Our Daily Bread 657: Boards Of Canada ‘Inferno’
June 15, 2026
Thirteen years after Tomorrow’s Harvest, Boards of Canada return with Inferno – a dense, haunting and deeply rewarding record. Glasgow local Mikey McDonald explores the duo’s long-awaited comeback.
Boards of Canada ‘Inferno’
(Warp) Released 29th May 2026
Boards of Canada are brothers Michael and Marcus Sandison who, contrary to popular belief, are in fact Scottish, not Canadian. They make music from their own studio, somewhere in the hills in the middle of nowhere (postcode N/A). The best compliment I can pay Boards of Canada is that they’re masters of their craft, pioneers of electronic music, and true visionaries. For decades they have dazzled us by blending the analogue and digital worlds, creating melodies and soundscapes that could belong only to them.
And yet, the brothers have always carried an air of mystery. In fact, if you dig deep enough into the internet, you’re likely to find only one interview (approximately a minute and a half) when they were invited onto The John Peel Show back in 1998, shortly after the release of their groundbreaking debut Music Has the Right to Children, one of the most influential albums in contemporary music. In the interview, one of the brothers informs us that his favourite letter of the alphabet is ‘M’ before remarking, “we’re off to the pub actually” – a phrase that should be all too familiar to us Scots.
I was first introduced to Boards of Canada way back in high school when a friend (thanks Tino) put me on to none other than Dayvan Cowboy from The Campfire Headphase. I was pretty blown away. Not just by the track itself, but by the way electronics were fused with acoustic guitars throughout the album. I hadn’t really heard anything quite like it. That record in particular is home to some of my favourite tracks of all time, including Macquarie Ridge, Peacock Tail and Tears from the Compound Eye.
Anyway… It’s 2026, and after a 13-year hiatus, the duo are back with their latest album, the forebodingly titled Inferno, which marks their fifth full-length under Warp Records. It’s natural to draw comparisons to Music Has the Right to Children, Geogaddi or their last release, Tomorrow’s Harvest, but the truth is that Inferno exists within its own world, quietly blazing from within. I’m going to use that old cliché that it’s a difficult listen but a highly rewarding one, and it’s true.
Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan, besides being a mouthful to say, references the three elements that started this whole universe thing – a theme the album isn’t shy about exploring. And then there’s Leviathan, the biblical sea monster. On a good set of headphones, you can actually detect an inhuman groan buried deep in the mix, and I can’t help but wonder if this is the creature stirring beneath the surface.
Age of Capricorn continues the zodiac thread running through their discography, after Aquarius on Music Has the Right to Children and Gemini on Tomorrow’s Harvest. Spiritual chants and religious broadcasts intertwine throughout the track before a voice confesses, “I’m a sinner. All have sinned. You bore my sin. You shed your blood for me”. The contrast between the track’s warm glow and its uneasy spiritual undertones feels entirely deliberate.
Memory Death features swarms of bugs and ominous bleeps – we’re alive, but for how long? Out of nowhere, breathtaking vocal samples emerge and offer some much-needed space to breathe.
Inferno is one of those rare albums that changes depending on how you hear it. Through speakers it expands outward, filling the room with warmth, static and shadow. Through headphones it collapses inward, revealing hidden voices, tiny details and fragments of memory buried beneath the surface. Both experiences are rewarding: one lets you inhabit the world, the other lets the world inhabit you.
Elsewhere, Blood in the Labyrinth sounds sick. Not just ‘sick bro’, but actually infected. To say this track is eerie and capable of haunting your dreams would be an understatement. Perhaps most surprising is the inclusion of a sitar, which shouldn’t really work with everything else around it, but somehow it does.
Disturbing male vocal samples can be heard, but you’d be doing well to decipher those without Googling. Perhaps most heart-wrenching is when a young female recalls a harrowing moment in her life:
“You know, and I- when I finally did dive in and get her she was already dead, and um, after that I just ran off screaming”
Unlike the former, there’s nothing hazy or muffled about these words, and maybe we’re meant to feel her pain. It does make me feel a little sad, so I turn into the sad me. The juxtaposition between these samples is true mastery, and it’s hard not to feel shivers.
