The structure of the Environments

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Ross
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The structure of the Environments

Post by Ross »

Something that's been discussed a little is how many of the Environments albums feature the titular 'environment' sections as separate tracks - it began on 3, and was taken to the extreme on 6 & 6.5, with 23 tracks each. It's an unusual creative decision to take - although the sections were generally given titles (see the tracklist on the inner sleeve of Ephidrina), they were mostly bolted on to the start or end of more traditional tracks. Whether it's a successful decision or not depends on the listener, but for me I think I prefer the older approach, if only because it makes it easier to remember track titles! Of the 46 tracks on those 2016 releases, I could still probably only name 15 without checking the sleeve.

And yet, for all the cosmetic difference, those albums are structured very similarly to the '90s works. I was just listening to 6, and started thinking how the albums might have been structured if the environments had been attached to longer tracks, so I thought I'd rip the disc to my laptop and have a play around. This is what I came up with (proposed titles in bold):
01. Polarize (03:56)
02. Mountain Path (03:54)
03. Thought Pattern (04:14)
04. Motioned (01:58)
05. Lichaen / Forest Soundbed (04:54)
06. Sol 7 / Hurt (04:49)
07. Wild Weather (01:30)
08. Unclear Vape / Voyeur / Seq/-9 (03:48)
09. Exerting Force or Influence / Symphony for HALia / Imagined Friends (06:52)
10. Electric Pastrol (01:57)
11. Plausibility (03:13)
12. Yut Moik / Beyond the Field of Vision (05:08)
13. Leak Stereo 70 (06:11)
14. Pipe Dream / Meanders (05:30)
15. Solace (05:15)

With fifteen tracks, and more than half around or over the five minute mark, it feels much more like a 'traditional' FSOL album. Most of the joins are literally just adding a brief environment section to the start or end of the track, although occasionally they do combine to make a coherent sounding piece in their own right (Pipe Dream / Meanders being the most obvious example).

Very similar results come about from doing the same to 6.5. Axis of Rotation / Solid Earth and Dark Seed / Tunnel North 5 in particular make a lot more sense as combined tracks.
01. Axis of Rotation / Solid Earth (04:12)
02. Anacro Rhythm / Some Degree of Sanctuary (06:30)
03. Opal Light (04:20)
04. Something Approaching Happiness (02:43)
05. Dark Seed / Tunnel North 5 (03:43)
06. Hollow Earth (06:12)
07. I Dream in Viral Blue (04:52)
08. This Place (01:30)
09. Ain't Gonna Lie / Next Town (04:41)
10. Amplification of Intelligence (02:49)
11. The Day the Poles Shifted / Somewhere Near (05:00)
12. Halodule (03:23)
13. Gradual but Not Continuous / Magnox (05:18)
14. Emissions of Light / Harbour (04:19)
15. Bright Skies / Strange Allure (04:41)

Approaching them as new albums, these 15 track versions definitely seem a lot less intimidating, and despite the content being identical, they just seem tidier like this. Or maybe I'm just stuck in the old ways of doing things.

2 and Five don't benefit from any cleaning up as they're much more traditional in their structures, and the first is obviously the actual opposite of this. 3 and 4 are where this format seems to have begun: No Man's Land, River Delta and Supercontinents make a lot more sense combined into a seven minute track, and Photosynthesis works as a coda to Sunsets, but otherwise that album is structurally more conventional. 3 could easily be a 14 track album, in line with the others:

01. Viewed From an Obscure Angle (03:10)
02. Summer's Dream (04:16)
03. Sunken Ships (03:40)
04. The Empty Land (05:40)
05. A Glitch in Cellular Memory / Recollection (06:42)
06. Accompaniment for Melodious Expression (03:05)
07. Absolution (03:39)
08. The Oldest Lady (01:19)
09. A Diversionary Tactic (03:07)
10. The Silent Place (02:52)
11. Out of Sync Child / Hall of Mirrors (03:33)
12. End of the World / Sense of Being (06:24)
13. Surface Water (03:42)
14. Heart Sick Chord / Repetition is a form of Change (09:55)

What's intriguing about 3 is that A Diversionary Tactic and Surface Water have significant outro environments in themselves, which would probably have had their own indexing had they been on Six or 6.5.

We can also retroactively apply the 'environments' approach to older albums, to show that, musically, the albums are still structured the same. Dead Cities is the most clear-cut case of this.

01. Herd Killing (02:38)
02. Dead Cities (04:59)
03. Dead Cities outro / poetry environment (01:38)
04. Her Face Forms in Summertime (04:13)
05. Her Face outro environment (01:25)
06. We Have Explosive (05:38)
07. Pig environment (00:40)
08. Everyone in the World is Doing Something Without Me (04:10)
09. My Kingdom (05:47)
10. Max (02:49)
11. Antique Toy (03:58)
12. 'He thinks he's very funny' environment (01:44)
13. Quagmire (05:11)
14. In a State of Permanent Abyss (01:45)
15. Glass (04:32)
16. Girl crying in park environment (01:05)
17. Yage (07:33)
18. Vit Drowning (04:47)
19. Through Your Gills I Breathe (00:44)
20. First Death in the Family (02:18)
21. Dead Cities Reprise (01:30)

