27/10/08 - Environments II, Archives 5 CDs, tour?

After six CDs already this year and the first Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble CD in a few weeks, we've been spoiled. So what better to follow this up than with two more CD releases? Environments II (CDTOT62) and From The Archives Vol. 5 (CDTOT63) are available for pre-order on FSOLDigital.com, with a 'mid November' release date there, so we're probably looking at December for full shop sales (we'll confirm once we know!). Promos are floating around on eBay already.

More excitingly, Mason Bentley says simply "FSOL World Tour: standby for announcement". We'll keep you informed...

17/10/08 - Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble 1 tracklist

Here you go:

Tracklist
CD1
01. Donovan - Barabajagal (Love Is Hot)
02. Chiitra Neogy - The Perfumed Garden - The Encouragement of the Lusty Wife
03. Heaven And Earth - Feel the Spirit
04. Osibisa - Blank Ant
05. Pop Levi - Blue Honey
06. Yellow Moon Band - Entangled
07. The Earlies - Breaking Point
08. Betty Davis - If I'm in Luck (I Might Get Picked Up)
09. Mountain Machine - Mountain Machine
10. Henry Roland - After All
11. Paul Giovanni - Maypole
12. Ian Neal - Kingdom of the Birds
13. The Amorphous Androgynous - Light Beyond Sound
14. Bob Downes - Tunnels Electronic
15. Can - Flow Motion
16. The Cosmic Wizards’ Club Band - Musashi
17. Espers - Mansfield and Cyclops
18. Cranium Pie - There It Is Part 2
19. Miles Davis - Rated X
20. Psychonauts - Circles
21. Pentangle - Light Flight
22. Friends Of Dean Martinez - Wichita Lineman
23. The Amorphous Androgynous - The Lovers
24. The Amorphous Androgynous - Opus of the Black Sun

CD2
01. Tommy Graham - Sahajiya
02. Cranium Pie - Awakening of the Birds
03. Cranium Pie - Drying in the Sun
04. Nick Nicely - 49 Cigars
05. Chiitra Neogy - The Perfumed Garden - The Encouragement of the Lusty Wife
06. Donovan - Riki Tiki Tavi
07. Devendra Banhart - Lazy Butterfly
08. Mahavishnu Orchestra - You Know, You Know
09. Hariprasad Chaurasia - Manzh Khamaz Teental
10. Tim Buckley - I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain
11. The Emperor Machine - Roller Daddy
12. Mahagon - Dívka s Jablky
13. Lord Sitar - I Am the Walrus
14. Wizards of Ooze - Helga
15. Tommy James and The Shondells - Cellophane Symphony
16. Hawkwind - Silver Machine
17. Magic Carpet - The Phoenix
18. David Axelrod - The Mental Traveler
19. Werkraum - Queen Mab
20. Shweta Javeri - Heart of Darkness

15/10/08 - FSOL to play 'live' at Bloc Weekend next year

Yes, the band's first live show since the Essential Festival some ten years ago,
The Future Sound of London will be broadcasting a live performance to BLOC, a weekend festival on the west coast of England, 13th-15th March 2009. Check out more information here.

This is all very exciting news, not only because of the performance, but what it suggests. As this appears to be a live show rather than a DJ set, is there new material round the corner for them to play? Either way, with several months away, there's a lot of speculating time.

14/10/08 - Amorphous on Donovan film, Psych Bubble snippets

Mr. Cobain writes...

Always a pleasure indeed (!) to hear from the Sunshine Superman himself, 'Donovan'... so last week when the Amorphous were invited to the Hampstead premiere of a new film celebrating the life and career of said psychedelic minstrel of course we duly attended... we were regaled with over 2 hrs of stories charting this man's amazing journey. Initially hailed as 'the British Dylan', Donovan justifiably carved out his own VERY special place in the musical lexicon (and rightly so!)... with his own unique brand of zen beat psych jazz funk bohemia and that's before you get onto mystical rockfolk and excursions into eastern promise! This man's music is as vast as the cosmos he is clearly tuned to! From the Maharishi to teaching John Lennon the Dear Prudence finger picking guitar style to drug busts and forays into transcendental states to American No1s to Led Zep being his backing band its quite a story! We didn't want to ask if we were in it (cos we vaguely remember a camera ghosting around when we worked together) so we were pleasantly surprised and honored when our faces duly popped out at us from the silver screen...
So here's a snippet where we hang with THE MaaaaaaN himself and work on a new rendition of a track that had previously appeared on the Isness called 'Divinity'!!

