The Future Sound of London thread / song-by-song blog

You did a fantastic job with this and have done the band such a huge service in the process. Well done, @purlieu.

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.

This was a heroic effort @purlieu, bravo!  Just been catching up with the last few posts.  Thank you for all the work.

Thank you, and to everyone else! It was a hell of an experience, even if I did have a fortnight of "what the fuck do I listen to now?" anxiety afterwards.

I'm hoping someone will do a similar thing for other artists but other superfans are losers.

  On 2/18/2022 at 9:14 PM, purlieu said:

Thank you, and to everyone else! It was a hell of an experience, even if I did have a fortnight of "what the fuck do I listen to now?" anxiety afterwards.

I'm hoping someone will do a similar thing for other artists but other superfans are losers.

Autechre

Rituals tracklist:

A1. Hopiate
A2. Triple Circles
A3. Somewhere Outside
A4. Ritualised
A5. Time Cone
A6. Solar Signals
B1. Sand to Ocean
B2. Far Seeker
B3. Slowly Slipped Away
B4. Visibility Accumulation
B5. I Am Error
B6. Colour Primary
B7. Time Passed the Sun

No 'Northern Point' or 'Sonata in A', although these might well appear on 7.002, 7.003 or even the extended CD version. 'Rituals' may have been renamed to 'Ritualised'. I believe the track from the Alan Dougans mix is among the ones listed here.

  On 3/6/2022 at 3:17 PM, purlieu said:

Rituals tracklist:

A1. Hopiate
A2. Triple Circles
A3. Somewhere Outside
A4. Ritualised
A5. Time Cone
A6. Solar Signals
B1. Sand to Ocean
B2. Far Seeker
B3. Slowly Slipped Away
B4. Visibility Accumulation
B5. I Am Error
B6. Colour Primary
B7. Time Passed the Sun

No 'Northern Point' or 'Sonata in A', although these might well appear on 7.002, 7.003 or even the extended CD version. 'Rituals' may have been renamed to 'Ritualised'. I believe the track from the Alan Dougans mix is among the ones listed here.

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Any idea on the release date for this, @purlieu?

LP on Record Store Day, 23rd April. CD and digital with four bonus tracks on 29th April. Further vinyl copies should be shipping from FSOLDigital at that point too. Digital bonus tracks:

14. Ebb Flow
15. Avoiding Mirrors
16. Clone A9
17. Only in Memories

  On 4/1/2022 at 12:16 PM, purlieu said:

LP on Record Store Day, 23rd April. CD and digital with four bonus tracks on 29th April. Further vinyl copies should be shipping from FSOLDigital at that point too. Digital bonus tracks:

14. Ebb Flow
15. Avoiding Mirrors
16. Clone A9
17. Only in Memories

Super, thanks. Can’t wait  

LPs are out now. Literally no promo on the band's social media haha. Can confirm that the first track on here, 'Rituals' from one of last year's Touched mixes and a renamed 'Rain Forest' from the first Mind Maps mix CD are on the album. 

Finally finished reading it all, every page,  every track and mix. Hugely enjoyable, informative and well written, amazing achievement Ross, and really made be appreciate and re-evaluate some releases.

It was funny reading about releases I’d designed, still get a kick of having done them (roll on Mind Maps 3). Also had to laugh at the pic of the ‘95 Essential Mix track listing as that was my photo shot on my old work desk. 

I should also add that sT8818r and bdog on the Mind Maps 2 sleeve weren’t added by me, I asked Brian for some aliases to add to the artwork as, unlike the first one, I didn’t know who was on this one.

Oh haha, he told me it was you. Naughty Brian.

Glad you enjoyed it anyway, cheers for reading! 

i just finished reading through all of the blog. i highly enjoyed it!

its amazing how prolific these guys are. and to think there's still a bunch of stuff left out of the blog

kudos to @purlieu, someone should do one of these for aphex's/autechre's discog

Wen E7.003 ?

/cc @purlieu

  On 2/2/2023 at 5:24 PM, NewSchoolScience said:

Wen E7.003 ?

/cc @purlieu

Spring. I think the original plan was Before Record Store Day, but I think RSD itself has put paid to that with pressing plant delays.

For RSD itself we have a Tales of Ephidrina reissue with four bonus tracks at the end of the CD and as a bonus 12" with the LP, and a first vinyl release of Life in Moments with a bonus track, and a further expanded CD reissue to follow. So lots to come.

New Humanoid 12" and Mind Maps 4 also in the first half of the year.

Ah I love that. Still hoping for another Zeebox release (or maybe a New Consciousness one). Brian has tons of unreleased 80s stuff lying around.

CD version of Life in Moments with four bonus tracks is lovely! On Bandcamp now.

Just discovered Papua New Guinea Translations from 2001 - each 'translation' is really a completely new track, and they all work together really well. I think it might be the most consistently good 'album' I've ever heard from them.

(edit: and to fit the thread, heres purlieau's blog post about this one)

As I think I said in that post, it's a touch too long in places, but it's definitely an overlooked one. The use of live instruments without going full on psych rock actually ties it in quite well with the band's mid-'10s sound. Might have to get my copy out tomorrow.

I was a big fan in the Lifeforms/ISDN era. Dead Cities and My Kingdom were my exit ramp, I kindof stopped following them after that. But I'm really digging Papua New Guinea Translations. And I guess by 'digging' I mean I put it on and get loads of work done and it lifts me along which is kindof my yardstick for a good album these days.

Started translating this blog into videos, will hopefully be updates to some of the entries, others will be fairly faithful to what I wrote a few years ago. 

  On 4/23/2024 at 8:46 PM, purlieu said:

Started translating this blog into videos, will hopefully be updates to some of the entries, others will be fairly faithful to what I wrote a few years ago. 

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Pretty cool idea, actually having audio to accompany the analysis definitely has its own perks. Subscribed. Your work on that blog is one of the most dedicated database / completionist-haven archive I've ever seen for an artist. Super useful for an act as FSOL with such a vast body of work.

Also, I'd like to take the opportunity to finally say thanks for your lengthy reply to my "Is the band aware casual fans might not recognize anything post-Dead Cities as 'properly/really new' stuff" question, a couple of months ago... 

Oh, hah, no problem!

And yeah, it's a tricky one juggling the audio - a lot of the earlier material and FSOLDigital stuff doesn't have major distribution so I can throw in full volume samples; the better distributed stuff will get a copyright claim if it's less obscure than quietly behind my voice, and as I'm planning a few ongoing series on my channel it'd be nice to at least have the option of monetising it if it becomes popular enough. So most of the Virgin era will probably just have quiet music in the background. But it's nice to be able to actually illustrate what I'm talking about, especially with some of the lesser known tracks.

Episode 2 covers the rest of the Humanoid era:

1990, plus some addenda and corrections to the Humanoid stuff courtesy of Mr. Dougans.
 

Hey FSOL fans, here's your weekly video!