Yage - The Woodlands of Old

[Concept]

I didn't know this was an entire album until today (I'd previously thought it was a small EP). I love the layering and texturing of the instrumentation. It feels like a fusion between Amorphous Androgynous and ISDN-era FSOL in parts. What do you guys think of it?

Crow Hushing the Floating Woods is such a track.

[Ross]

Yes, an unfairly overlooked record I think, some astonishing pieces here that I think would fit very well on a recent FSOL record, or even on an Amorphous one in places. Crow is probably my favourite too. My only issue with the album is that it's a bit too long - in the early days of FSOLDigital they put out a lot of records with about 20 tracks on which were all just too overwhelming!

I wonder what became of the Pygmy / Pygmy People EP that was due last year.

[Blu Mar Ten]

yeah i only discovered this a few months ago. No idea how I missed it. Love it.

[dell1972]

There's some wonderful stuff on it, but as Ross says, it's one of those albums that seems a little too long to take in. Love some of the drum loops on it from Will White. I guess Pygmy People is on the vast pile of abandoned releases now.

[seedy]

love this album!
like a lot

[Pandemonium]

Well, lots of love for this one - I still haven't heard anyone say it's mediocre let alone not good

I really love it too - I look forward to make full review too

[Mr Royale]

I love the opening track and there some really good tracks throughout the album. I've not sat and listened to it all recently, but it used to be on shuffle with a number of other FSOL archives albums and it fits in well with their other stuff.

[Mr Royale]

'He laughed himself...' and 'Centipede' are two other favourites of mine and yes 'Crow...' is a great track.

[epitome]

I just bought this album (arrived in the post yesterday), so haven't heard it yet - but looking forward to it even more after all these comments I still have a lot of catching up to do with FSOL and all their aliases!

[mcbpete]

It's one of my fave-ist releases post-Dead Cities. Full of fantasticness throughout

[moxlox]

So is it them, or is it Yage? Is Yage a person, I thought he was their engineer, or is Yage the engineer just another of their personas? Been a fan since Papua New Guinea, and I don't know the answer to this! Thought I knew until I read this thread......

[Ross]

An alias - I believe in recent times Brian has adopted the alias for solo material (the Neotropic remix in particular), but it's not been revealed whether this album is Brian or both of them. It's officially credited to Dougans / Cobain. The 1992 Yage tracks were definitely the pair of them, and the "engineer" has always just been an alias, sometimes described as the mid-ground between the two - the place where their different minds and tastes meet.

[epitome]

Ugh, now I don't know whether to move Yage to the top of my list of stuff to listen to... I'm still working through the Archive albums and was just about to go through the AA stuff from The Isness and on... so much music, so little time!

[Dennis]

The 1992 Yage tracks were definitely the pair of them, and the "engineer" has always just been an alias, sometimes described as the mid-ground between the two - the place where their different minds and tastes meet.

I always liked the imagination that Yage (as a producer) is the being that resulted when the two personalities of them melt together to form that 'transcendental brain' that creates musical otherworldlyness out of the most remote sample trash...

BTW in the 90ies I thought FSOL were a whole collective of people with yage being one of them, like The Orb were in the mid-nineties. I think I realised it´s only two guys when I first read an interview, ca. around when "The Isness" came out.

[Ross]

For some reason I always thought the pictures of Brian in the ISDN booklet were Yage. Before reading interviews and web stuff, I also assumed there were more than just the two of them - especially with all the mad credits on Dead Cities, the stories in the ISDN book and so on. I suppose they've managed to carry this over somewhat even in the internet era - although they've lost a lot of their 'facelessness' by their open approach to fans, there are still things like the description of the Glass Girl release, and all the various odds and ends that have turned up on the EBS mixes that aren't referenced anywhere else online, plus the various FSOLDigital releases.