I've had a bash at the first part of that French "Trax interview" -
namely, the short page with "LA" on it in large print, and the next
full page after that. I found it hard going. (BTW, my comment last
time on being "not keen on the French language" - no offense to French
readers intended; I just meant that, not knowing the language well, I
find it very hard work).

Whether what I've written has much to do with the proper meaning of
the text, I don't know, but corrections are welcome (and badly needed
in places). :-)

[Major confusions marked in square brackets below. I don't mind owning
up to being a bit baffled in places, and a list of some of the main
puzzlers follows the end of translation. The writer's florid language
doesn't help; "Boards of Canada eagle" - huh?] :-)

Likewise, if anyone wants to tackle the rest, or even redo properly
the bit I've just done, feel free, I don't mind.

Also, if anyone can fill us in on what the French "Message à caractère
informatif" is all about, that would be good to know (it's cited in
the interview).

-S

***

For three years we've been waiting for the Boards of Canada eagle to
alight once more upon our turntables. On the occasion of the release
of The Campfire Headphase, the glorious event of their electronic
return, the most psychedelic duo of electronica finally agree to speak
openly. Conversation around the fire …

The moon is low and red on this chilly night on a beach somewhere in
the south of Scotland, in the area around the Pentland Hills. However,
as though a strange pagan rite, a circle of twenty-odd people has
formed around a large crackling fire which seems to glorify the
communion of the elements, the forces of nature, with the powers of
the mind. A post-hippie gathering? Initiation into a magical cult? A
clandestine cermony of the Solar Temple? None of those things as a
meeting point for a wizard, guru or other supernatural medium to
influence the stars here. In place of these, to mediate everything, is
a ghettoblaster. It's the winter of 2002; Boards of Canada, four years
after the international triumph of Music Has The Right To Children,
their first album, meet up with their childhood friends to celebrate,
in their own fashion, the end of the recording sessions for Geogaddi,
which will garner them universal critical acclaim. "I can see where
you're going with this," laughs Michael, one of the duo, "but no, this
time we haven't gone about things in that way, despite the name of the
album being The Campfire Headphase, but, this time around, after the
final touches have been made to the record, Marcus and I would rather
test it out in the car, switching on the car stereo and driving
without any destination in the open countryside round about the
studio, in the pitch black night at four in the morning."

A Special Case

OK, rewind: When Warp announced the scheduled release of the third
album from Boards of Canada, at the end of June, immediately a whole
bunch of forums began to echo with a period of waiting that many
simply found unbearable. There had never been so much speculation
based upon simple track titles, [???], and never so much worry that
what was being downloaded off the Internet was not the sacrosanct new
album from the Scottish duo, but a collection of a Few Old Tunes that
some mischief-makers had underhandedly fabricated. But in a few short
years, Boards of Canada had become a special case among the masses of
the electronic underground, a position that could become yet stronger,
and, by a kind of concentric magic, let them leave the narrow
outskirts of their circle of adepts and [win a scale model of the
globe?], thus tranforming them into a mainstream phenomenon.

Hiding away in their cold home, only rarely granting interviews, and
then only by email, [not performing live?], cited by Thom Yorke
himself as the direct inspiration for the masterwork Kid A, and buoyed
up by a growing reputation that saw Music Has The Right To Children
listed among the 25 best psychedelic records of all time, along with
The Beatles and Pink Floyd, the Boards of Canada legend is in full
swing. Also, when Warp confirmed, after numerous delays, that Michael
Sandison and Marcus Eoin had finally agreed to meet up with us near
their location in Edinburgh, [we might end up meeting neither one nor
both of them, despite a looming departure flight] which was going, at
last, to get us nearer to the great enigma, the darkest star in the
electronica galaxy.

