The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

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Ross
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by Ross »

Louder Sound have run an article on this that seems to be being repeated throughout various press outlets - basically how the music media works these days - which has a few interesting points.
The Amorphous Androgynous have released a teaser video of their recent collaboration with Peter Hammill, We Persuade Ourselves We Are Only Immortal to celebrate the release hitting streaming services from May 21. You can watch the new video clip below.

We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal was written with Hammill and also features Paul Weller on piano and guitar, and explores the theme of mortality and immortality. The epic suite took four years to create, and was recorded with over 100 musicians, including a 25-piece string orchestra and 50-piece choir The Chesterfield Philharmonic.

“I wanted this to be a no holds barred massive prog rock celebration that is rarely seen these days," explains AA's Garry Cobain. "But rather than the sound of seven hippies hanging around my french chateau it’s very much a post-modern back to front sonic twist of a vision - very much studio based balancing the best of what we do as sampling collage freakniks colluding with the most liberating musical performances I can inspire - very much moving forward rather than retreading the past!”

The music segues from a 13-minute prog opera opener with Peter Hammill to full on post-modern backwards sampladelic beat splurge Pysch Recap with disembodied vocals, to the finale Symphony On A Theme Of Mortality, which starts as a Vangelis circa Bladerunner soundtrack before lifting off into pure Floyd like female aria rock heaven with screaming guitar by Ray Fenwick (Ian Gillan Band and the Spencer Davis Group), and screaming diva Kendra Frost.

We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal is already available on CD and vinyl and a companion piece, an A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble remix album, featuring remixes and collaborations with the likes of Regal Worm and Cobalt Chapel and many more is also available..
It's an odd one, for several reasons.
Firstly, I'm bemused by the idea of a 'teaser' for an album that's been out for four months.
Secondly, it looks like the album is going to be widely distributed on streaming services, which goes totally against everything Gaz has said about streaming in the past - he's been very vocal in his dislike of Spotify and such, so I wonder what's changed his mind. Although, despite his insistence that he doesn't want his music on such services, the entire Amorphous discography is on Spotify (other than Alice in Ultraland, the rights of which recently returned to the band), while FSOL are far less well represented in terms of recent material. As ever, it's impossible to ever tell everything that's going on.
Thirdly, while Immortal is a great track, I don't really hear any of the "sampling collage freaknik" stuff in it at all - it feels like the logical conclusion of the journey Amorphous has been going on since late '96/early '97 - starting out as FSOL sampling organs and fuzz guitars, turning that into songs, gradually incorporating more live instrumentation, until it basically just sounds like a prog rock group. Immortal, and most of the work-in-progress material we've heard from the new album, feels so far divorced from the samples, loops and weird sounds approach of FSOL at this point (anything that's even remotely along those lines seems to end up on a FSOL album, a la 'In Solitude We Are Least Alone', 'Anacro Rhythm', etc) that it seems like a really weird thing to say. When they were working on The Isness and Alice in Ultraland, it was the only project they were working on, which is why you ended up with that really odd and unique mix of electronica and psych/prog. At this point, I don't think Gaz needs to fall back on the 'samplerdelica' type line: Immortal is just a big prog rock song.
Fourthly, it's, as ever, a huge shame that we've had a range of exciting, genre-busting FSOL material over the past few years, and it's only when a new Amorphous release comes around that we get any press response. There are a number of reasons I could speculate: Listening Beyond the Head Chakra probably cost a ludicrous amount of money to make in comparison with recent FSOL albums, so they need to push it; the wider music press is probably more interested in something like this than the IDM-ish approach of recent FSOL releases; Gaz is probably more interested in talking about this than FSOL. Either way, it's telling that the first comment on the YouTube video is someone asking if we could maybe have one more FSOL album one day. There are still sizeable parts of the fanbase - those who aren't here or on the Facebook group - who don't realise that there's actually been more new FSOL material in the past few years than in the whole of their '90s run put together, and I just feel that's a real shame given how utterly brilliant most of it is.

Anyway, that came out a lot more moany than I intended. Ultimately, it's just nice to see them mentioned in the press again, given that it's been quite a few years since we had any sort of interviews or reviews at all.

