A week before the release of Inferno, a Barcelona arthouse cinema hosted a listening session where a flaming hexagon rotated in darkness while the album played in full. The venue featured projected and spinning hexagonal visuals, and the lobby carpeting already contained a hexagon motif, matching the duo’s retro-fantasy aesthetic. After attending, hexagons appeared repeatedly in everyday and media contexts, from clothing patterns and corporate logos to a spelling game, car speaker grilles, nature, and even the spaceship shape in Asteroid City. The recurrence is attributed to the duo’s detailed world-building, which has long included esoteric symbols that guide fans into interpretive rabbit holes. The hexagon is central across song titles, album artwork, stickers, and the name of a studio and collective.
"A week before the release of Boards of Canada's Inferno, attendees in a Barcelona arthouse cinema watched a flaming hexagon rotate slowly in the darkness while the album played back in its entirety-part of a series of listening sessions held that day in theaters, auditoriums, churches, and record stores around the world. The Barcelona moviehouse had been decorated for the occasion; the cryptic Scottish duo's hexagonal logo was projected on the walls and spun on circular screens set into the ceiling. But even without further adornment, the venue's sleek, modernist interior would have been a perfect fit for Boards of Canada's retro-inspired fantasies, thanks in particular to one serendipitous detail: a hexagon motif woven right into the lobby carpeting."
"In the days after taking part in the listening session, it seemed that everywhere I looked, I spied hexagons: in the graphic pattern of a passerby's black-and-white shorts; in a tech company's logo; in the New York Times' Spelling Bee game; on the plastic grille covering the speakers in my car; in the geometric membranes of a wasp's nest in the yard. Rewatching Wes Anderson's Asteroid City, I was startled to realize that the alien's spaceship is in the shape of- yeah, you got it."
"That I should have noticed this lattice of coincidence may have less to do with any cosmic unconsciousness than with the persuasive seductions of Boards of Canada's portentous world-building. Since at least 1998's Music Has the Right to Children, brothers Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison have notoriously laced their music with esoteric details that send devoted fans spiraling down rabbit holes, and perhaps no symbol holds a more privileged position in their lore than the hexagon. One of their most beloved songs is called "Turquoise Hexagon Sun"; the six-sided shape graces the cover of 2002's Geogaddi and the center sticker of a related EP; Hexagon Sun is the name of the brothers' recording studio and broader artistic collective."
Read at Pitchfork
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