Sunday 9 March 2008

09/03/08 - even more new releases! (and a very old one)










That's right, after years of nothing, they're continuing to pile on the new music. Remember the Five Six Five track from the Freeze CD, which claimed to be from Environments II? Well, that wasn't a typing error. Here's the cover. It's described as "Where Environments 1 left off, the journey continues through dark head storms to green grass valleys future and past", covering "3 parts 59 minutes". Coming soon, this'll probably be a digital download. We know nothing of release dates, CD releases, tracklist or even whether this is old or new material. But it's pretty exciting, no? And that cover's a lot better than the awful Environments 1 cover, which we're still hoping will get an update before its CD release. Even more interesting, is a new Yage album. Yes, that alias which gave us jazzy house and minimal techno in 1992 is back. And sounds nothing like it used to. The title track to "The Woodlands Of Old" is available on the band's MySpace, and sounds much like The Amorphous Androgynous with less of an eastern influence. The band describe the album as a "New collection of tracks from FSOL's engineer/producer Yage. 19 songs 1hr 5mins". Another unexpected release. There's also a nice, professional looking cover for From The Archives Volume 4 on the page now, leading us to believe a CD release can't be that far off. This time just showing the Electronic Brain, without Shauneen Ta, it fits in stylistically with the rest of the series.


Now, in fitting with current trends, for every hundred new releases, we seem to stumble across an old Humanoid release. This Japanese import from 1988 features the same tracks as the UK version, but entirely exclusive artwork, on a special 3" CD. Thanks to (RONTXO) for finding this and for the images!
And that's about it for the minute. We're working on a nice big discography/lyrics & song info update soon to get all this information in order!

Tuesday 4 March 2008

04/03/08 - ExtremeMusic tracks

It's been discussed on the forums for a while, but it's finally time to make the information known. If you check out http://www.extrememusic.com/ you'll find a heap of apparently unreleased FSOL material. Under 'X Series', in the 'Composers' section, there are a number of pieces by Dougans/Cobain. These tracks are pieces the band have hired out for commercial use, and are not available for sale, but the full tracks can all be streamed on the site. Not is all as it seems (typically), as many of the tracks are available on the Archive series anyway. Here's a brief description of what's there...

From 'Acid Breaks':
Jaw Breaker (04.32) - actually an edit of 'Speed Ball' from Archive 4
Roid Rage (03.26) - electric guitars and funky breaks
Big Max (04.20) - acoustic guitars and breakbeats
Fly & Mash (04.52) - pre-Accelerator acid
Skunk Junk (03.25) - '5 Months 5 Acres' from Archive 4
Touching Bass (04.13) - 'G Eletro' from Dead Cities era ISDN show
Swelter Skelter (04.42) - we can only think this is a very old track, hip hop brass stabs, wah guitar and squelchy breakbeats

From 'Deep Chill':
Bubble & Peak (05.22) - 'Lizzard Crawl' from Archive 1
Ice Stage (03.44) - edit of 'Cellular Control' from Archive 2
Unreality Control (04.20) - dark, minimal trip-hop
Acid Drop (04.45) - strange guitar/FX/sax soundscape

From 'Dark Trance':
Sable Empire (03.26) - sounds like an Intelligent Communication era piece
Dearth Control (04.03) - 'Plasmatik' from Archive 4
Airless Whisper (04.20) - minimal techno
Blindside Bizarro (03.50) - breaks/trance

From 'Psychedelic Air':
Eerie Query (02.46) - dark ambient drones
Polar Rinse (03.41) - strings and sub-bass rumbles
Tinted Love (02.07) - piano piece, can't work out where it's from despite its familiarity
Stark Tower (04.55) - synth ambience
Dead Ringer (01.58) - dramatic orchestral piece

There are some very interesting pieces here - Airless Whisper, Polar Rinse, Dead Ringer and Swelter Skelter aren't anything like the FSOL we know, and it's nice to hear a full studio version of G Eletro. And they're available to listen to for free on the site, and to license out for use on films &c. - keep your ears open, you might hear one on a documentary or trailer today!