Here's the video that Gavin Penn and Gaz made to promote the wider release of the record:


It's hitting streaming in late May. We'll probably need a bit of a gap after that if they want to do any serious promotion for LBtHC, which means I doubt we'll be getting that album until late summer / early autumn at the very earliest. At this rate, we might not even be on schedule for the originally promised release of Christmas 2016.
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

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News! Listening Beyond the Head Charka isn't finished yet.
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by mcbpete »

Of course it's not :lol: When you posted on the 1st I actually thought you were doing an April Fools joke to say that it was actually released !
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

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When asked if Head Chakra was coming this year on Facebook, Gaz responded:
Doubt it - it’s timing is organic dependent on its build through the various singles and steps you understand ? ( I like this - it’s a celebration of being an independent artist reacting and adapting rather than the corporate rigid marketing ‘ campaigns ‘ ) so the next step is the 2nd longform single ‘ Mantra ( Crossing Over )’ which certainly will come this year ( manufacture and distribution permitting
So yeah. Another delay.
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by dell1972 »

A mildly obscure one that has come up on my radar as result of an old RSS feed I set up about ten years ago. I don't think it's been mentioned elsewhere, I don't quite have the time I used to to check these things.

A forthcoming (April 30th) anthology of the Music of guitarist Ray Fenwick is to include a "unique edit of his guest appearance with electronica act Amorphous Androgynous" as described on Amazon.

The following web page states "The last track of this set is the spacy exploration of We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal, an item he recorded with The Amorphous Androgynous, The Future Sound Of London’s psychedelic alias. This goes to show Fenwick, to his great credit, hasn’t stopped going forward even so many years on."

https://louderthanwar.com/ray-fenwick-p ... um-review/

I'm not entirely convinced it's anything other a chopped down edit highlighting what he did on the track. I could be wrong but it would set me back twenty quid to be proven otherwise. I'm not sure I like the song that much, one for the raving completists! Maybe look out for an individual electronic copy.

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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by Ross »

I mentioned it in the Compilation & 12" tracks thread. I'll probably track down a copy for my Amorphous Rarities playlist at some point, but I'm not gagging for yet another version of the track.
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by ronniedobbs »

From that interview with Gaz,it sounds almost as if Enrico Berto has kind of become the unofficial third member of AA.
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

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Interview with Prog magazine. Not very much new in there (other than Prog's lack of awareness of electronic music genres - "ambient trance" and "progressive techno" indeed), although there's a suggestion that Listening Beyond the Head Chakra isn't near completion. I think Gaz could do with some of Brian's pacing skills, this albums has already taken a year longer than The Isness to come out and appears to be at least 18 months from release already.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/prog/202 ... 5049258149
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

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Interview from MOJO last summer (the Amorphous promotional machine working as efficiently as ever):
The Amorphous Androgynous return! With "Sonic wangery", Weller and more.
"I've got a chateau in France," says Garry Cobain, the cosmic yet matter-of-fact brain behind The Amorphous Androgynous. "But don't be impressed by it. I bought it with very much a Led Zep romanticism in my mind, but it's falling apart in my absence - it's a fucking nightmare, ha ha! So don't follow my lead!"
It would be near-impossible to try. Alongside partner Brian Dougans, Cobain's been a chimerical presence in music since 1991's starry-eyed rave classic 'Papua New Guinea', credited to The Future Sound of London. A later refocusing as The Amorphous Androgynous led to 2002's unashamedly Aquarian The Isness and "super-consciousness" mixtape series A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding in Your Mind. Yet an uncompleted album with Noel Gallagher begun in 2009, it seems, placed stones in his passway that took time to get over.
"In simplistic terms we haven't actually done anything since 2002," says Gaz. "But we've been very busy, and all those chapters and been collected and worked through."
Already released is big-themes prog-epic 'We Persuade Ourselves We are Immortal', a six-part, 40 minute suite with strings and analogue synths featuring Peter Hammill, Paul Weller and the Chesterfield Philharmonic Choir, among others. The piece had a long genesis, growing from, variously, childhood memories of Pink Floyd, the Iraq War, hearing 'Comfortably Numb' while immobilised on a Shoreditch acupuncturist's couch, meeting Hammill at the MOJO Honours List awards in 2010, and the tragic death of drummer Virgil Howe.
"I began to realise, my God, you've got one life," says Cobain. "I regrouped, regrew and regathered. I wanted to get into my own power again... the challenge [with 'We Persuade...'] was to make it not only new, but also '70s, which I realise is a bracket that potentially only 'me' would like."
he says that recording has been going on since 2011, collaborating with musicians at 12 studios, physically and remotely - spaces include previous collaborator Weller's Black Barn, ex-Verve guitarist Nick McCabe's West Midlands set-up and, for mixing, Enrico Berto's Neve desk-equipped Mushroom studio near Venice. As a self-funded project, Cobain was able to overcome budgetary restrictions in a spirit of cooperation, directing up-for-it musicians including McCabe, guitarist Ray Fenwick, The Kooks' Luke Pritchard, and Steve Cradock into new creation via his sample collages and vibes.
"I'm tapping into all these great people and their collective knowledge," he says. "The album goes from pagan folk craziness to rocktronica to samplerdelia to prog-funk epics. The next single ['Mantra (Crossing Over)'] is pure Madchester, a confluence of where machine hits spirituality his vocal - I've got Paul [Weller] on vocals, guitar, keyboards and veena, a Rowetta!... there's a lot of sonic wangery on the album, the songs point to inherent spiritual sound-truths..."
Cobain is currently in Glastonbury for a month, and as Dougans lives in Frome, they might get to meet in the flesh. We must ask: will the Noel Gallagher LP ever come out?
"I feel quite stung by the Noel situation," says Cobain, who says he has 10 hard drives' worth of music from the 18-month sessions. "We didn't finish it together. I'd love a reason to revisit it, it was great, but maybe it was a bit too early... on a finishing note, [Noel] may or may not be on the album. I've had so many drummers and bassists in that I've forgotten."
Phrases that make me even more skeptical about this album than ever: Madchester, The Kooks, Steve Cradock. Also very slightly odd that Gaz being a few miles from Brian and they only "might" meet in the flesh.





