Tape 05,” its first since 2013’s Tomorrow’s Harvest.

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Whether it’s a standalone track, a fragment or part of a larger breadcrumb trail is anyone’s guess, but the tune falls squarely in the Boards of Canada milieu. “Tape 05” is warm, ghostly and out of focus; it feels almost unearthed rather than released on purpose.

Tomorrow’s Harvest debuted at a career-best No. 7 on the Official U.K. Albums chart and No. 13 on the Billboard 200. Boards of Canada have not played live since 2002 and have only performed in public a handful of times across their entire 40-year career.

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