Boards of Canada Are Back and Inferno Drops in 12 Days
Thirteen years of silence. One VHS tape in your letterbox. Boards of Canada just announced Inferno and it drops May 29 on Warp Records. Go pre-order it now.
Twelve days. That is how long you have to wait. Inferno is the fifth studio album by Scottish electronic music duo Boards of Canada, scheduled for release on May 29 2026 via Warp Records. It marks the duo's first studio album in thirteen years, following Tomorrow's Harvest in 2013. Thirteen years. The last time Boards of Canada released an album, streaming was still being figured out, vinyl was just starting its comeback, and a large portion of their current fanbase was still in secondary school. None of that matters now. The album is twelve days away and the whole underground is holding its breath.
How They Came Back
Beginning in early April 2026 the duo mailed mysterious VHS tapes to fans and put up posters in various cities. Fans also noticed that a website used for clues for the marketing campaign for Tomorrow's Harvest had been revived with a message reading nobody home in both English and morse code.
They put up Boards of Canada referencing posters in London, New York, California, and the Liquidroom venue in Shibuya, Japan. The Liquidroom is one of Tokyo's most respected electronic music venues. The choice of location was not random. Nothing Boards of Canada does is random.
On April 16 the duo uploaded a three minute track titled Tape 05 to their YouTube channel, their first new music in over a decade. Fans on Reddit identified it almost immediately as the fifth track on the album, officially titled Father and Son. Then on April 22 the announcement came. The official confirmation was made via the duo's official social media channels following weeks of speculation within the electronic music community. The 42 second trailer that accompanied it featured a hexagonal shape bathed in alternating colours. Boards of Canada fans immediately started decoding it. Of course they did.
Why This Matters Beyond the Nostalgia
It would be easy to frame this as a pure nostalgia play. Two brothers who made some of the most important electronic albums of the last thirty years disappearing for over a decade and then coming back. That framing undersells what Boards of Canada actually represent.
Since the 1990s Boards of Canada have maintained a significant influence on downtempo and IDM. Known for their analog textures and nostalgic themes the duo has released a string of seminal works on Warp cementing their reputation as definitive figures in the genre. Music Has the Right to Children. Geogaddi. The Campfire Headphase. Tomorrow's Harvest. Each one a complete world that sounded like nothing else being made at the time it was released. The influence on electronic music that followed each of those records is incalculable. Every producer making ambient, downtempo, or IDM in the last twenty years has their fingerprints on something that leads back to Boards of Canada eventually.
Prior to readying Inferno, Boards of Canada had re-emerged in the spotlight only on occasion, offering remixes, archival reissues, and an NTS DJ set for Warp Records' 30th anniversary in 2019. That is it. That is everything they gave us across thirteen years. And every single piece of it was treated like an event. That is what a decade of silence and a catalogue that refuses to age does to a fanbase.
The Full Tracklist
- Introit
- Prophecy At 1420 MHz
- Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan
- Age Of Capricorn
- Father And Son
- Somewhere Right Now In The Future
- Naraka
- Acts Of Magic
- Memory Death
- The Word Becomes Flesh
- Into The Magic Land
- Blood In The Labyrinth
- Deep Time
- All Reason Departs
- Arena Americanada
- The Process
- You Retreat In Time And Space
- I Saw Through Platonia
Eighteen tracks. Seventy minutes. The track lengths alone tell a story. Introit runs 36 seconds. Acts Of Magic runs one minute and eighteen seconds. All Reason Departs runs six minutes and fourteen seconds. This is not an album built around singles or streaming logic. It is built around exactly the same thing every Boards of Canada album has always been built around: an internal world with its own rules, its own time signature, its own atmosphere. The titles carry their usual weight. Prophecy At 1420 MHz. Blood In The Labyrinth. I Saw Through Platonia. You already know what these are going to sound like and you are still completely unprepared for them.
How to Get It
Inferno will be released on special edition limited red translucent 2xLP vinyl in a triple gatefold sleeve with a 16 page booklet, standard black 2xLP vinyl, as well as CD and digital formats. Pre-orders are live on Bandcamp now. Two tracks are available to stream immediately with the pre-order and the complete album arrives the moment it is released on May 29.
The deluxe red vinyl is a limited pressing. The record is currently being pressed at multiple pressing plants around the world. Digital formats will be available for download from May 29. The black vinyl format will be repressed and kept in stock moving forward beyond the release date. If you want the red edition, move now. These will not come back.
Thirteen years. Eighteen tracks. Twelve days. Go pre-order Inferno at boardsofcanada.bandcamp.com right now and then go listen to Tape 05 on YouTube to remember exactly what you have been missing.