edit: here's another! August 2021's Resolution Mag.
With the pioneering Future Sound of London still in semi-hibernation, Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans return to their Amorphous Androgynous alias to create their first original body of work since 2005. Titled We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal, the 40-minute, six-part prog rock concept album was created on a scale rarely seen these days, featuring over 100 musicians with a full 25-piece string orchestra and 50-piece choir. Under construction since 2017, the Floyd-inspired release features a veritable supergroup of contributors including Van der Graaf Generator’s Peter Hammill (vocals), Paul Weller (piano and guitar), Caravan’s Brian Hopper (sax) and one of Britain’s foremost guitarists, Ray Fenwick, with Garry Cobain in the ‘sampledelic’ hot seat. We sat down with the producer to talk about that, and set the record straight on his infamous co-production fracas with Noel Gallagher.
Moving from the pioneering IDM of Future Sound of London to the psychedelic/progressive rock sound of The Amorphous Androgynous, do you feel that electronic
music has less to say in 2021?

GC: FSOL was set up to be quite a vast, open source experiment and we were able to do lots of styles within that. I loved the audio-visual mystery of electronic music, but as we veered towards the millennia, with ‘future’ in our name I began to catch a glimpse of a future lust that I didn’t like and wanted to get the balance right. I don’t think FSOL has changed. A lot of it’s been archivist, and Brian [Dougan]’s been really active within that mode. When we’re solid together in recognising that name, there’ll be a very strong new FSOL that’s not so hidden.
Why was “future lust” a dead end for you?
GC: It’s the whole aspect of a faster, more programmed, more syncopated future, but what about the future of George Martin hooking up two 24 tracks and using the technology of the day to revolutionise the song? I was excited about that and began to play avant-garde ‘60s albums that used electronics. I didn’t want there to be a revolution of technology, I wanted to revolutionise my soul to be more symbiotic with everything. The future can’t just be technology; that would be a dangerous future.
So what was the concept behind We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal?
GC: In my mind, I was going to reunite Roger Waters and David Gilmour and get them doing harmonies [laughs]. My soul craved a certain kind of sound — I wanted to hear lyrics against lo-fi, modular vintage synth work. After the absurdity of [FSOL’s 2002 LP] The Isness, I craved a bit more of the FSOL — more of the depth, the ambience and the synths, but in 2012 I had no idea how I would be able to do a Floyd thing, especially with the budget on my label. Then I thought, I’ve only got one life I’m going to have to do it budget or not, and it’s been amazing in terms of directing and coordinating
musicians and experimenting with my own songrwiting and lyrics.
How would you describe Brian’s role in the production process these days?
GC: Brian’s much more technological. He’s also a brilliant communicator — albeit a lot more sparing with his words than me. The interesting story here is the advent of the remote studio. We’ve had to learn a new lexicon or language, which is working out our philosophy and working alone to the best of our ability. With Amorphous it’s based on songs, so I’m like a dog with a bone looking to interface with the right guitarist, drummer, vocalist or lyricist. He’s like, ‘fuck that, I just wanna keep making building blocks and new tracks’. He’s totally productive, so it’s very push-and-pull, but if I need a revolutionary angle put on a sound then I have the world expert. Sometimes it will come back as something I can use directly or sometimes I’ll say, ‘my god, it’s a new song!’
And your role?
GC: I’m a kind of master of sampling. I’ve been doing that for 30 years so I’m going to self-own that — having grown up with an Akai S612 two-second sampler and trained my ears to listen to snippets
of sound. When I listen to someone play, I can hear what I like and direct it into a mode. In the ‘90s we’d pay £50 to a musician, give them a reference, leave the DAT running and go and play pool. We were dysfunctional and didn’t even know how to interface with a human being. Now, I’ll talk to you about philosophy and get into what triggers you and your trauma wounds before we start recording. I’m really interested in collaboration and people — that’s how you get them to trust you and really understand what you’re after.
What intrigued you about working with Peter Hamill on this project?
GC: I originally met Peter when he gave us the Mojo Compilation Album of the Year award for A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding in Your Mind. I must confess I was a little embarrassed that night because I was introduced to people and didn’t actually know who they were. I didn’t know Peter too well either as most of my psychedelic catalogue came from picking up second-hand records. I’d
