Two days ago, Boards of Canada released Inferno, their long-awaited LP and first album in 13 years. While most everybody had to wait until Friday to listen, horror movie fans got to hear one of its unreleased songs a little early: “The World Becomes Flesh” plays in Backrooms, the new A24 film directed by Kane Parsons, during its end credits. You can listen to the song and watch the movie trailer below.
If all of these names mean nothing to you, then the quick summary is that the Scottish duo Boards of Canada have been making esoteric, ambient, and downtempo electronic music for over 30 years; in the process, they’ve set a benchmark for the genre. That’s longer than Parsons, the YouTuber-turned-director behind Backrooms, has been alive. His debut feature film is a massive box office hit, racking up $118 million worldwide over its opening weekend — setting new records for both A24 and Parsons, who’s the youngest director to claim No. 1 at the domestic box office.
Backrooms is about an eerie liminal space full of yellow-walled rooms that never seem to end, adapted from the YouTube series that was inspired by an old meme that was taken from a photograph of a real building in Wisconsin. Boards of Canada’s music is not only spiritually in line with the movie’s tone, but it also directly inspired Parsons, too. To not only get new music from them, but to hear it soundtracking a movie equally as labyrinthine and unnerving is a little surreal.
Read Philip Sherburne’s Best New Music review of Inferno, and see where Music Has the Right to Children lands on The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s.