Boards Of Canada have dropped a mysterious new track called ‘Tape 05’, their first new music for 13 years.
The song appeared on both the Scottish duo’s YouTube channel and that of their longtime label, Warp. No other information about it, or whether it’s part of a wider project, has surfaced as of yet.
‘Tape 05’ is an ambient piece of music whose main melody comes from a harp, with subtle shoegazey textures behind it. It’s their first release since their 2013 album ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ and arrives off the back of a drawn-out trail of teasers.
The band have displayed brief signs of activity in the 13 years since that album came out, in the form of random remixes, archival reissues, and an NTS DJ mix.
Another sign of life came when a Boards of Canada fan worked out that a website once used for their clues that had been suffering 404 errors for a prolonged period had been —revived with the following message: “nobody home…” and then a repetition of that phrase in Morse code – ” /// -. — -… — -.. -.– / …. — — . .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.-“.
At the beginning of the month, fans reported across social media and Reddit that they had been receiving VHS tapes bearing Boards of Canada’s hexagon-mesh logo. According to archivist page BoC Pages, the tapes contain audio for an ad for a Christian bible school magazine that stopped publishing in 1991.
Posters featuring designs similar to the artwork of 1998 debut album ‘Music Has The Right To Children’ then began appearing in cities such as London, New York, California, and at Liquidroom in Shibuya, Japan.
Earlier this week, Warp shared an Instagram carousel of the posters, but didn’t comment any further on what they could mean.