Career cross-reference · 1986–2026

Three practices over time

Broadcast, Stereolab, and Boards of Canada across the same forty-year span. Read each practice through time and compare how their working languages change in parallel.

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Comparative career timeline

Method. This selective timeline uses formation dates, original releases, changes in working process, pauses, archive activity, and current work—not every record. Career facts and production history draw on artist, label, and discographic sources; the shorter listening phrases are this room’s editorial observations. Yellow marks the albums and releases connected to the nine opening tracks in Listening Room 001; individual song titles stay in the shelves. Alignment shows chronology, not direct influence or a family tree.

Selected career and practice milestones for Broadcast, Stereolab, and Boards of Canada, including the albums and releases connected to Listening Room 001’s nine-track opening selection.
Practice Beginnings1986–95 Language forms1996–2000 Studio expands2001–09 Interruption / archive2010–18 Present forms2019–26
Broadcastpersonality / transmissionarchive active · band history 1995–2011
Formed in BirminghamTrish Keenan and James Cargill bring psychedelic song, electronic sound, sampling, and film-music atmosphere into one intimate language.
Work and Non WorkEarly singles gather into a first map of the practice.
The Noise Made by PeopleVoice, analog electronics, studio texture, and broadcast fragments become an intimate album-length transmission.
Band, reduction, collageHaha Sound, Tender Buttons, then Witch Cults: live interplay narrows into two-person electronics and opens again as séance-like montage.
Trish Keenan diesThe group’s active period ends; the recordings and unfinished work take on a different life.
Berberian Sound StudioThe film score is released posthumously.
Practice heard through the archiveSessions, miniature pieces, Spell Blanket, and Distant Call expose demos and process without presenting Broadcast as a restarted band.
Stereolabmotion / repetitionactive · new recordings and live work
Formed in LondonTim Gane and Lætitia Sadier build a group around drone, motorik pulse, vintage keyboards, and bright melody.
Refried Ectoplasm / Mars Audiac QuintetGuitar-organ drive, motorik repetition, and explicit pop structure form a repeatable system.
Dots and LoopsDigital segments, drum loops, brass, and layered production turn the studio into an instrument.
The system keeps movingArrangements, producers, instruments, and recording systems change while pulse and repetition remain the organizing force.
Hiatus and catalog workThe group steps back from new records while earlier material is reissued and reconsidered.
Live returnThe group resumes concerts and archive activity.
Instant Holograms on Metal FilmA new album, new songs, and live dates extend the practice rather than simply reenact it.
Boards of Canadaatmosphere / memoryactive · new album in 2026
Project begins in ScotlandEarly tape experiments and a wider collective gradually resolve into the Sandison brothers’ studio practice.
TwoismThe private tape world begins to become public.
Music Has the Right to ChildrenAnalog melody and softened loops make repetition behave like memory.
GeogaddiSlow pulse and cyclic structure repeat until rhythm begins to feel ritual.
The Campfire HeadphaseLayered texture expands from distant haze into release.
Tomorrow’s HarvestAfter a long interval, the duo returns with music that treats the imagined future like a damaged memory.
InfernoThe duo’s first studio album in thirteen years makes the present tense explicit again.

Read across for each career; read down to compare time. All three practices remain present now, but differently: an active band, an active duo, and an archive that continues after loss.