purlieu

Good to see some Sawako upthread, she's one of my favourite 12k artists. As is Fourcolour... Hmm, what else. Logreybeam's debut on Type is wonderful. Love this skeletal version of Danny Elfman's Beetlejuice theme Matt Rösner's debut album: I do love that clicks & cuts / DSP era, still waiting a very much overdue revival. And a couple of tracks from unlikely artists:

It was probably in this thread that I asked if there were any alternatives to BC when the Epic buyout happened and there was nothing, so it's interesting to see that there are some around now. Although it'll take a big shift to get large numbers away from BC, I'll probably get my material on alternatives so I have options for the future. Songtradr obviously have vested interest in areas that go against a lot of what BC was about, but at the same time they might also be sensible enough to follow Epic and realise that it's so successful because of what it does, and not make (m)any changes.

When it was released, it seems like Rituals was recut from the full 60 minute album, and for some reason that outro to Time Cone got its own index and everything else was knocked out of place by one track with 'ext tx' given as the additional one at the end. I had a brief chat with Brian about it and it all got corrected so that the Time Cone outro now gets its own title and all the other titles are now correct as per the original release. The exact indexing is a few seconds out from the earlier version in a few places, but the actual material is identical.

Dead Giveaway is giving me definite Brian Dougans vibes - I'm thinking Humanoid tracks like 'Tiny Machine Birth'. My guess for the FSOL/Humanoid contribution.

I reckon we'll get Untilted, Quaristice and Oversteps reissues next year. Putin's sad, his £150 original pressings won't be worth as much after that.

They're '91-'93 tracks. 1. The last I heard is 2" Tape Reels is still on the cards, but honestly, given that this is the officially announced/rumoured list, and I'm aware of at least another 10 projects that are hush-hush at the moment, the chances of everything ever coming out are... well, slim to say the least. Honestly, there's so much material these days that I'm in a constant state of feeling like I'm playing catch-up. 2. I've chatted to Brian about it on more than one occasion. He informs me there is a plan behind everything, although is never clear what that plan is. I'll give my own theorising. It's kind of known within the fanbase that the album finalisation, artwork, etc. is all done by Brian for FSOL and Gaz for Amorphous these days. Gaz is very big on pop culture and making a huge statement, which is why the only interviews and articles in the last nine years have all been related to Amorphous, and why that new album is taking forever, there's been a multi-path single before it, etc. Brian, on the other hand, isn't into that side of things at all, and prefers to let the music speak for itself - if you look at his '80s stuff, he did tons of material as Zeebox and didn't even consider releasing it until 20 years later, when it was just put out as Zeebox 1-3, and similar for the Humanoid Sessions stuff. I actually mentioned the idea of a big "follow-up to Dead Cities" to Brian and he wasn't remotely interested in the idea, as he's not into the whole spectacle thing. So he's happy to just put stuff out as it comes along, which is why the Environments series (after the first volume) began by taking old archived tracks, half finished old tracks recently completed, and a few new pieces, and making them into consistent albums, as opposed to the disjointed early From the Archives albums. Then the series gradually shifted towards newly recorded tracks, and at the same time the Archives series began to focus more on a combination of old tracks, reworked old demos and outtakes from recent albums (like the early Environments). It probably also explains why there are FSOL tracks that sound like Humanoid and vice-versa: I think things just come along and get slotted into whatever project they fit most comfortably in at that moment. When Environment Five and Life in Moments came along, which are audibly the most Gaz-heavy of the FSOLDigital-era releases, Gaz was talking on Facebook about being excited about doing the next 'proper' FSOL album. And then he started work on the next Amorphous album and didn't really mention FSOL again. So I think what will happen is if/when they get to a stage where they're both 100% focused on recording and promoting a new FSOL album, it will be its own thing, no series, etc, and Gaz will be out there making huge statements about it. But while Gaz is spending so much time on Amorphous and his own hippy lifestyle stuff away from music (and, annoyingly, downplaying FSOL - he said something in 2021 about "one day we'll do a new FSOL album" as if there weren't new albums coming out every six months), leaving Brian to 'lead' FSOL, the albums will just carry on coming out as Environments. They clearly won't sell as well as anything with a new name on it, but I don't think that's an issue - sales are apparently pretty healthy and have been broadly increasing with each release. When the first two volumes of Environment Seven came out as Rituals and A Space of Partial Illumination, they seemed to get way more attention and positive comments than the previous volumes, which really does suggest that the psychology linking separate titles to 'proper' albums is a thing. But I don't think it makes enough of an impact to necessitate a change (as evidenced by 7.003's title [Where All is Ending] not being mentioned on the cover or Bandcamp). I do see people still complaining that the Environments albums are just cast-offs or leftovers (as well as someone on Discogs claiming that even the original Environments was a new re-recording of the 1994 album - it's not), so the lack of clarity is almost certainly off-putting to some. On the other hand, I think the complete lack of promotion is a big part of the current relative obscurity. I mean, Life in Moments and Music for 3 Books don't have series titles, and haven't received any more attention than the Environments albums. They're technically compilations, but anyone who saw them would consider them - especially the former - as new music, as there's no hint that some of the material was released digitally beforehand. I still come across people saying "whatever happened to FSOL?" etc., so yeah... they could sell more if they wanted to. But Brian's not into the interviews and promotion end of things, so until Gaz is 100% FSOL-focused again for a while, that's probably not going to be happening. And it's a shame, because Environments 4, Environment Five, Life in Moments, the Environment Six trilogy, Music for 3 Books, Music from Calendars and the Environment Seven trilogy all have very distinct styles and moods, as individual as their '90s albums, and were they all just put out as standalone albums with their own title and a little bit of promo, they'd have been warmly received new albums without any of this controversy, or without me needing to type long messages like this every now and then.

