Boards of Canada thrive on making themselves scarce. A duo of brothers from rural Scotland, Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, the group has been releasing electronic music since the mid-1990s — music that eludes most standard pop notions of electronica and has built a fiercely dedicated following among fellow musicians and producers.

It’s usually amorphous, not crisp; it doesn’t aim for the dance floor. Bits of melody or rhythm, or stray human voices, surface, only to dissolve into disorienting ambiences; even brief tracks are eventful. They work on their own time frame; the new Boards of Canada album, “Tomorrow’s Harvest” (Warp), is their first release since 2006, and it’s rich in moody suspense, with even fewer bucolic moments than past releases.

The brothers stay largely private; they have not performed since 2001. The following exchange — their only United States interview for this album — took place via e-mail, and has been slightly edited.

Q. Six and a half years — what took you so long?

MIKE SANDISON We spent some time overseas and then we were busy expanding our studio space back here in Scotland. A couple of years ago we decided to start collating and cataloging all our early recordings, just for ourselves really, to know that we could tidy it all up and hand it on to our kids someday, but there are literally thousands of tracks going way back into the ’80s. It’s a huge task, and this just seemed to eat up time. We’ve been working on new music all the time throughout this, so we have a lot of material to wade through.