Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

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Pandemonium
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Pandemonium »

But if 'Viewed from the Right' became 'Sunken Ships' - then what's that track before the Zeebox track ??
- Another unreleased FSOL / Pemberton piece I suppose so... I'll ask around :)

Ross, of course that depends on my taste in music - that goes without saying :)
But also it's applicable in general, if we exclude the pop-shit :)

Cool into on the Freesound.org sample - I'll add the changes :)
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Ross »

Pandemonium wrote:But also it's applicable in general, if we exclude the pop-shit :)
I'm still not sure I agree. Loads of hugely influential, important bands started or made their first recordings in the 1980s - FSOL, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, My Bloody Valentine, Orbital, Underworld, The Smiths, New Order, Current 93, Coil, Psychic TV, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Slayer, Nirvana, Pixies, REM, Manic Street Preachers, Minor Threat, The Orb, Beastie Boys, NWA, De La Soul, Pulp, Pet Shop Boys, Run DMC, Public Enemy, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Talk Talk, Depeche Mode, Art of Noise, The Boredoms, Slint... house, techno, garage, acid! And that's just off the top of my head. All of those groups cast a long shadow of influence over music through the '90s to now and are all held in very high regard, unless you're a classic rock type who thinks that punk killed off good music.

I also don't really differentiate between pop and not-pop really. If I like it, I like it, regardless of genre.
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Pandemonium »

FSOL / Orbital we around in the '80s but didn't have a valid studio release until the '90s,
(maybe Chime was 1989 but that's just one promo...)

Half of the bands you wrote are regarded as 70s bands or 90s bands... but I'm too tired to type :)

Good point on Cocteau Twins & Dead Can Dance, and few others...

But you wrote Pet Shop Boys & Depeche Mode dude, that's 2 out of top3 list of my most hated bands of all time :D
Those are like the definition of shitty music to me... OK, I'll stop writing
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Ross »

Pandemonium wrote:FSOL / Orbital we around in the '80s but didn't have a valid studio release until the '90s,
(maybe Chime was 1989 but that's just one promo...)

Half of the bands you wrote are regarded as 70s bands or 90s bands... but I'm too tired to type :)
Ah well, you said bands who started their career in the '80s. If we're talking about those who had a creative or commercial peak then I could draw up another list just as long. :D
I don't see any '70s bands there (they all formed in the '80s, so...). Yes, there are some whose commercial peaks were in the '90s, but also many like REM, Metallica, etc. whose most influential and well regarded material is from the '80s, even if they sold better later on.
But you wrote Pet Shop Boys & Depeche Mode dude, that's 2 out of top3 list of my most hated bands of all time :D
Those are like the definition of shitty music to me... OK, I'll stop writing
I like fewer than half of the bands in the list, to be honest. I'm not talking about taste, just originality and importance. Depeche Mode were the first 'superstar' synthpop group, who almost single handedly (maybe along with Gary Numan) brought synths into mainstream music. I know the Pet Shop Boys have their detractors, but they're an absurdly well-regarded group. There's even a book about the political implications of some of their '90s work.

Maybe it's down to exposure of certain types of music fan. I've generally come across people who rate the various indie styles, mainstream pop, synthpop, most electronic genres, metal (etc.), punk (etc.), prog, classic rock, soul & funk, hip-hop, etc. all fairly equally. In this light, the '80s has no less to offer than any other decade.
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Dennis »

Nothing wrong with PSB & DM, just good, timeless pop music, especially DM had an incredibly right touch for absolute mesmerizing melodies - and when recently "Westend Girls" was playing during my weekly GTA5-session in the ingame-car radio, I suddenly realised how I always fucking loved this song.

But nevermind, I always had an unexplicable faible for cheesy 80ies retro stuff of all kind, maybe it´s some sort of early childhood impression kind of thing :)
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Pandemonium »

Don't get off topic guys :)

The theme is EBS 4 right now :)

How about that Murcof track 'Mes' - fucking love it - it became one of my all time favorite "modern classical electronic" pieces.
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Ross »

Dennis wrote:Nothing wrong with PSB & DM, just good, timeless pop music
Yup. I hate the assertion that all music has to be big and arty / experimental to be of any value.
Pandemonium wrote:How about that Murcof track 'Mes' - fucking love it - it became one of my all time favorite "modern classical electronic" pieces.
Don't particularly rate Martes as an album, although it's one of the better tracks on there. Remembranza and Cosmos are tremendous records though, absolutely beautiful stuff. I wish he'd hurry up releasing Oceano, he toured a live version of the album about eight years ago and it's just disappeared since then.
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Pandemonium »

