Boards of Canada :: Inferno Sessions @ Barnsdall Gallery Theatre, Los Angeles May 22, 2026 · 7:30 PM

Smoldering, hypnotic, and emotionally consuming

Boards of Canada returned in unmistakable form; the long years since 2013’s Tomorrow’s Harvest proved entirely worth the wait. Barnsdall Gallery Theatre, perched above Barnsdall Art Park—overlooking the Griffith Observatory—known for live theatre, dance, music, and film screenings, became an intimate sanctuary for sound and memory. Old-growth pines framed the surrounding hillsides as a 7:30 sunset gave way to a cool 70°F evening—an oddly fitting nod to Music70—BoC‘s creative arm for images, paintings and other art. Every detail aligned perfectly: atmosphere, architecture, temperature, fading light, anticipation. My wife and I stood among roughly 300 kindred spirits, all bound by BoC’s surreal audiovisual language, waiting for an experience that already felt dreamlike before a single note emerged.

Near the entryways, merchandise tables displayed BoC t-shirts alongside crimson hexagonal tokens redeemable for a forthcoming Bleep.com Inferno cassette edition. Excitement built gradually as an earlier listening session emptied moments before showtime. Cool air drifted through the long line while conversation softened into hushed expectancy. Something mysterious lingered just feet away, waiting to reveal itself.

“During the session you will hear specially designed audio triggers; what we call Hex Recordings.”

A cinematic descent inward ::

Once inside, with wristbands secured, attendees were greeted by Warp and theatre staff bearing a thoughtfully curated collection of extras: sealed envelopes containing a visually striking Inferno artwork poster, turquoise hexagon keychains, pamphlets filled with collage imagery and cryptic graphics, stickers, and even an Inferno family patch. Those thoughtful details deepened the immersion before the music had even begun.

With seats situated, low-end rumblings quietly vibrated through the darkness while faint fog curled across the stage lights. Audience members settled into attentive stillness, prepared less for a concert than a cinematic descent inward. Listening sessions carry their own peculiar tension—calm surfaces concealing emotional undertow. Then Inferno finally poured through the speakers.

What followed felt like a perfect union of sound, mood, and vision.

An eternal fire burning through seven slowly rotating hexagons ::

Saturated percussion thundered beneath dense instrumentation and kaleidoscopic textures. Serene vocal fragments drifted through the mix, obscured enough to remain indecipherable yet somehow emotionally immediate, as though subconscious signals were bypassing language altogether. Waves of analog warmth swept through room after room of memory, carrying listeners back into forgotten emotional landscapes and cryptic sonic worlds long associated with brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin. Every fissured texture, every buried transmission, every glowing synth passage felt consumed within an eternal fire burning through seven slowly rotating hexagons projected on screen.

Vocal treatments colored much of the opening stretch with emotions suspended between nostalgia and disorientation. Connections formed naturally between the audience, the subtle projected imagery, and the music coursing through the room like distant recollections resurfacing after decades underground. Somewhere past the midpoint, one especially devastating composition unfolded alongside vintage film fragments and blurred collage loops: children playing, faded memories, half-remembered moments dissolving like damaged reels uncovered in forgotten crawl spaces. The sound grew heavy, intimate, and overwhelming.

Smoldering, hypnotic, and emotionally consuming ::

Sandison and Eoin continue to master time itself, reshaping synth strands, analog production, and surreal atmosphere into something unmistakably human. With Inferno arriving May 29, the session confirmed that none of Boards of Canada’s magic has faded. Rhythmic swells, leftfield pulses, downtempo rumbling, and towering synth plateaus evoked the emotional weight of Music Has the Right to Children, the darker corridors of Geogaddi, the pastoral elegance of The Campfire Headphase, and the submerged frequencies of Tomorrow’s Harvest with its lingering psychoactive mythology. Subliminal voices, fractured signals, hidden messages, ambient drift, and beat-heavy propulsion intertwined within a meticulously layered fabric of sound that demanded repeated immersion. After all this time, we can finally conclude our 2020 in-depth inquiry—Will there be another Boards of Canada release?

Ultimately, Inferno revealed itself as exactly what its title suggests: smoldering, hypnotic, and emotionally consuming. Layer upon layer is poised to unfold once the full release arrives in just under a week. Combined with the beautifully curated atmosphere of Barnsdall Gallery Theatre—cool night air, dim lighting, attentive silence, and towering pines beyond the surrounding walls—the evening became far more than a listening event. It felt like a communion between nostalgia, environment, imagery, energy, and sound design, all fused into a single transcendent experience.

The canopy of pines flutter in quiet assurance ::

From a conscious subconscious, Inferno unfolds like a faraway audio collage—a richly rooted excavation of sonic architecture and dream-soaked saturation—while beyond the walls, the canopy of pines flutter in quiet assurance, keeping us held in comfort. Boards of Canada may not seek reinvention through Inferno, yet they further emblazoned their command of analog warmth and deeply emotive soundscape—weaving hypnotic rhythms and unfolding narratives into cinematic passages where memory and modernity dissolve seamlessly. One fan succinctly captured the album as being very organic, dynamic, spiritual and aggressive—a sublime sensory experience we wholeheartedly agree with.

Perhaps another transmission will surface long before 2039. Until then, surrender to the flames, the unknown, the hidden frequencies, and Boards of Canada’s unmistakable haze of memory-tinged alchemy. My wife and I drifted through something strangely hypnotic and deeply restorative—an experience that revealed just how much anticipation still lingers for Inferno: vivid audio mosaics, grain-worn textures, muted tones, and carefully aged sonic relics suspended somewhere beyond ordinary time.

Welcome back BoC—a flash to the past, yet time doesn’t seem to have elapsed; instead, it has collapsed into the present.

Inferno Sessions ::
On Tuesday April 28 2026, Warp Records announced Inferno Sessions for Friday, May 22, 2026. Tickets were available from Friday, May 1, 2026 for events in Tokyo, Berlin, Barcelona, London, Glasgow, New York, and Los Angeles. Interested parties had to sign up by Thursday, April 30, at 3:00 p.m. BST for access. boardsofcanada.com