purlieu

The totally new art style and return to proper album titles (while still within the Environments series) really suggests to me this might be quite different, it almost feels like a new era.

So much to unpack with this cover. The art looks totally unlike any other FSOL cover to date. Buggy is very much not around these days, meaning there's been a real diversity in sleeve designs of late. This is a really bizarre one though. Rituals seems to be the title, with e7.001 as the subtitle identifying it as part of the Environment 7 trilogy, which very much makes it an album with its own title, for the first time since Dead Cities, arguably. e7.002 is finished and already has a title too (a very different one to this), so it seems that titles are very much a thing they're interested in doing again. No tracklist yet, but a few tracks believed to be coming from the Environment Seven trilogy (knowing them they probably won't turn up now0: Northern Point An unnamed track that opens this mix by Brian's brother A piano & string interpretation of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A, featuring Morven Bryce on violin, played on a 2020 Touched Mixlr FSOL Night show. A breaksy track called 'Rituals', played on the Touched Music FSOL Night show last July. I'm looking forward to this a lot. Some of the other recent releases have been good but just haven't quite had that fully rounded FSOL album experience, I'm sure this will though.

CD and digital editions will be expanded with bonus tracks, as with past RSD releases.

LP coming for Record Store Day. CD, digital and further LP copies will ship from FSOLDigital the week after. This is the first 'proper' new FSOL album since the Environmental disc of Archived : Environmental : Views which was initially a RSD release five years ago. What's really interesting here is that the cover and blurb seem to just be calling it Rituals, as part of the Environments series, which basically makes it the first FSOL album with its own standalone title since Dead Cities. No tracklist yet, but a few tracks known to be coming from the Environment Seven trilogy: Northern Point An unnamed track that opens this mix by Brian's brother A piano & string interpretation of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A, featuring Morven Bryce on violin A breaksy track called 'Rituals', played on the Touched Music FSOL Night show last July.

Can't believe just how long this is taking to come out. I remember the "30th anniversary album next year, then a new album straight after!" enthusiasm in 2018. Four years later and we're yet to get either. Fingers crossed those reissues are going to be good. Paul talks about vinyl a lot in there (and, judging on a Twitter conversation I had with him a few years ago, seems to be of the incredibly inaccurate opinion that nobody buys CDs anymore), but I'd really love some nice 2CD versions with all the b-sides and some unreleased pieces. Orbital albums flow so brilliantly that they just seem to make more sense on CD than vinyl.

Does Gier even send out review copies? A lot of the Biophon releases seem a bit under the radar.

Cheers, glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, the past few years have been pretty difficult to follow for all but the most hardened fans. One of the aims of this blog was to get it all arranged in my own head as I'm behind on recent releases. It kind of worked in that respect.