Don't drag me back to 80s pop talk please :)

I may left an impression that I don't like pop at all and all that stuff,
which is not true (well, in general).
I like a lot of pop artists, the catch is, in my mind, you can like/listen whatever you want as long as you're conscious about it's value - or in other words, I like Kid Rock a lot, but I'm aware it's shitty music with little artistic value and a decent amount of 'FUN' value :)
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Ross »

Eh, I think trying to put objective ideas on things like 'artistic value' is getting into dodgy territory. Plenty of music which could be described as pop - and possibly dismissed as simple/shallow - has far more depth to it than may be obvious at first. Sorry for bringing them back up again, but the Pet Shop Boys are a great example. Lots of brilliant social and political lyrical commentary, a ton of emotion - but they might seem little more than simple mainstream pop to someone who's not looked deeper.

I think the matter of artistic value can be better discussed in terms of whether it's successful at what it aims to be or not. If an artist is trying to be experimental, original, progressive etc. but ends up sounding derivative and uninspired, then there's a better argument for saying it's not 'good'. But there's loads of stuff that simply aims to make music that moves people, and if that happens then it's an artistic achievement and can't really be described as 'shitty'.

I have absolutely no idea what Kid Rock is aiming to do because his music sounds incredibly aggressive and arrogant to me, which are things I dislike in music (and people in general), so I'm in no position to judge. But if the point of his music is to make people have fun and that's what people do then it's successful. Don't criticise it for not being something else. That's edging towards high art / low art territory, which is only a step away from elitism and snobbery, which are only ever conducive to artistic sterility.

Anyway, this is what you get when you pretty much blanket slate an entire decade of music. :P
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Pandemonium »

Ross wrote:I think the matter of artistic value can be better discussed in terms of whether it's successful at what it aims to be or not.
I think we're talking about the same thing (more or less) - but you described it better than me :)
"at what it aims to be" - that's a great parameter. - I shall meditate on that.
Ross wrote:Anyway, this is what you get when you pretty much blanket slate an entire decade of music. :P
Still a valid one to me :)
I have literally dozens of bands that I like / love / respect from every possible decade since the 1940s (maybe even earlier I haven't really thought about it) - but the '80s - I can barely name 5 bands that are great (to me).

PS - I have really tried to find what's 'good' in PSB & DM, my childhood best friend loved them both - but that music really is definition of 'not good' for me.

PPS - Kid Rock actually IS arrogant and aggressive on the surface - and while arrogant rapping is the shitty part (I rarely try to hear his lyrics in the rapping) - the aggressive southern rock is done pretty well. His hooks are great, his band is tight. His audience (I imagine) are the regular US hicks who decided to try and listen something more than country-rock :) His tracks range from RATM style to cocky rap/rock to some great rock ballads - he is a weird cookie indeed :)
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Ross »

Pandemonium wrote:PS - I have really tried to find what's 'good' in PSB & DM, my childhood best friend loved them both - but that music really is definition of 'not good' for me.
I can't say for Depeche Mode as I'm not really a fan - although this was the first piece by them I heard (years before I even knew who it was) and I still think it's lovely


Pet Shop Boys I think wrote a lot of really brilliant tunes really. Just masterful use of melodies. Songs with great energy. And brilliant lyrics. Perhaps growing up the English suburbs would make them more appealing, they're an exceptionally English sounding band - the music and lyrics remind me of everyday life here, much in the way a lot of British pop and indie does.

But that's it for me really, there are three things which draw me to music, regardless of genre: melody, atmosphere and texture. It's why someone like Kid Rock never appeals to me, as rap-rock and the slightly angsty style of rock ballad stuff he does doesn't tick any of those boxes for me. His music is much more about attitude (like a lot of 'rock' music - generally I tend to veer towards pop and indie) which just doesn't resonate with me at all.

For me, the 1980s was the only era where atmosphere was used in pop music, and it's a meeting of approaches that sits really well with me. Loads of synths, lots of reverb and chorus, there's this really vivid feel to lots of it which elevates a fair bit of it to another level for me. Songs like 'Someone, Somewhere in Summertime' by Simple Minds or 'The Working Hour' by Tears for Fears are just astonishing to me, both really pretty, lushly melodic songs with a bittersweet melancholy, but then given that big melodramatic '80s sheen so they sound so much more than they would in any other decade.

