Earlier this spring, dozens of mysterious VHS tapes began showing up in mailboxes around the world.
On one side of the tape was a hexagon, an image used by the beloved, but secretive, Scottish electronic band Boards of Canada. By the mid-2000s the group had cultivated an air of mystique, built on an enigmatic musical style that mixed analog nostalgia with an otherworldly ambience. The band was also relatively anonymous and rarely gave interviews. Boards of Canada had been together since the late 1980s, but the two members — Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin — only revealed they were brothers in 2005.
Immediately, fans started poring over the short distorted video found on the tape for secret clues and hidden passwords. Ultimately, the tapes were sent out to tease a new Boards of Canada album released in May, titled Inferno, the group's first new music in thirteen years. But the cryptic bread crumbs were nothing new for the band. The duo had always laced secret messages and mathematical sequences into their music, years before mainstream fans began decoding pop star Easter eggs. Once, the band even transmitted Morse code over a pirate radio signal. And nearly 20 years ago, a Boards of Canada mystery led a group of international fans deep into the Scottish countryside, searching for the band.
In the spring of 2006, an image appeared on the Boards of Canada website: a hazy red moon with two lines of letters and numbers superimposed on top.
"That's when the carrot first started to be dangled," says Dougie Byrum, who was living in Manchester, England at the time, and was active on the Boards of Canada internet forums. "It just got everyone a bit giddy."
In the absence of official information from the notoriously private group, fans had injected their own lore over the years — like rumors of so-called "red moon parties," informal musical gatherings held by the brothers around bonfires in the Scottish countryside. The band hadn't played live since 2001; was the red moon image a coded invitation to a secret concert?
"People were speculating like crazy," says Ben Satterfield, another fan who was living in southern California at the time and helped lead the forums' effort to decode the image. "Everyone's imagination, including mine, went really out of bounds."
The first line of code looked like a date: June 10, 2006, in the British format. But the second line was trickier, a seemingly random string of numbers and letters. For more than a month, the forums tried in vain to crack it, using numerology and archaic languages as codices.
"It was quite exciting, because it was the first time we'd really had something like that happen, once there'd been a community online to go and analyze it," says Ian Boffin, a fan from London who was also on the forums at the time. The excitement mixed with frustration — one user called it "mind control," imploring the brothers to put the code-breakers out of their misery.
Embedded in their music is this idea of secret transmissions and voices coming through the ether.Music critic Mark Richardson
Finally, the code was entered into a British military mapping system, and out popped coordinates in the Pentland Hills, south of Edinburgh. The location made sense: for years there had been rumors that the brothers had a secret studio in the area.
"We're like, OK, we're really onto something," says Satterfield. Other clues seemed to confirm the red moon party hypothesis. Within the coordinates they found an abandoned observatory, and the moon would be full around that time. "Oh my gosh, is that a telescope there? Come and see the red moon here! At that point, we're like, let's buy plane tickets."
Around a dozen others on the forum also made plans to meet up and find the party.
"It was just getting to be too many coincidences for it not to be a thing," said Dougie Byrum. "Hence why we grabbed the car keys and a tent and drove up to Scotland."
"There was mystery surrounding them from the beginning," says Mark Richardson, a music critic who covered Boards of Canada for Pitchfork at the time. It wasn't just the brothers' reclusive tendencies, The music itself, a nostalgic wash of hazy synths and half-legible samples, invited speculation. "It's kind of seeded into the aesthetic of their music as a whole. Embedded in their music is this idea of secret transmissions and voices coming through the ether."
And for a generation of electronic music fans that grew up on early rave culture, the idea of trekking into the countryside for a show wasn't farfetched.
"They did have a connection to rave music in the late 80s and 90s," says Richardson. "And it's interesting to remember that a lot of those raves would happen in outdoor spaces. They might be held in a wheat field, and people would bring generators out there. So there's something about the red moon incident that made me think of, in a way, returning their music to its roots."
On Saturday, June 10, Byrum picked up Satterfield and his brother at the airport in Edinburgh. They headed out to the Pentland Hills and hiked around looking for signs of life, like tire tracks or a stage, anything to indicate a concert or event might be happening. Eventually they found the abandoned observatory and made a bonfire as others filtered in. Then, they waited.
"Then we start talking about, what if it doesn't happen?" says Satterfield. "What if nobody shows up? We haven't seen anything around the area… are we wrong? Or did we scare them off?"
By nightfall, there was still no sign of the band.
"We listened to some tunes, we had some beers, we saw the moon," says Byrum. "Whether they were over the hill with some binoculars laughing their heads off, I dunno. I'd like to think they were."
"And so it ends up just turning into a party," said Satterfield. "And then the campfire dies down and the sun's starting to come up, and we're just like… OK. I guess we either got it wrong, or maybe this was the real takeaway. That we got to hang out together. Like, it was good enough for us."
Twenty years later, Boards of Canada has never publicly acknowledged the incident, or explained the meaning behind the red moon image posted on their website. Some of the fans involved believe the saga may have been a test to see how far fans would go – seven years later, the band did use secret codes to lead fans to a listening party in the Mojave desert, for the release of the album Tomorrow's Harvest. NPR reached out to the band's label, Warp Records, but didn't hear back.
"I would love to get an answer," said Satterfield. But he doesn't regret the failed hunt for the red moon party. "So much about art is the unknown anyway, right? And if you have all the answers, you don't long for whatever's next."
Copyright 2026 NPR