And a wrap-up. An End of Sorts Well, it’s taken me almost a year, but I’ve reached the end. When I started this blog, I had a lot of thoughts going around in my head, and I was hoping writing all this would help me clear them out. And I think it’s worked. After all this in depth analysis, I’m really looking forward to being able to just listen to my favourite band again and enjoy their music for what it is. It’s been incredibly interesting, following their music from the earliest days right up to the present. Although I’ve certainly listened to some things in order before, I’ve never done a fully chronological play through like this before (and I almost certainly won’t do again!). Being able to hear every release, transmission and performance in context, with accompanying quotes where relevant, has enabled me to understand and appreciate Brian and Gaz’s music more than ever, and revealed some interesting things that I’d never even considered when I started this blog. I might have thought I knew everything there was to know before this, but I’ve learned so much from the process. It’s also allowed me to reassess a lot of their music. With a lot of stuff going on in recent years, including some radical changes in sound, a ramped up release rate, some negativity on the FSOLBoard, the fanbase shift from the board to Facebook, having to deal with the nonsense Gaz writes online, and – particularly – my own mental health problems, before starting this blog I had begun to wonder if I was really a big FSOL fan still. I’d maybe talked myself into thinking I liked some releases less than I do for various reasons (largely due to an excessive idolisation of the 1993/1994 material), and that, combined with one or two recent releases I’m slightly less fond of and the lack of many conventional albums in recent years had just soured my enjoyment a bit. At this point, I feel much, much more positive about the band, their music and their future. Which is a huge relief in itself. This has also led me to really enjoy some records in years. Although I always knew it was great, I found a new love for Dead Cities while writing the blog. After so many releases and transmissions with a particular sound, the slightly starker, more melodically beautiful and melancholic sound of the album absolutely resonated with me in a way it hadn’t done is as long as I can remember. It was really like discovering the album for the first time again. I had very similar experiences with Environments Five and Six and particularly Archived Environmental Views, which has now become one of my favourite FSOL albums. And the re-recordings have really been a source of some of the band’s best material in recent years which, along with Music for 3 Books, have been excellent albums in an era defined by tracks and mixes, which I find generally less satisfying (although not as much as certain FSOLBoard members!). I’ve even discovered an bunch of material I really like on an album I’d previously considered not my thing, The Cartel Vol. 2. With Environment Seven just around the corner, I’m enthusiastically awaiting some wonderful new material… Not everything I’ve taken away from the experience has been positive. The first three From the Archives albums are patchier than I remember – despite a lot of great tracks on them – and, although I still adore the 2002 mispress version of The Isness, on the whole I’ve found my opinion on most of the later Amorphous material has dropped a little. It has led me to wonder whether my initial love for Alice in Ultraland and The Peppermint Tree was more to do with the lack of new Dougans/Cobain material at the time than my genuine love of the music. My favourite FSOL and FSOL-related releases, as of 25th January 2022: Lifeforms Environments II Dead Cities Environments 4 Archived : Environmental : Views Environment Five ISDN My Kingdom The Isness (2002 Mispress) Cascade 2020 Environment Six From the Archives Vol. 9 Blackhill Transmitter From the Archives Vol. 7 Lifeforms Paths Music for 3 Books Last but not least, thank you to everybody who's read along, and given me feedback. I hope you enjoyed this, and maybe even learned something! It's been a labour of love, and a difficult one at times, but knowing that other people have enjoyed it to has given me the strength to keep on writing when I'm had one of my 'why the fuck am I spending all this time on this?' moments (they happened far more often than you might think). And with that, this is done. Until I remember something I’ve forgotten in a few days. I’ll keep the blog updated with new releases as and when they come along. With around seven more planned for this year that shouldn’t be too long…

Extra-curricular activities, then. Some obscure material and probably a few things you never knew: Library Music Soundtracks Unreleased tracks and scrapped records Artworks EBV & FSOLDigital And, finally, checking off the various little missing pieces and corrections I've noted down over the last year: The track from the Athens show with Gaz singing is called 'Welcome'. Homeboy's Sunshine & Brick from 1989. Mention of the 30th anniversary reissue of Earthbeat. DPTV track on EBS5 identified - Daniel Pemberton TV Orchestra. With overdubs from Brian. A mystery Amorphous flyer. Immortal & MPB double pack. Another Amorphous gig where they didn't bother promoting it and fans missed out. Mention of The Otherness mispress featuring The Isness on the disc. 20th birthday alternate take stream added to Tales of Ephidrina. PNG / Stolen Documents RSD 7". Original longer version of Considered. Another Stakker remix. A reluctant attempt to write about a track I was involved in.

Aaand, this is it... ACID TIME Humanoid - 7 Songs Touched Music FSOL Night 6, 12/11/21 Another Mixlr night intended to launch... FSOLDigital Presents Mind Maps 2 My favourite of the Controlled Vistas and Mind Maps so far. More acid... Humanoid - sT8818r Humanoid ...and the first ever full length Humanoid radio mix to promote it. Humanoid - De:tuned Records Guest Mix, We Are Various, 03/12/21 And ending on what is probably the strongest run of compilation tracks and remixes in the band's history. 2021 remixes and compilation tracks. That's not actually it, though, as I do have a list of omissions to work through later today, plus a brief look at extra-curricular activities (library music, NFTs, EBV) and, following that, a final post to sum up what I've learned from the whole experience. But in terms of the overall story, we're at the end.