never come across a Van der Graaf Generator album, probably because people don’t get rid of them. It was only when Gary Lucas sent me an album he’d done with Peter that I heard an authority of voice that was able to occupy its own unique area and recognised the exact terrain that would work in. I’m a fully-fledged fan now because I’ve had more time to absorb his vast talent since the record came out.
We Persuade is a proper prog-rock odyssey. Where did you start in terms of laying a sound bed to build from?
GC: Although some of the great prog-rock and conceptual rock albums were done with a bunch of dudes sitting around a chateau for months waiting to do their part, that’s not going to work in the modern day. I create guitar, bass and drum samples from sessions I’ve done with musicians over the years and tend to lay the template of a song using those. We Persuade was already a 12-minute loop with drums, then I laid guitar and bass down, sampled that and started singing before breaking it out to loosen it up. I wanted it to sound live but I also wanted to have a sound bed that couldn’t possibly be live. I’m not interested in metronomic looping, too much processing or the reverb sounding modern — if it’s beginning to sound like a modern record I have to pull it apart and ditch it. Although it sounds like I’m emulating the past, I’m not. I’m perceiving a liberation of form that, yes, involves technology but has a load of eternal spirit in there. We don’t need to forget the past; we need to bring what works from the past into the present. That’s the ethos of Amorphous.
How did you persuade Paul Weller to take part and at what point was he brought into the production?
GC: He rang out of the blue to say that he loved one of the tracks we’d previously worked on and could we work out a deal for it. I was thinking, great, so I told him I’d swing by to talk about splits and deals. Long story short, I ended up staying three days and played him my piano refrain on We Persuade with vocals and all the samples. A lot of people equate Paul with his music and vocals, but he’s one of my favourite instrumentalists. We went to a curry house and I’ve always got Erik Satie and romantic French stuff like Debussy on the CD in the car. Paul went really quiet and as soon as we got back he said ‘I’ve got an idea for that track’ and immediately sat at the Steinway and wrote something in two takes. I went straight from Paul’s to SYd Arthur to ask if he knew a baritone sax player and he gave me Brian Hopper’s number. Then I knew I could crack this We Persuade baby open, so I collaged Paul’s piano with a couple of his solo 12-string guitar motifs and went down to Brian’s.
I understand mix engineer Enrico Berto had a big role to play?
GC: I dropped a Facebook post about working with Peter Hammill and Enrico messaged saying, “no way, I love Van der Graff Generator” and started introducing me to loads of other tracks. At that point I was really struggling with the technical enormity of what I was getting into. I didn’t realise I was going to replace a cello and a violin, multi-tracked ten times into a real 25-piece string orchestra, but Enrico started to show he really understood that. The mixing was colossal and I wanted to see how he dealt with the almighty challenge of using all those live elements. I knew he had a Neve set up and I was really interested in a getting an analogue, vintage sound, so I got on a flight, went to Italy, stayed there for four days to do the first mix and listened all the way back home. I was buzzing.
This sort of project sounds perfect for Abbey Road…
GC: Last time I went there was for The Isness, but I basically tried to polish a turd. Some of the recording was wrong and I tried to rectify it in mastering, which of course you can never do. We ended up spending seven grand, everybody was horrified and I was banned from recording at Abbey Road. I think a lot of us fell for the beautiful illusion of digital. Basically, we’ve all broken out of the box again,
or reconfigured the box to be in symbiosis with all that wonderful gear. At the end of the day, as much as computers have the ability to do exciting things recording is a wonderful air and that air is in the diodes and transistors of wonderful gear. That air is deeper than ones and zeros; it’s sacred.
You recorded strings at The Foundry in Sheffield. Can you take us through what your expectations were of the orchestra and the setting up of that space?
GC: Morven Bryce, who’s a top player on film sessions at Abbey Road, had been the violin player and string arranger by means of me singing bits to her and collaging them. We built them up over a year across four or five different sessions but she came back one day and said she’d love to get a live string section for this because 24 strings playing together is very different to collaging three violins from a