Christ I just realised I haven't even listened to this yet. Didn't expect to reach Burial Boredom but apparently it's happened.

Weirdly, it turned up on the Dead Cities tour of all places. A two minute cut of that version (with all the live watermarks and stuff) was on the very first digital release of From the Archives 3, although it disappeared soon after. 'Reasonable Aquiries' is the highlight here, a gorgeous Ephidrina-style epic. I think people are going to really like this album.

There's some gorgeous stuff on this - despite the write-up, it overall feels much closer to '92/'93 era, releases like Fuzzy Logic, Accelerator and Tales of Ephidrina. A weird ethereal atmosphere despite it mostly being four-to-the-floor stuff. Only the Smart Systems track feels properly rave-friendly.

Oh yeah, I remember this one. It's not too bad. First track has some nice textures. Didn't really excite me, though.

I could never get into the side-project albums, thought they were alright but pretty bland. Maybe I'll revisit them one day.

There are some nice bits, but the description of it being some improvs on old keyboards is very, very apt. Any of these tracks would be fine on an album, but as a whole album it's very lacking. That said, I appreciate Geir's thing of each album taking a different approach, some being denser and more composed, some being stripped back and spontaneous. He remains interesting. But I doubt I'll be buying this particular one.

Great to see it back in print, but crikey, those are practically Discogs prices already. Also astonishing how prices change - I built up a bit of a vinyl collection that I had to sell off about 10 years ago and had absolutely no problem finding an original of this for a perfectly reasonable price at the time.

My favourite Namlook record. Still feels slightly odd that Silent State are vinyl-only, given that Pete very vocally expressed his dislike of the format and released exclusively on CD. Why not give these albums the reissue treatment in the format the artist preferred as well? God, I've just seen the second hand prices of the Air I and Silence I reissues.