Totem and Taboo

So here we were, in September, in the medieval city of Edinburgh,
looming suddenly out of the age of knights, with its fortified castle
in the mist high on a cliff, its gothic cathedral, its cobbled lanes,
and hills blasted brown by the circling winds. Quite apart from any
such romantic associations, it was 10 degrees, with freezing rain, and
a miserable [jacquard] for protection. Bloody Scottish showers. We
were in a hurry, therefore, in this inhospitable clime, to find the
Royal Museum, where we would meet up with the group in order to, quite
appropriately, break the ice [in which many seemed to be imprisoned],
to hear their latest album, and to release the smouldering fire which
seems to gently light up their works. And it was with a wholehearted
welcome that Marcus and Michael greeted us in the interior of the
museum, a white glass roof where a huge stern totem pole held court, a
safekeeper of ancestral spirituality. We settled down at the foot of
this sacred guardian, and the two musicians were soon cracking jokes
about our wretched appearance, dispelling at once any fears that we
were face to face with two grizzly bears, condescending to serve us
their more polite political chatter. To the contrary, they were at
once very worried about the reception of The Campfire Headphase. [On
their explanation] of the mixed reception of the work, the hot/cold
[lukewarm?] reaction it provoked, the response was raw:
"It's funny that when we try to make a cheerful album, as in the
present case, it is at the same time invariably seen as something cold
and a little sinister. I think that's a reaction prompted by
psychedelic elements in the music, which emphasize certain effects
that make the whole thing at the same time strange and remote. But
it's just the same characteristic of Boards of Canada: to capture the
feel of the sounds of a very specific era, going from the end of the
70s to the start of the 80s. For us, it's a sort of tangent in which
we don't move away in terms of form, but go alternatively towards
something more electronic, acoustic, cinematographic, or orchestral,
but always within the zone of public education programmes, Super-8
videos, jingles in the form of public safety films or adverts.
Everything we've been able to compose which moves away from that
primary vibe has never been kept, and isn't released." In crude terms,
and to keep it brief, the BOC (for close friends) aesthetic is the
equivalent of our French "Message à caractère informatif", and it is
really very interesting.

Bohemia

First, there's the name, Boards of Canada, which isn't a reference to
the floating logs on which beavers lounge around at the edges of the
Great Lakes, but is inspired by the National Film Boards of Canada, a
cinematographic society which broadcasts all sorts of nature
documentaries and programmes on social issues, with a very distinctive
kind of grainy look giving a sort of "wash" effect to the image which
can be seen in the artwork of many of the works by the duo. This might
seem anecdotal, and not related to the substance of the records, but
the strength of Boards of Canada is to have linked this rather blurry
and old-fashioned visual universe with a musical identity which, by
taking up or sampling sonic elements that make up the raw sound
element of these videos, and coupling them with steel guitars, synths,
and beat-boxes of that era, and children's voices in the background,
is charged with evocative and nostalgic power.
Listen to any BOC record, and, if you are a 30-something, you'll be
transported back to a familiar world of flares, "cake slice" shirt
collars, [smoke-coloured sunglasses?], scratchy polo neck jumpers,
everything [imbued?] with the atmosphere of a rather bohemian utopia
coming to an end. "We spent our childhood in Canada, and it's really
the culture we were immersed in, in which we were saturated like every
child of that time, which was a tremendous influence on the world
around it. American road movies, Glenn Larson TV shows, animations of
every genre … These are only 3 of the links to that era, and everyone
who lived on the American continent at that time was brought up on
these programmes; it really was "mass media", and, the next day at
school, all the children would be talking about what they'd seen the
night before."

* * *

This isn't part of the interview. The main areas of confusion where
assitance would be appreciated in the above:

"le tout nimbe d'une atmosphere" - I've put "everything imbued with an
atmosphere"; in fact, "nimbe" isn't in my dictionary, so I've put
"imbued" as a rather vague guess.

"lunettes fumées" - I've put "smoke-coloured sunglasses", but my
dictionary seems to suggest "steamed up glasses". However, that
doesn't seem very 70s. I'm guessing that the "fumees" is sort of
"smoked up", maybe the kind of smoke-brown sunglasses that were common
in the 70s. But that's another wild guess.

"jacquard", that's not in my French dictionary either. My English
dictionary has it as a loom or weave pattern, which doesn't help. From
context, it seems to be a garment, and I doubt the interviewer is
wearing a loom for warmth during his visit to Edinburgh. A cagoule or
something?

From nearer the start: "n'a jamais autant glosé sur de simples titres
de tracks, jamais frolés d'aussi près la pamoison vide et prospective,
et jamais ensuite tant anguisse a l'idée que ce que l'on venait de
télécharger n'etait pas …": my dictionary doesn't list "pamoison", and
I can't even hazard a guess at that bit.

The bit from "concentric magic" about spheres and ladders or scale
models or suchlike (please see the JPG for original text) had me
really muddled.