Thirty years on from the emergence of Chicago house and Detroit techno, electronic dance music has been pretty well integrated into the mainstream entertainment industry. Now we don’t just have superstar types like Skrillex and Steve Aoki, but also a whole tier of underground stars DJing and playing live regularly to massive club and festival crowds. For many who’ve been involved in aspects of the genre for a while, both the star system and the lack of innovation in the consumed canon can get a bit distressing. 

Thankfully, some EDM artists have managed to scrupulously avoid the limelight—eschewing most live opportunities and even interviews—and let their music speak for themselves. Along with Burial, Warp label duo Boards of Canada—comprising Edinburgh musicians and siblings Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin—has worked almost facelessly in a scene filled with fame-hungry clowns. BoC’s blend of substantive synth sounds, emotive ambience, and electro- and hip-hop-referencing beats has enchanted a fan-base that’s only grown since they released their debut EP Twoism in 1995.

Now their new album Tomorrow’s Harvest—their fourth studio set and first release in eight years—has become one of the more anticipated album releases of the year. So it’s as good a time as any to note the recent posting on Mixcloud of this 2002 mix that BoC did for the Helter Skelter radio show on Paris-based community station Aligre FM. Broadcast just as the band released their claustrophobic second album Geogaddi, the mix features lots of rare bits from their early-‘90s era, along with remixes of electronica peers like Meat Beat Manifesto, and R&B stalwarts Colonel Abrams and Midnight Star. Although it’s been dispersed via MP3 amongst BoC fanatics, it’s good to see this excellent broadcast finally on stream.

Here’s the tracklist:

PART1
01:20 - 05:30 - “1969” (Geogaddi)
05:30 - 09:30 - “Chinook” [Extended] (Aquarius) [WITH CHAT]
09:30 - 13:11 - “M9” (Boc Maxima)
13:11 - 18:45 - “Korona” (Mask100)
18:53 - 21:55 - “Smokes Quantity” (Twoism / MHTRTC)
21:55 - 24:59 - “Soylent Night” [Hell Interface] (Whine & Missingtoe)
24:45 - 29:28 - Colonel Abrams “Trapped” [Hell Interface Remix] (Mask200)
29:25 - 32:50 - “Music Is Math” (Geogaddi) [WITH CHAT]

PART 2
32:46 - 37:52 - “Turquoise Hexagon Sun” (Hi Scores / MHTRTC)
37:52 - 44:28 - “Chinook” [Extended] (Aquarius)
44:28 - 49:45 - “Sixtyten” (MHTRTC)
49:45 - 54:22 - “Orange Romeda” (WAP100 - We Are Reasonable People)
54:22 - 58:00 - “Music Is Math” (Geogaddi) [WITH CHAT]

PART 3
57:58 - 65:00 - “XYZ” (Peel Session - not on CD)
64:42 - 69:18 - Midnight Star “Midas Touch” [Hell Interface Remix] (Mask500)
69:18 - 70:22 - “A is to B as B is to C” (Geogaddi)
70:22 - 74:20 - Bubbah’s Tum “Dirty Great Mable” [BOC MIX] (Dirty Great Mable) [WITH CHAT]
74:20 - 76:13 - “Music Is Math” (Geogaddi) [WITH CHAT]
76:36 - 82:25 - Michael Fakesch “Surfaise” (Trade Winds Mix by BOC) [PLAYED TOO SLOWLY]
82:15 - 85:43 - Meat Beat Manifesto “Prime Audio Soup” [Vegetarian Soup by BOC] (Prime Audio Soup) [PLAYED TOO SLOWLY]
85:13 - 86:41 - “From One Source All Things Depend” (Geogaddi - Japanese Bonus Track)
86:40 - END - “Poppy Seed” [BOC Remix] (Slag Boom Van Loon - So Soon) [WITH CHAT]
 

Boards of Canada the legendary Helter Skelter Radio Show 2002 by Abstractmovies on Mixcloud

 
I know, I know, the clichéd mashup… However, this one is kinda fun.

Music and video by Soundhog.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

 
Since the post about the individual tracks that comprise the Rolling Stones’ classic “Gimme Shelter” went over so well, here’s another in a similar vein, a track by track breakdown of “Helter Skelter” by the Beatles. 

This is probably as close as it is possible to be in the recording studio with the Beatles during the White Album sessions in 1968. Record producer Chris Thomas, then a “tea boy”/intern at EMI later said of this session:  “While Paul was doing his vocal, George Harrison had set fire to an ashtray and was running around the studio with it above his head, doing an “Arthur Brown.”

If you’re really bored you can open them all up in different windows and try to sync ‘em up…

First McCartney’s frenzied vocal. Superb! How do you improve on something like this? You don’t because It’s fucking perfection. “It’s coming down fast….!”
 

 
After the jump, hear the guitar, bass and drum tracks!

 
What if Pasolini’s Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom was performed by The Three Stooges?  Well, it might come out looking something like the work of L.A.-based artist, Paul McCarthy.  Although he probably first captured national attention with MOCA’s infamous Helter Skelter show in ‘92, McCarthy’s been working with “the primal substances of life—blood, pus, urine, feces, sperm, milk, sweat,” ever since the ‘70s.

Below is a more recent work from ‘03, WGG (Wild Gone Girls).  Ubu describes it thusly: “Depicting a sailing party gone wrong, McCarthy questions the effects that violence and mutilation, both real and simulated, have on the viewer in contemporary culture.”  Maybe so.  But strip away the cozy, art-speak contextualizing.  Couldn’t that be said, too, for something like, oh…Wes Craven’s, Last House On The Left from ‘72?  WARNING: McCarthy’s WGG = not for the squeamish!

 
In the NYT: Fairy Tales, But Strictly Adults-Only