Boards of Canada’s Hi Scores

Leith Theatre

Edinburgh duo Boards of Canada – brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin, who produced four acclaimed electronic records for the Warp label in their Pentlands studio between 1998 and 2013 – never submit to interview, photography or live performance.

In which case, this was the next best thing; an earlyevening classical performance on the final day of Light on the Shore by de Ridder’s paneuropean classical and contemporary chamber orchestra Stargaze, in which Boards of Canada’s 1996 second EP Hi Scores is reinterpreted for analogue instrumentation – and it was one of the most concise and enriching pieces of music heard in this theatre this month.

While Boards of Canada’s music manages to plough a distinctive kind of emotive warmth from sounds which are created entirely artificially, Stargaze approached from the other end, using brass, strings, xylophone, the wordless human voice and at one point a brush being swiped across the floor to recreate the lulling, futurist rhythms of key tracks from the record like Turquise Hexagon Sun and Nlogax. Complete ground-up reinventions (and of an encore trio of other BOC tracks, including Olson), this was covers project as stunning piece of art in its own right.