Boards of Canada: Twoism [WARP]

Why you'll love it

This Warp edition is pressed in the EU and includes a download card. Twoism first appeared in 1995 on the duo's own Music70 label in a run of about 100 copies, and it's where the hazy Boards of Canada sound begins.

This edition

• Download card included
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Long before the big Warp albums, Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin were brothers making music for friends in a studio they called Hexagon Sun, out in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, and putting the results out on their own Music70 label. They recorded Twoism there in the summer of 1995, and it already sounds like nobody else.

The sound is all here in miniature: warm, slightly warped synths, crunchy hip hop beats and melodies that feel like a half-remembered childhood TV programme. "Sixtyniner" sets a woozy, nodding groove, "Basefree" glows, "Iced Cooly" and "Melissa Juice" are brief, odd little sketches, and the title track, "Smokes Quantity" and "Seeya Later" drift in that bittersweet place the duo would make their own. Pitchfork singled out its prescient, beanie-nodding beats, AllMusic called the reissue exquisitely spooky, textured emotronica, and Drowned in Sound found it a fascinating glimpse of the duo's early style.

Warp brought it back into print in 2002, so the rest of us could finally hear where it all started. Back in 1995 getting a copy meant knowing the right people; these days it involves considerably fewer favours.

Also at Kops: more Boards of Canada on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Music70 / Warp (cat# WARPLP70R), a reissue of the 1995 EP.