Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Feel free to talk about anything and everything FSOL related in this board.
Neil
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Neil »

Thanks Dennis. Yeah i've got all the RSD re-workings and really enjoy them. Interesting you mention the Amorphous feel on My Kingdom - was listening to it the other day and thought i heard a sample from The Isness, possibly Divinity?! But maybe i was hearing things!

I will definitely pay some attention to archives 5 - thanks for that, i can't think i've listened to it (at least not properly). Big fan of their darker atmospheric stuff.
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Ross
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Ross »

Dennis wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 3:21 pm Btw. I always thought the "breath environment" is a snoring horse recorded :) anything known about the sample origin?
I'll have to ask Brian, it's so weird.

And yes, Archive 5 is the most Dead Cities-esque, the first four tracks are early '97 pieces, effectively the start of The Isness but have more in common with DC really, then The Exhibition, Yashica, Tif Feetal, Darkness at Noon and possibly Water Hole are all DC outtakes.

To the best of my knowledge, the following Archive / Environments / etc tracks are Dead Cities era:
Lizzard Crawl
Hallucination
Is This Real
Mouth Muse
Hazey Day Girl
Wt Pavement
Arrived
Environments - Thunder
Slow of Motion
Dark Matter
Mas X-XX-XX / 2
Skinny Ribbed Fucker
Mains Interrupt
Futura
Insulin
Mango Tree
Insides
La Tronik 1
LA7
Hidden Sign
West Path
100 Baby Spiders
Absent With Concept / Swarm
The Exhibition
Yashica
Tif Feetal
Darkness at Noon / Dream One
Water Hole
Protractor
Switzerland
The Empty Land
Accompaniment for Melodious Expression
Repetition is a Form of Change
Glacier Part 1 & 2
Colour-Blind
A Corner
Blue Green
Forlorn
I Turn to Face the Sun
Abandoned Housing Blocks of Prypiat
Yage (Rhodesia)
Yage (Sunset Strip)
Implosive
Detonation

And the following are from the early '97 sessions:
Trying to Make Impermanent Things Permanent
Head Hunter
Popadom
Speed Ball
Sendoro Luminoso
A Sweltering Heat
Exploded Funk
Private Psyche and Inner Life
Gyrated
Exchanged
Ice Formed
Grindatone


The two eras are slightly difficult to differentiate between, because the early '97 sessions included some WHE expansions and the scrapped Glass single. For example, WHE Part 4 grew into Implosive which grew into Head Hunter which grew into Sendoro Luminoso which grew into Shining Path, which originally had words co-written by Ian Astbury and was very much an early Isness track. Glacier and I Turn to Face the Sun would have started as Glacier Part 2, 3 or similar.
Neil
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Neil »

This is great Ross, thanks. I see a playlist coming on. I have some of those tracks already but very scattered. Just lost track of the archives stuff and struggled to find time to seriously engage the amount of material. I miss being a teenager and legitimately being able to hole up in my bedroom and just engage with music for hours. I will say that your thread has really incentivised me to revisit stuff i already have, and explore the things i don't yet have.

Listening to Archives 5 right now and really, really liking it - lots of DC touchstones in there. The Exhibition is interesting! Do you plan to submit all the Archives and Environments series to your Fractional Difference blog?
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gabo86
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by gabo86 »

Neil wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:07 am Do you plan to submit all the Archives and Environments series to your Fractional Difference blog?
I hope so, because some of the best FSOL tracks are buried in there :D
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Ross
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Ross »

Neil wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:07 am I miss being a teenager and legitimately being able to hole up in my bedroom and just engage with music for hours.
Oof, tell me about it. I remember being in my teens and listening to absolutely anything FSOL-based on repeat, bootlegs of 45 minute excerpts of Kiss FM broadcasts without any actual FSOL material on them, even tracks used on the early MPB mixes. Any snippet of FSOL and it would get repeated. I often wish the current deluge of new material had come around then as I would have absorbed it all, whereas I'm honestly totally struggling to keep up with everything they've done since 2016. One of my hopes for this blog is that it allows me to get to know some of the more recent material better, and makes it all gel into the band's wider history for me.

And yes, I'll be covering Archives, Environments, everything. Here's the discography to date.


