Over a decade ago, Travis Stewart, aka Machinedrum, stumbled on a bootleg of Boards of Canada performing at the Warp Records 10th Birthday Party in 1999. The last unnamed track BOC played that night was a mystery to Travis, who thought it:
‘quite possibly one of my favorite things they have done and really is a shame it never came out’
Fast forward to 2012, and Travis/Machinedrum has now made his own version of this unknown Boards of Canada track, as he explains:
I decided to take this bootleg recording and re-produce 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 bassline. 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 4-5 minute version but I figured I should preserve the original piece in its intended length.
This is the finished result and it is quite incredible.
With thanks to John Kowalski and Glenn McQuaid