Anyway… What’s quite memorable is how the album closes. Penultimate track You Retreat in Time and Space feels like the album’s true closer, but Boards of Canada wouldn’t let us off the hook that easily. The track twinkles and shines, and where Age of Capricorn feels triumphant, Retreat radiates serenity, hope, and optimism. The track is both lush and divine, featuring angelic vocals and what sounds like boats docking in the latter half, perhaps offering a chance to escape.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, it’s not over.
I Saw Through Platonia feels like one of the most important tracks the duo have ever written. If Retreat offers a place to rest, then Platonia brings us crashing back down to Earth. It’s a track so utterly terrifying that it could soundtrack the end of the world. And if it did, you’d have to applaud – no end could ever be this beautiful. It sounds windy, but even those winds feel as though they’ve been lifted from the hostile atmosphere of Venus, and only Boards of Canada could make a piano sound so utterly morbid. It’s painfully magnificent.
Bells drift in and out of the mix, though they sound less like a Sunday church service and more like waiting to ride the escalator to hell. An unnerving heartbeat pulses beneath everything before abruptly stopping, leaving the listener with six long seconds to contemplate what they’ve just encountered. Is this the end? Is Inferno Boards of Canada’s farewell fire?
Now that the review is almost over, and we have jointly exercised our constitutional rights, I would like to leave you with one very important thought. Sometime after reading this, you may have the opportunity to listen to Boards of Canada.
Do it.
You know, there’s a lot of fucked up shit going on in the world we live in. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, and that chaos, that darkness can feel unbearable and contagious. Yet somehow Boards of Canada continue to find beauty in the static. Thirty-one years on, they’re still dazzling us in ways nobody else can.
So go on, hit play, and open the light.
They must be so fucking proud.
And there’s a proud me too…
Mikey McDonald
Our Daily Bread 611: Interview With Forest Swords
February 16, 2024
MIKEY MCDONALD SITS DOWN WITH THE FACE BEHIND THE FOREST SWORDS NOM DE PLUME, MATTHEW BARNES
In today’s exclusive interview on The Monolith Cocktail, Mikey McDonald sits down with one of UK’s most talented electronic musicians Matthew Barnes AKA Forest Swords. Barnes hails from Liverpool and has been releasing music under the Forest Swords moniker for over a decade.
They discuss the recent release of his third studio album titled Bolted as well as what the artist has been up to and future plans.
MM. Hi Matthew. Thanks for taking the time to chat, I really appreciate it. First thing is first, congrats on the new album. A mere six years have passed since your last full-length release. Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about what you’ve been up to in this time?
FS. Mostly concentrating on scoring work. I was lucky to be asked to do a bunch of different stuff across video games, dance and art installations over the past few years and it took up a lot of my time, so it didn’t feel right to try and balance it with starting an album. I’ve learned to listen to those sorts of gut instincts over time.
MM. Obviously Bolted has already received a lot of critical acclaim. Is that something you pay attention to, critic reviews?
FS. I don’t read any reviews, the most I’ll see is maybe just one-line quotes that get put on a press release or whatever. I see some feedback on things like my social media profile but it’s not something I want to be glued to. It’s really bad for anyone’s mental health to be checking in so much with that sort of thing, and I learned pretty early on that it wasn’t good or productive for me to engage with it. I’m really happy and grateful if people connect with anything I make though.
MM. From what I gather you’ve set up your own studio now in a former munitions (military weapons) factory in Liverpool. It was quite interesting to read that as part of your creative process you were visualising what oil spilling might sound like and became interested in things like metal and steel. These are very physical, inanimate things which we wouldn’t normally associate with sound. Working in a space with such history, did that inspiration come about naturally or did you have a particular vision before setting foot in the studio?
