Fans had almost given up taking signs for wonders when the duo's signals began to fully emerge this week

It’s been almost 13 years since Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison told The Guardian they’d become “a lot more nihilistic over the years”; one can only imagine how they are feeling now. In any case, that was the last anyone heard of Boards of Canada.

But not if you had asked their diehard fans, who are scattered across subreddits, Discord servers and BoC forums; they never went away. They’ve been watching, sending out signals that they would come back.

“I have this strong feeling that Marcus and Michael were on the brink of releasing something right around 2020 but quickly pulled back on it due to the pandemic,” one user commented three years ago.

“They joined Instagram’s threads a few months ago … something is definitely brewing,” another user surmised two years ago.

“6/6/26 I have no basis it’s just a guess,” a third said.

These commenters and many other fans have had their prayers answered, 4,694 days after the release of Boards of Canada’s last album, Tomorrow’s Harvest. A month ago, it was the stuff of conspiracy theorists. A week ago, it was a collective fever dream. Now, it is reality. Boards of Canada will be releasing new music imminently.

It all began to get real at the start of this month. A tape, emblazoned with a seven-hexagon shape, appears on Discogs.  The contents of the VHS are eerie and indecipherable – though Boards of Canada fans wouldn’t want it any other way.

Lone – who has just released the formidable Hyperphantasia, took to his instagram with excitement. “Just wanted a say a few words about THE TAPE,” his post began, before telling his followers he found it idling in his mailbox. “I first heard Boards of Canada in 1998 when John Peel played ‘Aquarius’ on his radio one show and have been hooked ever since. Hard to put into words how much their work has enhanced my life over the years but l’m certain many of you reading this will have had the same experiences … Who knows what’s in store.”

At first, it was garbled images and a muffled voice happily speaking through the fuzz. “From the first line to the last word, the message is clear. It’s a monthly devotion… revelation.”

Like many times before, it seems the artists are looking to infuse this new music with a sense of spirituality. Not devotional in itself, but more a study of the human penchant for spiritual commitment. Just as the Christian ideals of Godly love and omscience are garbled in the banality and horror of the everyday, so too does the duo willingly bury their melodies and instrumental elements within a tumultuous sea of feedback. In fact, with their use of analogue instrumentation and their wider interest in older technology, that obfuscation is part of the design.

In any case, fans have gone wild with speculation. They had wished for this day to come, but now it was here… surely it couldn’t be real? The decoders have got to work. The spoken words on the tape seem to be an advert for Moody Monthly Magazine, an old Christian publication associated with a bible college in Chicago, Illinois. Some tapes – configured in NTSC format – were slightly different from the PAL versions, individual frames out of place.

In these instances, it feels as though the diehard decoding fans walk in lockstep with BoC, perhaps even faster than the duo or the team behind the rollout expect. Sources are found within hours, and data is scraped. Last time, the fans willingly followed the signs and coordinates to Tokyo, where a teaser played on a big screen, and then to an abandoned waterpark in the Mojave Desert. There, a listening party took place.

In today’s social media-centric age, it feels as though the duo can rely less on Radio 1 previews and similar mainstream promos. They can play to this rabid audience that have been fed on scraps – and an incredible NTS mixtape – for the last few years.

Days later, posters appeared on the walls of Soho in London. Children with whited-out eyes, grinning, staring. Each sheet emblazoned with that same seven hexagons. Pilgrimages to the posters began. Posters in New York spotted. Japan. Then Warp posted them.

And then? Tape 05.

Shivering synths snake upwards in an apprehensive corkscrew. Sturdy bass emerges, as do the pictures on the video. Satellites, people in the throes of religious ecstasy, shadowed figures standing beneath the sun. A race of images, all suddenly playing out over a slowly revealing shape of seven hexagons. The images then turn to cult-like religious passion as meaningful notes taper the otherworldly eeriness to a feeling of hope. Not necessarily through devotion to a higher power, but reaching for something higher in and of itself.

Euphoric calculation. Life-affirming connection. Sacred soundwaves.

And in the midst of this crescendo, something different, or unorthodox. Clean harps rest gracefully on top of the crest of the synth-led euphoria. This type of organic instrumentation is dotted through the BoC catalogue – Satellite Anthem Icarus and Chromakey Dreamcoat’s use of guitar springs to mind. But something here feels purer. A new layer of candid musicality atop this tried and tested formula of fizzling ambient melody.

The message fades.

Nothing is exactly clear, no doubt by design. A new release is, at this point, inevitable, though.

How this duo will conduct their sound in this modern world also remains unclear. If Tape 05 is anything to go by, they have not sped up for our accelerating times; they have not cleaned up in an age of horrific pristine simulacra.

They are offering us a chance to slow down to their speed. To explore the wonders of the past reanimated. To reach back to drift forward. To once again, connect with their signal.