Old Tunes

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"A Few Old Tunes" album art.
"A Few Old Tunes" album art.

"Old Tunes" refers collectively to several audio cassettes rumored to have been privately released by Scottish electronic music duo Boards of Canada between 1995 and 1996. Neither Boards of Canada nor Warp Records have confirmed or denied the existence of the Old Tunes tapes (comprising of "A Few Old Tunes", "Old Tunes Vol. 1" and "Old Tunes Vol. 2"). Some enthusiasts believe the tapes contain authentic Boards of Canada tracks within a collaboration of other artists.

Copies of these tapes were only privately released, so very few tapes are known to exist. A member of the WATMM forums attempted to sell a collection of 2 Old Tunes tapes in an online auction, but the auction was shut down without a winning bidder.

Contents

[edit] Origins

It remains unclear as to whether or not these tapes were ever actually released; Boards of Canada has chosen to unlist all material predating Twoism, possibly due to the fact that most of the band's early recordings were never meant for public consumption. Rather, they were distributed only to family and friends of the band.

[edit] Audio cassettes

[edit] Album art & pictures

A Few Old Tunes cassette liner. [1]

A Few Old Tunes cover art (digital recreation).

Old Tunes vol. 2 cassette liner. [2]

Old Tunes vol. 2 cassette liner. [2]

Old Tunes vol. 2 cassette liner. [2]

Old Tunes vol. 2 cassette tape. [2]

[edit] MP3s

A few years ago, about 30 tracks of various quality were discovered by fans, using peer to peer file sharing programs (specifically Soulseek). This collection was simply known as A Few Old Tunes. Soon afterwards, more tracks surfaced under the titles Old Tunes Volume 1 and Old Tunes Volume 2, bringing the total number of Old Tunes MP3s to over 100.

The tracks appear to have been ripped directly from the original Old Tunes tapes, explaining the low quality of many of the files, and in addition, tape hiss can be heard in the background of many of the songs.

[edit] Controversy

From the time the first Old Tunes tracks appeared on the Internet, they have been surrounded by controversy. Having seen a number of fake Boards of Canada "rarities" in the past, much of the Boards of Canada fan community initially viewed the Old Tunes collections with skepticism. The sheer number of tracks, however, along with certain undeniable similarities with the band's studio work (including a few entire tracks included on later works) led to a general acceptance of the Old Tunes tapes as authentic.

Joyrex, a respected Boards of Canada authority with known contacts with the band, and administrator of the popular electronic music site WATMM, initially proclaimed the tapes to be fake, however, he later recanted and confirmed that they were legitimate. He explained his actions by stating that the tapes were only distributed to close personal friends of the band, that they were never meant for public consumption, and that he deliberately lied about them in an attempt to halt their dissemination, acting in accordance with the wishes of the band.

[edit] Prince Murat affair

While MP3s of the Old Tunes tracks became fairly widespread on file-sharing networks, confirmed sightings of the original tapes remained elusive. This changed in February 2005 when a new user, "Prince Murat", appeared on the WATMM forums, claiming he owned original copies of A Few Old Tunes and Old Tunes vol. 2, and was looking to sell them. He backed his claims by posting photographs of the tapes; shortly afterwards they were put up for auction at eBay, with a starting bid of $800. Included in the listing were more photographs and a high-resolution scan of the cover and liner notes of Old Tunes Vol. 2. The auction was quickly shut down without a winning bidder, after representatives of the band contacted eBay.

Debate continued on the WATMM forums, as Prince Murat defended his actions, claiming to be fighting the Boards of Canada "hype machine". This eventually led to a rare public statement from a representative of the band.

“ OK, the reason it was jumped on was this: Warp and BoC have been in talks for a long while about putting out a box set of old tracks from these tapes and others, with new packaging and art, to be released sometime after the forthcoming record. The tapes were private comps given out to close friends a few years ago, long before the band imagined there would be this kind of interest, and long before the likes of Soulseek, etc. existed.

The tracks are out there now, nothing can be done about that, they've been circulating for a while and fans have them, so the decision was taken to at least consider tidying them up and repackaging them with decent exclusive artwork & more rarities. BOC never wanted these tracks presented this way, mislabelled and as poor-quality MP3 files.

There's no 'hype', these comps were never listed on any old discogs as they were never intended for mass release in the first place.

Now the intention is still to get round to scheduling a release of these tunes and other rare comps, but unscrupulous people like "prince murat" are obviously stealing the thunder of the proposed releases whilst trying to make a tidy profit in the process (a starting price of $799 speaks volumes about 'prince murat's true intentions. who is trying to profit from hype here? If any money is going to be involved, surely the artist who wrote those tracks should be receiving the royalties, and not this person? there's no difference between this kind of profiteering and someone trying to sell a bootleg CDR of Beck's new album months prior to release.)

Anyway, now you know, we hope the intervention hasn't caused too much negative feeling, after all the concern that Warp and BOC have is that basically it's going to spoil the impact of a nice release that hopefully will be enjoyed by the fans.

– "Mark", Hexagon Sun [1]

 ”

The post was signed simply by "mark, hs" and was made from a privileged account, "Hexagon Sun", created specifically for the band's use in monitoring the forum for potentially libelous content. Given Joyrex's previously known connections with the band [2], the message is considered by most fans to be an authentic communication from a legitimate representative of the group.

Boards of Canada has yet to release a rarities box set.

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

Boards of Canada
Michael Sandison | Marcus Eoin
Christopher Horne
Management
Warp Records | Skam Records | Music70 | Matador Records
Studio albums
Catalog 3 (1987) | Acid Memories (1989) | Closes Vol. 1 (1992) | Play by Numbers (1994) | Hooper Bay (1994) | Twoism (1995) | Boc Maxima (1996) | Music Has the Right to Children (1998) | Geogaddi (2002) | The Campfire Headphase (2005)
Singles & EPs
Hi Scores (1996) | Aquarius (1998) | Orange Romeda (1998) | Peel Session TX 21/07/1998 (1999) | In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country (2000) | Roygbiv/Telephasic Workshop 10" | Trans Canada Highway (2006)
Live Recordings
Live @ Warp10 (1999) | Live @ Lighthouse (2000) | Live @ ATP (2001)
Related articles
Discography | Hexagon Sun Collective | Music70

Old Tunes: Old Tunes Vol. 1 (1995) | A Few Old Tunes (1996) | Old Tunes Vol. 2 (1996)
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