I think Bill and Jimmy were, and continue to, incredibly brilliant and inventive artists. As The KLF, they only actually made about 10 tracks, which they just fucked around with in various styles, which fit their modus operandi at the time - they weren't aiming to be great songwriters, but they were exploring the form and structure of dance music. I think the stadium house singles are fun, and Chill Out is still fantastic. The rest of The White Room is pretty naff, and even enjoying the singles requires a particular level of appreciation of the ridiculousness of the rave/pop crossover stuff at the time, which they took to its logical conclusion. The music was just a part of the whole KLF product/experience I suppose. A lot of the time they're more fun to read and talk about than listen to. I mean to be fair, they didn't do anything at all with their most famous names for more than two decades, and even then their return was as The JAMS and didn't include any new music. They were happy to let their stuff exist in its own time. It still seems weird that they willingly put their stuff on streaming services.

This is just another disc of fan remixes, right?

Yeah, Environmental was recorded at the same time as 6 and 6.5. Brian considers it the third part of Six.

Future Testaments - Pure ISDN, chunky live drums and bass guitar, muted trumpet. Layers of weird noises swirling around. 303 comes in at the end. Resting Point - Rain, birds, wordless male voice, warm drone - organ and reversed guitars? Suits the title perfectly an a nice breather after an intense opener. Beautiful. A Desolate Stretch of Night Road - Owls calling. This is a bit brighter sounding than the name suggests. Backwards guitar and synth textures over a sedate beat. Bells from 'Eggshell' appear. Gorgeous synth pads appear in the second half. This is really stunning. Where All is Ending - Continues the warm, enveloping atmosphere. Some tabla from 'Life Form Ends'. Birds speeding up. Windscreen wipers. Some stuff from 6.5, backwards guitar and flute. Flute from 'Serengeti'. Light percussion from one of the '94 transmissions. This is like a history of FSOL minced into an ambient mulch. I think this was part of the warmup show for the last Touched Night. Gorgeous stuff. Overwrite - First appearance of the more recent IDM type sound, drum machine with a lot of glitches. The beats are sparse and slow, though, fitting in with the earlier tracks, and there's a lot of texture going on behind things. I'm Eating Here - This was on one of the Touched Music nights, chopped up 'Mountain Goat' guitar with live drums and bass. Wonderful synth pads. Yet another stunner. That fucking title though. Echoes of Inherent Sense - Melancholy ambient guitar interlude. A Space of Subsequent Familiar - Thick wads of synths, old analogue drum machine, carries on the warm atmospherics of the album. Beautiful twinkly synth melodies near the end. Drift Incline - Merges seamlessly from the last track. Plucky synth arps, building up in intensity. Breakbeat! Tense atmosphere here, adding a refreshing darkness. Ends with Deuter field recordings from Lifeforms Path 4. Trichome - Weird spoken voices. Sparse glitchy beat, dark brooding synth melodies. Quite E6-ish in sound. One of the synths is heavily reminiscent of 'Northern Point', I wonder if it was recorded at a similar time. Absence of Solution - Another seamless mix, this could easily be part two of the last track. Beats build up, then really atmospheric synth pads. Violin, some familiar field recordings, loads more unidentified textures in the background. Feels like I'm saying the same thing about each track here, and there's definitely a sense of consistency between the tracks that the last two albums haven't had, but at the same time each clearly has its own identity. Kwaahu - Seems to be a Native American word. And we're back in ISDN territory again, live drums. String melody, tuned percussion and FM synths, reminiscent of Heads of Agreement. Piano, oboe. Cor, this is dramatic. Another tiny bit of Lifeforms Path 4, that track seems to be scattered throughout this album. I wonder if any of this originated in the Lifeforms Path re-recording sessions. That's a very strong end to the vinyl edition. Bonus track time. Ruler - Weird groovy jazzy drums. Synths, textures, keeping in line with the rest of the record yet totally different. Awkward Shape - Suddenly into pitch black ISDN territory, growling synths, timestreched drums, cavernous reverb. Enjoyably gnarly. One Solar Radius - Starts with silence which, combined with it not appearing on the printed tracklist, suggests this was a fairly last minute addition. Which makes sense as it sounds nothing like the rest of the album at all. Bright, bouncy, twinkly IDM. It's lovely and actually works as a bit of a palate cleaner at the end, but it's bizarrely different to the previous hour. So the issue I had with the previous two volumes of the trilogy was the comparative lack of ambience and texture - they were maybe slightly more conventional IDM and breaks type stuff - but this really harks back to Environmental from A:E:V in its use of field recordings and synth textures as a general background throughout the whole thing. I'm really into textural stuff and this delivers in spades. It's heavier on harmonic elements - no big melodies but definitely much more in the way of rich synths - than the previous two, and has some very emotive stuff. It's not as dark as the description suggested, but by combining the chunky beats of the last two albums with the textures of some of the 2017-2020 material, it's definitely reminiscent of pre-Dead Cities. It's probably the densest, most detailed production of any FSOLDigital-era release. There's lots going on so play it loud! The more IDM-leaning tracks are a world away from the Humanoid-esque clatter of the last two volumes. And every track runs to what seems like its natural length, there's none of the slightly-too-short sketches that have sometimes turned up lately. One thing I did notice, there's no obvious Gaz-written Amorphous-style track here. 'Kwaahu's sense of scale and use of acoustic instruments is the closest, but there's nothing like 'Hopiate' or 'All This Has Happened Before' here at all. I'd say there's actually quite a parallel with the E6 trilogy here - the first volume has a dark, almost claustrophobic vibe, the second is more varied and possibly slightly disjointed, the third is more homogenous, subtler and heavily textural. From the tone of all that I think you can tell that I enjoyed this. Going to have to give it a few more listens first, obviously, but I think it has potential to be my favourite FSOL record of the last decade. Depending on how well it holds up to E4, it might even end up being my favourite all new album (ie not E2) since Dead Cities.