multitude of mic positions. I couldn’t afford strings so we put something on Facebook saying if you’d like to play on a 12-minute rock odyssey with revered session musician Morven Bryce, you’ll be fed and credited but there’s no money in it. We got a great reception to that, so there I was with 25 strings all set up and just about to hire a hall in Sheffield to try and wing it when the guy from The Foundry saw us on Facebook and said that he’d love to get involved. Let’s call it synchronicity.
Did the 50-piece choir also necessitate being recorded on a budget?
GC: I realised I couldn’t get the choir to the same studio because it was a 30-minute drive away, so I basically needed a mobile studio. I was speaking to Steve Cobby and he suggested
Paul Blakeman of The Cuckoo Clocks for on-location recording, so I hired him to come with his computer and mic, went to the rehearsal of the choir and recorded them over two days. It was about accepting imperfect character balanced by a good recording. I wanted it to have edge rather than make perfectly recorded chamber music.
For the final track, Synthony, you brought in Dave Spiers who runs GForce Software?
GC: Dave Spiers had posted a video on Facebook of him playing the Yamaha CS-80 and I immediately recognised its Vangelis sound so I got in touch with him. He invited me down to his studio, opened the door and, wow, he had 100 rare vintage synths. He’s now become an expert on all those synths and knows how to model them and turn them into GForce software.
There’s a theme that runs throughout the album where certain passages of music are returned to — a thread that keeps pulling the concept back together.
GC: I love that, so I don’t want to ruin it, but it all started with We Persuade. It’s a bit like a movie — you film loads of extra scenes and a lot of stuff hits the cutting room floor. There were lots of pieces I loved that had to go, but I still thought I could elevate those buried elements and expand them. Suddenly I could make a synth that was previously hidden really loud or turn a bridge into a Tomorrow Never Knows–type up-tempo splurge. So I dragged the samples kicking and screaming into that terrain, backwards, time-stretched and using that classic trick of recording the vocals half-speed with the beats and sounds at double-speed. I love motifs that punctuate space in a reverb or echo and find them really impactful, so I basically started to build in and add new instruments and performances from people like Dave Spiers.
Do you have plans to further develop the material?
GC: I’m not really sure if We Persuade is a themed single or an epic concept album. The real album will be Listening Beyond the Head Chakra, where you’ll get an element of We Persuade and the next single Mantra Crossing Over, which will also be 40 minutes.
It’s been written that you didn’t get on well with Noel Gallagher when producing his High Flying Birds debut. What impact did that experience have on you?
GC: I was a little traumatised in terms of what it’s like to have somebody who’s so opinionated about their music that they wouldn’t do what I want. Contrary to what was said in the press, I was very respectful to his tracks, but wanted to bring a new sonic encapsulation. My role is to be a loving bully, where you want to produce the best possible version of them but also have a vision. I’d be listening to Noel and thinking I want far more for you than just a remix, so I’m going to find your trigger points and go as far as I can before you tell me to leave the studio. There was a great moment where I asked him to be a voice actor. I wanted him moving me, not playing against an acoustic guitar demo, but he just sucked his lips and said, “Never ask me to be a fucking voice actor again”.
Would it be fair to assume things went downhill from there?
GC: There was a track called Everybody’s on the Run and I wanted to do my Floyd epic. I spent six months getting drums, strings and bass and learning how to create this sonic cathedral of sound and then we brought Noel in to do vocals. It was the big day and I was really excited that he was going to hear it but he said, “Get rid of that sound, get rid of that sound, get rid of those things” and I looked at Brian and did an impersonation of Beaker from the Muppets with his quivering lip. He was basically pulling the whole track back to his demo. My greatest regret was for myself and him, because it was a great album that needed collaboration and a maturity that I didn’t have and maybe he didn’t. I’m a big fan of reading books by producers. Some bully, some bribe, some co-dependently beg and some are so charismatic they get everyone within a one-mile radius to do exactly what they want — I think it’s called hypnosis.
Great, so Gaz is now basically shitting all over the last however many years of FSOL releases.
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by nanio tine »

