Chants, Prophecies, and Cultic Transmissions: Boards of Canada’s ‘Inferno’

By Michael Grasso / July 1, 2026 “Even apart from my intellectual convictions, there was this whole matter of California. As a transplanted Easterner, I felt duty-bound not to take anything in California very seriously. I certainly felt no need to understand California; I simply allowed myself to record the usual impressions: millions of Americans breaking away from reality, looking for a dream; everything in excess… When natives told me this was where it was “happening,” when they said California was the future, I was quite ready to believe them simply because I had no real hopes for the future anyway. To me, California was a place desperately lacking in the experience of limitation, a dream factory in every sense of the word. No wonder all these cults and sects were flourishing here.” —Jacob Needleman, The New Religions, 1970 “They talk about cults and they say that cults are dangerous, but all you ever actually see in the news is governments killing cults! You don’t see cults…