Download available now!

Yeah, the 12" is a straight up re-press but the digital has two unheard bonuses. Get the feeling they're probably going to try and get the whole J&P/Debut era back in print at this rate, which is pretty cool.

"Going deeper and darker than the previous two albums, the flavour here harping back with memories of the groups 90s sounding pre “Dead Cities” album. On this release they have swamp laden electronics dripping from cavernous breakbeats weaving in and out of otherworldly chords and strings firmly back in the driving seat." 1 Future Testaments (4:13) 2 Resting Point (2:16) 3 A Desolate Stretch of Night Road (5:50) 4 Where All Is Ending (4:37) 5 Overwrite (4:11) 6 I'm Eating Here (4:01) 7 Echos of Inherent Sense (1:21) 8 A Space in the Subsequent Familiar (4:23) 9 Drift Incline (4:52) 10 Trichome (4:19) 11 Absence of Solution (4:23) 12 Kwaahu (5:02) CD Bonus Tracks 13 Ruler (4:14) 14 Awkward Shape (4:04) 15. One Solar Radius (4:24) LP time: 49:28, CD/download time 62:10.

Love this one. Has to be the most prominent Karl's been in years, heaps of lyrics and up front and centre. Drift was awesome but his contributions were fairly minimal, he's giving me '90s UW vibes here. The bit where it goes into the melodic vocals from the a capella around five minutes is a real highlight. Fuck the prices, though. Other artists can put out an LP for less than £25, there's really no justification for these prices, especially given that the b-side is just an a capella and an instrumental.

Given how many releases there have been I'm amazed there are any left to use. Apparently the album is titled Environment 7.003: Where All is Ending, only the title isn't on the sleeve or Bandcamp. There are two ways to live your life: the easy way or the FSOL way.

Surprises: ISDN homage art No title beyond Environment 7.003, after the past two had proper names 'I'm Eating Here' up there with the least FSOL titles.

Pleasantly surprised by this. It's very much one of those albums that sounds like a Greatest Hits only it contains all new material. The majority of his directions over the years are represented in one way or another. Actually really appreciate this, because I'm always more into albums that have loads of different approaches and styles on them.