Multiple Angle Distortions pre order

[DVE2054]

fsol has finally become humanoid after many years heading in that direction. its not bad but its so far away from fsol that i really dont recognise what the name stands for anymore.

Hi everyone, I'm new here.
You know, perhaps you hit the nail on the head here, and it touches upon the real (unknown) reason E8 changed direction and the pre-EPs approach was scrapped.

OTOH you know, you're saying how FSOL is Humanoid now, whereas Enofa complains how FSOL does nothing "different" (which is equivalent to saying FSOL shouldn't sound like FSOL 'we know'...). That's art for Pete's sake, they'll go their own way anyhow.

[Enofa]

Hello and welcome!

I suppose I was talking about the entire FSOLDigital output - at one point, every album felt like a major move forwards, but this decade there’s been a lot less of that. Certainly by FSOL standards, Multiple Angled Distortions is a pretty different sounding EP, but in context of releases like Built by Humanoid and KAAGE, it feels like it’s still in relatively familiar territory.

Of course it’s easy to say “oh every album should sound completely different,” and less easy to actually do that whilst yielding excellent results each time, as I know from making music myself. I suppose a lot of it comes down to holding FSOL to particularly high standards - in the past they’ve done things like putting out Lifeforms and ISDN within seven months of each other, and the radical changes of direction over the earlier Environments, so it’s easy to expect that every single time, while there are going to be periods where there’s a particular approach sticks around for a while. Brian, especially, is more than 40 years into making music pretty much every single day - he can’t be expected to be reinventing himself every six months.

Still, I do hope E8 is going to hold some major surprises.

[DVE2054]

Hi Imogen - full disclosure: I'm one of your followers on Youtube (it's your vid series that drawn me here) but I'm not holding the same identity here to keep those separate. And I know perfectly well you're making music, listened to quite a vast bit of your stuff at work (e.g. "life's too short..." - which also got me to discover Matthew Barney via the magic of google...). Fingers crossed for the Appertures project.

I completely agree about the impracticability of constant auto-reinvention, that's what I meant in my last post. I've been making some music too (but it's far less present in my life, more like a hobby) and I perhaps reinvented myself once over the last 25 years, haha.

I might add I'm currently binging through both Humanoid's last LPs and FSOL's both pre8 EPs. All these records are new to me, but I'm receiving them different. Humanoid is Brian's acid vehicle - whether acid house or acid/idm it depends (lately the former). And FSOL remains far more into world-building, trips, environments, athmospherics, keys, breathing space, melancholy, you know the drill.
But I'll give it some 50 more listens and get back here

[mcbpete]

Agreed - I definitely disagree with the below, I'd say there still is quite a sonic margin between the 2 aliases (aliai ?) of FSOL and Humanoid

fsol has finally become humanoid after many years heading in that direction. its not bad but its so far away from fsol that i really dont recognise what the name stands for anymore.

Today's Humanoid is mad robots going wild in a factory, and FSOL more the sound of a dark sci-fi dystopia (one might describe it as being the noises heard from a city at some point in the future)

[Enofa]

Interesting. While stuff like 7 Songs and Sweet Acid Sound are definitely a light year from FSOL, I’d say there are tracks like ‘Intermodal Container’, ‘Tiny Machine Birth’, ‘Static Objective’ and others which would fit very comfortably on recent FSOL albums. While I don’t think Multiple Angled Distortions is completely Humanoid, like nanio tine, I do think there are tracks in it - those with 303s at the fore, and pounding, ever-changing IDM beats - could comfortably fit either project, most notably ‘Askance’ and ‘Kuttin’, which feel far more Humanoidy than, say, ‘LoadedMethod’ from KAAGE, with its relatively mellow beats and atmospheric pads.

[DVE2054]

Allright, so 10 listens to 'Multiple Angled Distortions', a quick impression update. There's some tracks here that are pretty FSOL-ish (e.g. Hauquil), some that are Humanoid-ish (parts of Askance, like Enofa said). But my overall impression not only from pre8ep2 but also from pre8ep1 is there's a lot of tracks that seem ..empty. Leadless, melodyless, pure beats plus some homeopatic atmospheres. That's NOT to say they're bad, mostly it works for me. But if, like me, you listen to, say, "Kuttin" in a car, there's a good chance what melody there is will be lost in engine noises.

I decided to actually make fun of it So what you've got below, is one minute of 'Set of Leaf', on which I overlaid samples from 'Improvisation 1' (made into reversed pads, you won't even notice them), and - slammed a Parisian street musician blatantly right in the center, showcasing how 'Set of Leaf' is pretty much only beats - because otherwise such a crude treatment would be catastrophic. Here it kinda works. Duh, there's even enough scene left for the Metro announcer, damnit. That's just for laughs of course




[ps. soundcloud wrongly displays this to be by divine electronics (my alias), that's a fault of the embedded player, i kept the original FSOLDigital id3v2 tags in this sample]
[edit 20260216: removed!]

[Enofa]

Ha that’s really cool! And yeah, there’s a fair amount of stuff from E7 and these EPs - and a lot of calendar tracks - that’s very low on melody. It’s still there, but buried in the mix and explicitly not the focus.

This is something I know nanio-tine, who posts here, has spoken about before, which really drew my attention to it: we’ve not had anything like My Kingdom or Cascade or Glass or Calcium or Sunsets or Symphony for Halia or [insert your favourite melodic FSOL track here] for a while.

[DVE2054]

I should spend more time reading old posts, which I'll do with pleasure. Always something to learn.

(edit: I should've mixed Leaf with "The Magic Ashtray Band - Are you"... that shit would be another Fentanyl]