lol that last interview is all the confirmation we need that fsol and amorphous are about 99% Brian and gaz solo projects these days. fsol is in semi-hibernation wtf? fsol has been putting out too much music if anything, while amorphous hasn't released anything in years, if any project is in hibernation its that! I might not like all the recent releases but they deserve better than "there'll be a strong album coming along one day" or whatever.
seriously fuck this guy. Brian go solo! you don't need gaz anyway.
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by Dennis »

Ross wrote: Thu Apr 07, 2022 4:53 pm Great, so Gaz is now basically shitting all over the last however many years of FSOL releases.
Huh? I really don't read it this way. It's basically no different than what we knew all along the recent years, Gaz mostly involved with AA, Brian doing his stuff all the time, and they still seem connected, trading tracks and songs so I really don't see a problem, or why should I "fuck this guy". He has kind words for Brian and his talent. It's obviously all how it was for quite a few years now.
And the 'FSOL in Hibernation' quote is not from Gaz, but that obviously uninformed interviewer.
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by Ross »

It just falls into this “one day there’ll be a new FSOL album” narrative Gaz has been peddling since the mid ‘00s. He said it in the Mojo awards interview literally weeks after Environments 3 came out, with tons of new material on it. Other than a brief period in 2014-2015, every time he’s asked about FSOL it’s always been “one day” despite the fact that there’s been more new FSOL released in the past decade than during the band’s heyday. To me it just makes it look like all those albums are hand-waved away.

I still see people online to this day saying they wish there was a new FSOL album, who are then surprised to find out that the FSOLDigital releases even exist. Those releases have zero promotional budget, but when asked about FSOL in the press, Gaz’s response is “one day there’ll be a strong new album”. Instead of helping raise the profile of the countless new releases, it actually diminishes it.
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by nanio tine »

Dennis wrote: Fri Apr 15, 2022 12:23 amGaz mostly involved with AA, Brian doing his stuff all the time, and they still seem connected, trading tracks and songs so I really don't see a problem, or why should I "fuck this guy".
it looks to me like gaz is doing amorphous and then occasionally getting Brian to add input like a session musician which seems like Brian has been kicked out of his own band (ross said on his blog that people were worried about that in the 2000s and it really feels like its happened now) and his fsol comment feels totally dismissive to me like as ross says he's saying one day there'll be another album but we've had loads of albums. like its obvious he isn't involved in those albums but don't just wash over them like they never happened, its shitty to Brian. I suppose just added to the spreading covid misinformation and the sexual harassment allegations and him being rude to fans on Facebook and I can't remember the last time I came across anything where I actually liked him, just seems properly up his own arse these days. if he's going to let Brian take over fsol but take half the credit - or only add the occasional amorphous outtake like anacrorhythm then I think he should just officially leave the band. he's been talking about 'a new fsol album will come along when we're ready' for 20 years and he's still saying it he's clearly just doing it to cash in on Brians work as fsol and has no intentions of doing it so I wish he'd just stick to his throwback hippy albums and fuck off.
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moxlox
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by moxlox »

I found that second interview very interesting and didn’t get negative vibes from it. I’m with Dennis!

Interesting to hear the anecdote about the Isness Abbey Road recording and “being banned from there”, implied perhaps because he overcooked the record label’s budget, who knows?! A few more titbits on the Noel Gallagher collaboration, or not the collaboration Gaz and Brian thought it was.

Sure Amorphous is his baby, but Brian seems involved - “ so I collaged Paul’s piano with a couple of his solo 12-string guitar motifs and went down to Brian’s.”… There you go.

I put on We Persuade Ourselves as I got part way through. Love that record, and I’d been listening to FSOL Environmental (AEV) coincidently before. So I just hope both guys keep making music for us. Sounds like it could be years before we hear this Amorphous album!!! I’ve kind of assumed the contemporary FSOL material has funded Gaz’s indulgence in his current Amorphous vision.
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nanio tine
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Re: The Amorphous Androgynous - Listening Beyond the Head Chakra

Post by nanio tine »

it definitely reads like he goes to Brian for input but he's not a major player on the album which is a huge shame because they used to work so well together

also tbh I thought one reason ross was so negative is because he clearly talks to Brian a lot so had some insider knowledge about it all
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