After the film Don's wife hugged Gaz and thanked him for the burdock root he had thrust into Don's hand as he climbed into a black cab leaving the Galaxial Pharmaceutical (our studio of the time). Don had looked bemused at the sight of the muddy root vegetable in his hand and so Gaz had said '"your wife will know what to do with it!". Well it seems she did... as she told him last week she dried it and put it on the altar and has been munching a small amount DAILY ever since and as you'll see she looks wonderful... (Now could that be the burdock root we wonder ha ha!)

Incidentally we have licensed a couple of Donovan trax for the upcoming 'A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind Vol 1- Cosmic Space Music' album which is a DJ journey that we have compiled and mixed that will be released on Nov 24th on Platipus Records. This has taken well over a year to bring together... such is the complexity (and insanity) and (did anyone mention) bureauocracy of licensing departments and record companies.
Anyway TIS DONE and tis sounding grande and charts over 40 years of psychedelic cosmic space music and IN THE PROCESS reclaims the psychedelic word from the annuls of history and the lingo of marketing men to return it to its original and grander original transformative origins to show how the spirit is truly vibrant and alive NOW NOW!! HOW could it not be with the triple helix in development an all!!
From Mahavishnu Orchestra to Miles Davis to Can to Devendra Banhart to Lord Sitar to the maaAN Donovan to Amorphous and too many others to mention (over 40 tracks) tis truly a sonic feast!! We are currently in talks to host events on the Monstrous Bubble theme so keep it locked in an incredibly loose way!!

Multidimensional love

the Automobile Association

08/10/08 - Monstrous press release

Lots more news on the Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble release for you all!

From http://www.electricroulette.com/2008/10/amorphous-andro.html

"Are you aware of Amorphous Androgynous? You should be for two reasons. One - We've spoke about 'em before and, Two - It's the mighty Future Sound of London doing stuff under a different name. Now, if that's all news to you, don't worry, we ain't gonna get all Record Shop on you. It's cool. If you're interested, pull up a chair and we'll fill you in. Do what we do and borrow the information and pass it on like you knew about it all along.

Anyway. Amorphous Androgynous are Gaz Cobain and Brian Douglas of FSOL, moving away from the electronics and into psychedelic cosmic prog rock. Of course, it's not that clear cut as the two bands cross over... I mean, it's not like FSOL never used live instruments and AA certainly stick their sitars through the circuits... but FSOL don't feel as 'live' as Amorphous. And it's 'live' where we're at...

Amorphous Andorgynous are releasing the brilliantly titled ‘A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind’, which for my money, sounds as tripped out as any Gong release! I like it! Well, the LP is an ISDN show that Amorphous Androgynous broadcast on XFM and KISS FM, has become something of a legend between fans and it extremely hard to come by these days even on the web.

Now, it's set for release as a double mix CD on December 1st (via Platipus Records) and the mix is set to re-generate the excitement around the Cosmic Space Music concept and finally make the music available to the fans while aiming to re-create the essence of the mix... essentially, a DJ trip spanning over 4 decades of genre-busting music featuring artists such as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis, Donovan, Devendra Banhart, Tim Buckley, Hawkwind, Magic Carpet, Can, Emperor Machine, Pop Levi, The Earlies, The Psychonauts, Betty Davis and more. Whaddalineup!

‘Mostrous Psychedelic Bubble’ will form a series of mix albums with the next one compiled and mixed by FSOL (Future Sound of London). Get that!"


No news on a tracklist - will this match a previous mix or will it be exclusive? - but it's definitely out on November 24th and the press is spreading.

Rich from Platipus adds these snippets:

"It's actually still 24th Nov for physcial CD release ...... Dec 1st - that was just a press thing. CD should be available a couple of weeks before this exclusively from our site www.platipus.com, and hopefully as digital from http://stores.d-igital.eu/platipus/. As of 25th Nov it should be available digitally from Itunes and the usual digital sites."

And RE: the second mix in the series: "well I'm yet to get a tracklist from Brian, the AA mix took 2 years to license the tracks, I'm hoping the FSOL one will be out before the summer 2009"

So there you go!