FS. I went to a Factory Records exhibition when one of the lockdowns lifted and I decided I really wanted some sort of warehouse or factory space, just to see what kind of things I could cook up in it, and because there’s still a few of these spaces left in Liverpool and they haven’t been gentrified out yet, unlike other cities. It was only really once I got in the space that the feel of the building and the architecture of it started to seep into the sounds I was making and the visual world I was trying to make.
MM. A lot was made about the fact Engravings was mixed outdoors and the impact this had on the record. Engravings has a woodlands feel to it and just listening you can practically hear the tracks leaching out of the soil…I guess the word I’m looking for here is organic. How did the mixing process go this time round? Do you find yourself constantly chopping and changing things in striving for perfection, or is that just it – can striving for perfection be a dangerous thing?
FS. I think like most creative things you just get a sense of when to stop. There’s a point with music, in particular, when you can tinker with something for so long that it loses all sense of excitement, and you also personally lose all objectivity over it. I’ve made enough tracks that I know when that point is before it falls over a cliff, so I’m fairly self-disciplined at stopping. Bolted I mostly mixed while I was going along, so it came out fairly fully formed at the end.
MM. I’m curious as to how you arrived at the album title?
FS. The studio space has these big metal doors I had to unlock every day with deadbolts. It became a sort of visual representation for me of creating the album, and sums up a lot of the sound world on the record too. I was struggling with a broken limb and other stuff while I was making it too so the idea of calling it ‘Bolted’, as in someone running away from something, became kind of bleakly absurd to me.
MM. Did you bother running any of the new tracks through your old four-track tape recorder, just for that extra bit of warmth and texture?
FS. Lots of it went through tape, most of the beats on it. A lot of the rhythms are quite heavy and came back through really blown out. Many of the synth sounds were put through it as well, and even mid-song I’ll switch between the digital version and tape version of a melody or beat. It’s a really hands on and easy way for me to get some texture and artefacts without running it through digital plugins.
MM. Let’s talk about one of my favourite cuts Line Gone Cold. The progression on this one is wild. I don’t know why but I feel like I’m being consumed by a blazing fire when listening to this, then we’re hit with some signature Forest Swords vocal passages. The strings are also a nice surprise, sort of devastating. On this track you sample the late Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, almost a full decade on after he remixed the otherworldly Thor’s Stone. Was this a case of returning the favour? Cool to think his legacy will live on in your music.
FS. Lee and I had always circled each other but I never met him in person. He was very gracious to do that Thor’s Stone remix and I knew I really wanted him on this record. I’d had this voice note from him for a while and it just seemed to fit right at the end of Line Gone Cold, which was always going to be the last on the track-listing because it felt like quite a finite song somehow. As soon as I put him on there it felt like it immediately crystallised into something more powerful and he kind of completed it for me.
MM. Probably a question you get a lot, but I must ask, what is your desert island synth?
FS. It’s not really a synth but I would want the Electron Octatrack. It’s so unique, frustrating and I also couldn’t live without it.
MM. Any releases you’ve been digging from this past year, electronic or otherwise?
FS. I like Holy Tongue who do dubby live jams, and I’ve rediscovered Seefeel from the 90s who are one of the only bands right now that soothe my brain when I’m feeling frazzled.
MM. Churches or power plants?
FS. A church inside a power plant, ideally.
MM. You’ve been doing this for a while now whilst dabbling in some scoring and side projects. What does the future look like for Forest Swords?
FS. I’ve got a couple of scoring things lined up for this spring and then I’m also chipping away at a new album that will appear at some point. Bolted was personally quite a difficult time for me and so I want to make a record while I’m in a good place. I’m just keen to keep learning and making work in whatever form that comes in.
MM. Well, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks again for chatting and all the very best for the next album and in the future!
Keep up-to-date with Forest Swords releases via the official website.
Or visit the bandcamp page.
Our Daily Bread 512: Brainwaltzera ‘ITSAME’
April 19, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW/Mikey McDonald
Joining the auspicious Monolith Cocktail pool of contributors this month, Glasgow local Mikey McDonald makes his debut as a music-writer, with a review of the recent Brainwaltzera album, ITSAME.
