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The Future Sound of London - Archived 9

Rubin Farr

By Rubin Farr
in New & Upcoming Releases

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Extralife Grand Master

Extralife

Posted
Posted

If you order the cd do you get a download of all the tracks on the cd plus the extra tracks from the vinyl release or do you just get the extra vinyl tracks as a download.

Just the extra vinyl tracks as a download.

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BUNKUM Mentor

BUNKUM

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Posted

Honestly, the extra vinyl tracks are good but not mindblowing. The flow of the cd album is where it's at.

Good to hear, I always seem to prefer my FSOL on CD rather than vinyl for some reason

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purlieu Grand Master

purlieu

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FSOL works well on CD as their stuff pretty much always plays seamlessly. Not the kind of music you want to be getting up to flip sides halfway through.

 

Some thoughts I just posted over on the FSOLBoard from my first listen...

 

Ocea - from the Touched FSOL Night last year. DnBish drums with gorgeous synths. Absolutely incredible track, what an opener! Drums suggest it's probably a '90s one.
Semi Conscious Participant - choirs and beats. A short one but a palette cleanser after the opener. Nice twinkly percussion in the middle.
Silent Midnight - not very silent. Unassuming intro, goes into some lovely synth work. Those pads definitely feel early '90s to me.
Halfer - Slightly jazzy melodies that sound very '90s. Glitchy drums that sound very, very recent. Drum machine at the end is a bit older. I reckon this is an enhanced one. Nice track.
Embodied - ooh that plodding arpeggio is lovely. Flute is great, haven't heard such an overt sample in a FSOL track for a long time. Strings! What an uplifting piece.
Super Tide - this has to be an Environment 6 outtake. Lovely little piece.
Without You it's Meaningless - Breakbeats, big synth melodies. Another rich and uplifting track. Glorious.
Osaka Traveller - oh bloody hell this is brilliant. Some of the synths are reminiscent of 'Tokyo Travel', even a touch of an '80s sound to them. Nice stuttered and chopped up breaks as beats.
Slow Moving World - very pretty guitar-based ambient interlude. Both Gaz and Brian started out in guitar-based bands and I think some people downplay the frequency the instrument turns up in FSOL stuff. Probably from this century.
Propagate - ah yes, the Humanoid track from the 2017 calendar. The general response was that this track sounded more like FSOL than Humanoid, so this makes sense. This is only the second time we have actual confirmation that a FSOL track is created by only one member (Brian's other entry being 'First Death in the Family'). Nice track, although strange to hear it in a new context after gradually getting used to the calendar album. I'm going to guess it was maybe considered not acid enough for the Humanoid album.
Photographs of an Object - a brief environment. Field recordings, samples, some synth drone, bit of flute. Usual stuff. No matter how much my music improves, I never seem to be able to make environments as evocative and full of space as FSOL. Leads into..
A Constantly Changing Mind - synth arpeggios, stuttered beats that fit in well with the drums elsewhere on the album. That funky-ish guitar sample is familiar, although I can't place it. Definitely a '90s bit there though. Acoustic guitar on top. Loads of space in this track, really vast sounding.
Confirmation Bias - dark stuff, booming synths, skittering breaks. 1995? 2015? Who knows. I'd say it's certainly had some recent treatment as the mix is similar to 6.5 / Environmental / My Kingdom Re-Imagined.
These Days - synth arps, although they don't sound like those found on recent tracks. Female vocal sample sounds very '90s. Nice moody mid-tempo track. Ends on a bit of that '90s FSOL staple, the muted trumpet.
Riverbed - another track ported over from last year's calendar album. Gorgeous guitar based ambience again. Once again, going to take a while to get used to this in a different context.
Extruded - back into dark, sinister breakbeat territory again. Becomes unexpectedly dreamy with layers of synth pads and arps later on though. Interesting stuff.
Views of an Empty Sky - a new views track is always welcome. Field recordings, guitar notes, EMS squelches, violin loop? Ah, there are the piano chords, gorgeous as ever. Airy and abstract, closes the album well.

I'm wondering if the title change from FTA to Archived is based around the enhancement of older tracks and the presence of more modern ones, as neither this nor the previous volume feel or sound remotely like the earlier volumes. So many of those tracks on 1-6 (and 7, to an extent) sound like they would fit on any of the '90s albums, but there's pretty much nothing on here & 8 that would, and even 7 felt like it had its own vibe, a few recognisable tracks aside (and at least a couple of tracks are more recentish). But yeah, this doesn't feel like a collection of '90s tracks at all, but more like 'if these tracks were released today, this is what they'd sound like'.
If this was released as Environment Seven, I don't think anybody would have noticed there was '90s material in here. Also helps that I think this is the first Archive release without and material from the '90s ISDN transmissions / mix at all.

And to echo what just about everybody else has said, this is definitely the best Archive release to date.

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