The aesthetic choice is something that does put a lot of people off - musically, the '80s has more of a distinctive sound than any other decade, which means it's dated the worst (much like the '90s, in hindsight, has dated really fucking badly in cinematography and SFX), so if that kind of sound isn't up your street then obviously it's going to be a difficult decade for the more obvious music - although for every OMD, there's a 23 Skidoo; for every Deacon Blue there's a Talk Talk. I'm strangely fascinated by '80s groups who don't sound like they were from the '80s at all...

Anyway, off-topic as this all might be, it's interesting so fuck it. :P
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Re: Pande-reviews: 1994.5 (ISDN: The Album, Far-Out Son VHS-

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I came across this board and post after Google searching the sample used in Just A Fuckin Idiot. Pretty cool finding out it was from Joy Division. I had to create an account here after reading this post and wanted to say that I felt quite the same after falling in love with FSOL after finding Papua New Guinea from the Cool World soundtrack in 92. After that I became a huge fan. I still have most of the older albums and singles, including the black ISDN. It's really cool to find others that feel the same and are into FSOL as much as myself.

Pandemonium wrote:FSOL - ISDN (Black Limited Edition) [album] (05.12.1994)

As I said at the beginning of the 1994 reviews: FSOL started their 3D Headspace tour in '94, and with it left their original print in the music history having done a new concept of live electronic concerts that no-one has done before. This kind of 'concert' was a totally new concept that FSOL literally invented, because like they said in many interviews, they couldn't nor would compete with the rock stars of the '90s and needed to invent something new. The concept itself was groundbreaking in the mainstream world, some say it was underground even... making live concerts all over the globe using ISDN internet connection and not leaving the studio - it sounds stunning even today, almost 20 years later.

In mid-to-late-94 the ISDN sessions were blooming, and the ISDN album was ready as a concept. The market was once again felt-out by Virgin with the promo releases mentioned a few posts up, and they decided to release the ISDN album as some sort of compiled works from the ISDN live transmissions. Almost everyone felt that this should not be presented as new FSOL album because it was weaker and could not follow Lifeforms - and even though a lot FSOL fans still feel like this today, I call BULLSHIT on this. This album is a matching follow-up of Lifeforms, it has it's own new concept and growth, and I think FSOL knew this and agreed to release this album as a compiled live works just to release it as fast as possible. The lists given on both (back & white) editions do not match the given live performances (see list below).
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Pandemonium »

Hi Kengine :)

I'm glad there are ISDN purist lovers out there :)

A couple of things to mention:

- The Joy Division sample is not 100% confirmed - Brian Dougans said to me it's from another similar (Mancunian) band, but didn't wanted to reveal nothing further. Gaz was also very vague about it... The story is they were both together on the gig, and Gaz recorded that sample from the first row. It's one of the very few samples in this thread that aren't 100% confirmed, but I've got used to stuff like this with FSOL - it's like a cure for my ultra-neatness :)

- The ISDN album is definitely the favorite album (from the 90s) to Brian, simply because, as he put it, it was the only project that they did right there & then, it was WITH the time (not before or after, like the other albums/singles were) - and it's a fucking awesome darkness album right ? :)
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by Ross »

Welcome to the board Kengine! Yup, there are some very passionate fans - they're almost a cult band in that sense.

That Joy Division sample, I'm sure someone said they actually had a bootleg of the show that features that speaking. If it was Joy Division it's certainly not one they were both there for, given that they met mid '80s and Ian Curtis died in 1980...

FSOL like mystery though. Take everything they say with a pinch of salt! Unless a bootleg turns up I doubt we'll ever know for sure on this one...
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Re: Pande-reviews: 2009.0 (FSOL - EBS Vol.4)

Post by dell1972 »

Welcome to the board!

I have a live album of the alleged show and it's a bit inconclusive. It doesn't have the actual dialog but it does fit with the overall show, which was a spectacularly shambolic triumph over the adversity of failing/faulty equipment. My understanding is that it was originally a bootleg, and the release has most likely been heavily edited to cut out delays, which might include that dialog. I was never able to track down the original bootleg though. Sounds like it was recorded in a glorified pub/very small club. Some girl announces that the last bus is leaving at some point in a very strong manc accent.
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