Boards of Canada condemn the White House over “unauthorised use of their music for political messaging”
Scottish band Boards of Canada have condemned the White House for using their song, ‘Deep Time’, without permission on social media.
The 15-second clip was posted late in the evening on May 27th local time in the United States, with the ambient song soundtracking footage of American flags, detention centres, helicopters, and the White House itself.
On X alone, the short video has been viewed almost 500,000 times in less than 24 hours, with the comments section filled with disgruntled Boards of Canada fans airing their frustration.
The top comment on the post encourages the band’s label, Warp Records, to “please copyright strike these fascist fucks.”
Meanwhile, another accused the administration of “disrespecting Boards of Canada’s beautiful music with this terrible video.”
In a joint statement, Boards of Canada and Warp Records have since distanced themselves from the White House’s nationalistic social media video.
They said (per MixMag), “Warp Records and Boards of Canada do not condone the unauthorised use of their music for political messaging.”
Boards of Canada are far from the first musical act to condemn the Trump administration to use their song without permission, last year, ‘Hold My Hand’ hitmaker Jess Glynne condemned ICE for using her viral track, which she said “makes me sick“.
In December, SZA also had her song ‘Bad Boys’ used without permission by ICE, which led to her accusing the administration of deliberately “rage baiting artists for free promo“. She made her comments after both Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo slammed ICE for using their songs.
Meanwhile, Boards of Canada are set to release their first album in 13 years, Inferno, which includes ‘Deep Time’, on May 29th.
In a three-and-a-half-star review of Inferno, Far Out wrote, “Boards of Canada achieve the right balance of past echo and contemporary on their latest LP effort. If you can forgive some of the soggy drumbeats that rob the cuts of their ambient power, Inferno reveals itself to be a rich and rewarding listen, an electronic statement that frizzles with weird pertinence in an age of digital uniformity and scant time to stop and consider the madness of the world.”
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