Mikey’s CV is very unique, eclectic. A resident of Glasgow, Mikey can normally be spotted running the streets of the city as long distance running enthusiast. A former full time poker player, Mikey is searching for new career opportunities, including sports rehabilitation. He’s previously been posting chat, games outcomes, strategy on the poker related rantings of a 6max SNG blog, and his musical tastes, recommendations can be found on Last FM.
Brainwaltzera ‘ITSAME’
Brainwaltzera (one can simply translate to ‘braindance era’) makes a return with his sophomore album titled ITSAME. The album comprises 17 tracks and marks the first full length from this anonymous producer in almost half a decade.
On the opener/self-titled track the man himself samples his own kids saying “ITSAME” and from the get-go it’s obvious this is going to be a very personal affair. ‘morning narcomnastics’ (gymnastics + narcotics?) is a nostalgic trip and a real triumph. This track exhibits scissor snips and bleeps that come in and out of the mix, which could quite easily have been sampled from a household appliance. These sounds in isolation may not be pleasant to listen to but fuse them together and you have a rather delicious sounding melody.
‘Reptikon 7’ hits hard and would fucking slap in a 90s underground rave. On this track the artist plays an e-cigarette as a bass – talk about next level ingenuity. The track breaks down around the midsection and really allows the static of that e-cig to flourish. Ask yourself how many musicians out there are playing an e-cigarette as a bass. I thought so… The latter half presents muffled vocal cries à la Future Sound Of London, and drive the track forward to an exquisite finish.
Meanwhile, ‘a star is bored’ could have been called ‘a star is born’ and is laced with unintelligible yet breathtaking samples and lush synths. Placing this track straight after the bold and menacing ‘Reptikon 7’ feels intentional and creates contrast in a big way.
Moments of respite are offered in the form of acoustic driven ‘PROVE UR NOT A ROBOT [SKIP]’ and ‘PROVE UR NOT A ROWBOAT [SKIPPER]’ and unfortunately (or fortunately) I didn’t skip either of these tracks failing to prove I’m neither a robot nor a rowboat. No regrets. ‘evening narcomnastics’ lives up to the expectations set by its sister track and features stunning electric guitars that are akin to whale calls.
Elsewhere, ‘F1 Halo’ is a moment the Sandison brothers would be proud of and offers some time to reflect before the album comes through with a big finish. ‘consent’ rather unsurprisingly contains samples of a male & female agreeing with each other and is another delight which provides plenty of warmth and feel-good before things turn frantic.
The foreboding ‘ad interim’ kicks off sounding like the end of the world and is peppered with video game like sound effects before we’re hit by a swarm of bugs in what sounds like a full scale attack, dare I even say alien invasion. Only the brave soldier on. Ominous atmospheres continue on the equally formidable ‘medal headz [G.B.D.F]’ which is likely a reference to the drum and bass music label ‘Metalheadz’ established in the mid 1990s, and this track also includes the ‘ITSAME’ samples from the opener but here they’re more distorted, more haunting.
Penultimate track ‘brothers [drop mic]’ is a playful number and could be a nod to Scottish legends and pioneers Boards of Canada. In this track the sampling and manipulation of children’s voices evokes feelings of nostalgia and takes the listener on a trip down memory lane. At this point of the album you could be forgiven for standing up and applauding but we’re not done yet. Closer ‘No fair’ confronts loss and delivers a gut-wrenching bassline and eerie samples of a French woman speaking. It fucks me up every time I hear it yet still I go back for more. In summary, the album is packed with nuances and little intricacies – so much so your ears are likely to detect something new with each listen as cliché as that may be to say. There’s so much detail you can practically hear the artist think through each track as the album unfolds. Now, one thing up for debate is the various ways in which to pronounce this ambiguous album title – ‘EATS-AH-MEH’, ‘IT SAME’ or ‘ITS-A-ME’ like ‘ITS-A-ME, MARIO!’ – perhaps down to the listener’s own interpretation. One thing not up for debate…ITSAMASTERPIECE
Review written by Mikey McDonald
Monolith Cocktail Blog 