Boards Of Canada - Inferno [Deluxe Edition]

Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin have never been in a hurry. The gap between Tomorrow's Harvest and Inferno ran well over a decade, filled mostly by rumour and by fans parsing catalogue numbers for clues. What finally arrived in 2026 is the longest record the duo have made and the one that leans hardest into dread.

The palette is familiar and the mood is not. Detuned synthesizer, tape hiss and half-buried voices still do the work, but where Music Has The Right To Children sounded like a childhood misremembered, Inferno sounds like a transmission from somewhere colder. "Prophecy At 1420 MHz" and "Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan" take their titles from the hydrogen line radio astronomers listen to for signals, and the album keeps circling that idea of listening to empty space. "Somewhere Right Now In The Future" and "Deep Time" stretch out past the point where most producers would cut, and the patience is the point.

Nothing here chases the nostalgia the band's imitators have spent twenty years mining. It is a Boards Of Canada record that finally sounds its age, and better for it.

The deluxe edition spreads the album across two LPs of transparent red vinyl in a triple gatefold outer sleeve with printed inner sleeves and a 16-page 12-inch booklet. Warp have put real effort into the packaging on this one, and deluxe configurations of this catalogue do not stay in print long.