At some point over the last 24 hours, mysterious VHS tapes reportedly started arriving in the mailboxes of a select group of music fans. The tapes contained what one outlet described as “analogue visuals, shortwave-style audio and layered voice fragments,” and were emblazoned with a design featuring seven hexagons. There was no other identifying information, but fans quickly picked up on their origin: an address used by British experimental music label Warp Records. This points to an exciting possibility: A new release by reclusive Scottish brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin, aka Boards of Canada.
The term “highly anticipated” is the archetypal music industry cliché, but a new Boards of Canada record would be genuinely big—and exciting—news. Their most recent record, Tomorrow’s Harvest, appeared over a decade ago, so a new release is well overdue. And while nothing has been confirmed, there are plenty of signs that point toward the speculation about a new release being accurate. Apart from the tapes coming from Warp, their branding also seems significant: the duo has a long association with the hexagon, and a new album would be their seventh.
BoC also has some experience in this area; the release of Tomorrow’s Harvest was preceded by what was essentially an augmented reality game based around a series of six numeric codes that were released throughout April and May 2013. When fans assembled all six codes and entered them into a box on the band’s website, they were presented with a link to pre-order the record. Even their early records were released in unconventional ways: After years of speculation about the follow-up to their 1998 debut Music Has the Right to Children, their second album simply appeared unannounced on release schedules in early 2002. No pre-release copies of the record—entitled Geogaddi and released in February 2002—were distributed at all.
The general air of mystery around the duo is heightened by the fact that they basically never play live. Their last public appearance was at the second-ever All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, in April 2001, and Setlist.fm lists a total of 12 shows ever performed. They also rarely give interviews.
With all this in mind, it’s not a particularly far-fetched idea that the videotapes might herald a new album from one of music’s most inscrutable duos. Fans on the r/boardsofcanada subreddit certainly think so—they’ve been going nuts trying to find and decipher possible hidden messages on the tapes. (Sample thread titles: “Every frame of the tape in JPEG (6422 files)”, “Phase-cancelled vocals from the tape”, and “I WANT TO BELIEVE”.)
This morning also brought another piece of potential evidence, courtesy of an enterprising Redditor going by welcome2wyzard, who searched Spotify for 2026 releases on Warp Records by artists whose name contains the word “Boards.” Top hit: Boards of Canada.
This method, explained welcome2wyzard, can be used “to find out if new releases from an artist are scheduled for a certain year/label,” even if the release(s) aren’t posted publicly yet. (Entering the same search for, say, 2025 returns no results.) While the method isn’t foolproof—it can flag upcoming reissues and compilations featuring the artist in question—it’s another promising sign.
It’s also worth noting that the campaign for Tomorrow’s Harvest started on Record Store Day. This is the third Saturday in April—or, in other words, just around the corner. Watch this space!
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