Just about reaching the home straight today, with last summer's music... The Future Sound of London - We Have Explosive 2021 I didn't listen to this one that much last year, largely because most of my FSOL listening was focused on the blog, so this was a wonderful reminder of how utterly fucking brilliant this album is... The Future Sound of London - Accelerator (30th Anniversary Edition) Sound quality vs. artistic intent here. The Amorphous Androgynous - The World is Full of Plankton Fairly inconsequential 10" EP. FSOLDigital Present Mind Maps And with the Controlled Vista trilogy complete, a new series of Touched Music-focused mix CDs begins... Touched Music FSOL Night 5, 25/06/21 And a new mix to promote that mix's release.

Some odds and ends today. 2020 remixes and compilation tracks FSOLDigital Presents 2021 Calendar Album Some utterly incredible tracks on this one. -and now I cross the one year line, with every remaining entry being something released within the last 12 months- The Future Sound of London - Music for 3 Books Technically just a compilation, but in actuality, a really great album in its own right. FSOL / FSOLDigital - Music from Calendars 2017-2020 A compilation I helped curate. Humanoid - Orfan Atmosphere EP And a brief, somewhat overlooked EP featuring some of my favourite Humanoid material.

Yeah, I love the fact that you never really know what his next album is going to be like. In the past few years he's done spectral eastern European folk ambient, ambient techno with spoken word samples, field recording-based ambience, sketches for synths and field recordings, mangled Beethoven recordings and now early analogue gear techno.

Yeah, immediately happy to say it's definitely his best album since leaving Touch, really brilliant.

The Amorphous Androgynous – A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble (Exploding in Your Mind) Presents We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal Remixes The Amorphous Androgynous & Peter Hammill – We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal Y'know, I quite like the song, but no piece of music can stand up to 90 minutes of reworkings without getting really bloody tedious. I don't think I'll be listening to it again in a good long while.

The Future Sound of London - Cascade 2020 Haven't listened to this in a year or so, God it's good isn't it?

A trilogy of EPs today. Humanoid goes dark... Humanoid - KAAGE EP Yage returns... Yage - Pygmy And Humanoid goes light... Humanoid - Future: Turned EP Listening to them in such close succession I'm amazed at just how different those two Humanoid EPs are. Also rediscovered how much I love the Yage record. More Yage please chaps.

I've done this before, and then ended up just selecting "hide from my collection" on most of the albums. I have 830 hidden items now hah.

A brief diversion for a re-release... Mental Cube - Mental Cube And then the Controlled Vista trilogy. FSOLDigital Presents A Controlled Vista A Controlled Vista 2.7 MiniPack 1 A Controlled Vista 5.6 MiniPack 2 Having already dismantled the idea of doing conventional album releases with the Environments, Archives, Calendar Albums and re-recordings, FSOL decide to go a step further and start creating ISDN transmission-style mixes of new tracks and releasing them as single files. Are they mixes? Albums? Compilations? Who knows. I've approached them in the way I have the transmissions, though.

Here's one I still struggle with a little. Couldn't quite find the words to explain why, but this album doesn't sit right with me at all... 2020 Calendar Album

Rounding out the decade! 2019 Remixes and compilation tracks And a new radio mix, away from the Electric Brain Storms series, with a very different sound and feel... The Future Sound of London - Planet Earth, Chill Lover Radio, 26/12/19

Brian brings the IDMzzzz on the first Humanoid album in 30 years. Humanoid - Built by Humanoid And the 12th and final Electric Brain Storm... The Future Sound of London - Electric Brain Storms Document 12, Soundcloud, 30/12/18

The re-recording series continues... Yage 2019

Third and final (so far) in the series, and the last FSOLDigital book published to date. Ramblings of a Madman Vol. 3