First leg of the Dead Cities tour, known shows:
Image
Forth FM, 28/10/96

Image
Kiss 102 Manchester, 29/10/96

Image
BBC Radio Leicester, 01/11/96
Radio Aire, 02/11/96
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Ross
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Ross »

Seeing out the end of 1996...

Kiss FM 05/11/96

Image
Fun Radio 08/11/96

VPRO 11/11/96

Image
Fritz Radio, 06/12/96

And the one compilation track of the year, Landmass.
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Ross
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Ross »

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Ross
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Ross »

Image
A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding in Your Mind Vol. 1 Kiss 102 FM (08/97)

1997 Remixes
-Neotropic - Ultra Freaky Alarm Clock (Bin Dogs Remix)


And then silence for nearly four years. The first decade of FSOL is over, and it's been a long, fascinating journey. I'm away for a week, so, fittingly, there'll be a bit of a gap before we pick up in a new century with some very different music.
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Trigga Bo »

gabo86 wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 10:38 am I have a question about Herd Killing: in the album version (which is a shortened version)...
On the compilation "Wipeout 2097 / Wipeout XL" both tracks are "We Have Explosive" & "We Have Explosive (Herd Killing)" this is a digitization of the first two tracks ("Semtex - Part 1 & 2") from vinyl (https://www.discogs.com/master/32347-Se ... -Explosive) and record on CD, back in 1996. Also, on the compilation do not specify aka Semtex because the name The FSOL it was known to many... marketing from Virgin.
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gabo86
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by gabo86 »

Trigga Bo wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 5:13 am
gabo86 wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 10:38 am I have a question about Herd Killing: in the album version (which is a shortened version)...
On the compilation "Wipeout 2097 / Wipeout XL" both tracks are "We Have Explosive" & "We Have Explosive (Herd Killing)" this is a digitization of the first two tracks ("Semtex - Part 1 & 2") from vinyl (https://www.discogs.com/master/32347-Se ... -Explosive) and record on CD, back in 1996. Also, on the compilation do not specify aka Semtex because the name The FSOL it was known to many... marketing from Virgin.
Yes, I learned this reading the Ross' blog. Anyway, my question was "why is that sample missing", but it just happened, so there's no answer to it.
Thanks, anyway!
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Trigga Bo »

gabo86 my guess is that Semtex project - working versions of "We Have Explosive" are the heaviest. Only partially by sound were included in FSOL releases. And the rights to the reissue belong to Virgin, the FSOL themselves are not particularly interested in remastering / reissuing, so sorry.
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Dennis
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Dennis »

Strange, that it was during those 4 years of hiatus when I discovered FSOL, first only with DC & Lifeforms, and around 2000 I began interesting for electronic music more general, looking for stuff similar to FSOL and The Orb, and I bought the missing pieces in FSOL's discog, ISDN, Accelerator and the EP's. It was until 2002 when I started wondering if they (or him, did not know anything about who or how many people FSOL was at that time :) ) was pretty sure they have disappeared as a relict of the 90ies and stopped releasing stuff at all.
It was a big and weird surprise when I read in the news section of a prog rock magazine that I read back in those days from time to time::"Amorphous Androgynous are back! After releasing several albums as Future Sound Of London they return with an album full of Beatles and David Bowie influences!" - That was so weird, I was sure they must have something messed up, or that this was some kind of fake news. I went to the big record store and they knew nothing about such an album. But at a little indie record store I could order a UK import of the album (unfortunately the official version, the one with reduced masculine energy :) )
- and to my surprise the description from the magazine was quite correct.
I liked most of it immediately, with the exception of Gaz' singing to be honest, but even that grew on me with the years.
But I think I will wait until Ross' review is online...
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Ross
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Ross »

Oh yes, there's a lot to say about The Isness, but that's still a long way off. 13 more entries to go after today before we get there. And I think it might take a day or three to write as well!

Meanwhile...
Image
Gaz Cobain - The Mello Hippo Disco Show Japan (08/26/00)

Image
Humanoid - Stakker Humanoid 2001
-Plump DJ's 2001 Re-Touch
-Krafty Kuts Mix
-Krafty's Radio Cut
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mcbpete
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by mcbpete »

Think this was the first 12'' I bought after re-obtaining a turntable in the late 90s/early 00s 'commercial' vinyl revival
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