And going backwards through time:
01. Just a Fuckin Idiot (05:40)
02. The Far-out Son of Lung and the Ramblings of a Madman (04:29)
03. Appendage (02:26)
04. Slider (06:05)
05. Slider outro environment (01:16)
06. Smokin' Japanese Babe (04:59)
07. You're Creeping Me Out (06:31)
08. Eyes Pop - Skin Explodes - Everybody Dead (02:38)
09. Eyes Pop outro environment (01:07)
10. It's My Mind That Works (03:25)
11. 'Come fly the teeth of the wind' environment (01:28)
12. Dirty Shadows (04:49)
13. Tired (beat section) (01:48)
14. Tired (Little Brother / horses section) (02:11)
15. Tired (synth outro) (02:31)
16. Egypt (04:11)
17. Kai (04:25)
18. Amoeba (04:22)
19. Amoeba outro (aka 'How did that happen?') environment (00:58)
20. A Study of Six Guitars (03:21)
21. A Study of Six Guitars outro environment (00:52)
22. Snake Hips (05:51)

With Bird Wings and Interstat as separate tracks, Lifeforms features a slightly lower increase in total tracks:
01. Disc 1 intro environment (01:05)
02. Cascade (04:55)
03. 'You will awake now' environment (00:41)
04. Ill Flower (02:43)
05. Flak (04:54)
06. Bird Wings (01:30)
07. Dead Skin Cells (05:00)
08. Dead Skin Cells outro environment (01:51)
09. Lifeforms (05:19)
10. Eggshell (06:24)
11. 'I can hear myself' environment (02:02)
12. Among Myselves (03:28)
13. Disc 1 outro environment (00:45)
14. Domain (02:48)
15. Spineless Jelly (04:42)
16. Interstat (00:55)
17. Vertical Pig intro environment (00:58)
18. Vertical Pig (05:45)
19. Cerebral (03:13)
20. Life Form Ends pt.1 (03:16)
21. Life Form Ends pt. 2 (02:03)
22. Vit intro environment (01:41)
23. Vit (05:07)
24. Omnipresence intro environment (01:09)
25. Omnipresence (05:3)
26. Room 208 intro environment (01:20)
27. Room 208 (04:53)
28. Elaborate Burn (03:16)
29. Little Brother (04:00)
30. Little Brother outro environment (01:13)


Using the Tales booklet I think I've worked out the full tracklist here:
01. 13th Century Kitichi (01:26)
02. Liquid Insects (05:20)
03. Arizona (01:02)
04. Swab (03:51)
05. Mountain Goat (04:39)
06. In Mind (04:15)
07. Mid Point (01:23)
08. Slow Blow (00:39)
09. Ephidrena (07.33)
10. It's Him (00:32)
11. Auto Pimp (06:56)
12. Offspring (00:17)
13. Fat Cat (03:50)
14. Tall Buildings (00:38)
15. Pod Room (03:49)
16. Cactus (01:00)

Unsurprisingly, Accelerator doesn't bear so well under the same scrutiny, nor does Environmental, which bizarrely only has a couple of brief environments and is mostly standalone tracks.


Anyway, that's mostly all a brief thought that got very much out of control and turned into a couple of hours dicking around with tracklists, but I found it intriguing nevertheless.
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by Chris3d »

I have to say I much prefer the older approach. Where 'joined' tracks and short 'environments' feature as just one track on the disc with one title or with a forward slash.

The first time I listened to Tales of Ephidina and Lifeforms was on cassette. I could get a rough gist of what tracks were which, but aside from that I didn't really consider that all the intros, outros, environments and bridges were separate tracks.

The Dead Cities tracklist was always somewhat confusing. 15 track titles yet only 13 tracks on the CD. It made it interesting trying to guess which track was which. Especially the last third of the album and the 'hidden' track thrown in at the end! Interesting that you have put the section after Her Face Forms In Summertime as an outro, when I always believed it was the intro to We Have Explosive (as it was on the 5 part EP too).

They made a bit of a return to seguing and flowing tracks together on My Kingdom Re-imagined. They listed the tracks separately, but I'm sure the FSOL of old would have just merged tracks like Transient Empires, Sound Shadow, Implanted Memories and Populate with the previous track.

Interesting that they decided to list every track on the Environments series, when the first one was just in 2 parts without any titles at all.
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by Pandemonium »

This actually makes sense to me - 100%
I love this approach - and I'd like to think what Brian comments would be :)

I'm aware that it's an artistic choice and all that - but (in general) albums with more than 15 tracks wear me down...
8-12 is my perfect count, 6-15 is what I can live with :)

Also not a fan of the E1 approach - it's nice to know and remember the album tracks, for dozens of reasons - reference / talk about them with friends, remember them who/where they are when playing around aka mixing stuff, reference for samples, etc.

PS - so when they finally get to 10 and end the series, they can consider using this approach for the limited edition box-set that will come out in 2026 :)
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by mtnsportr »

I've always thought of it as the 2 minute rule - if a song isn't 2 minutes long then it is either: an intro, outro, or interlude. Anything less needs to be tacked onto another song.

Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit was 2:31 and is the greatest "short" song ever so don't try to beat it!
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Ross
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by Ross »

In terms of E1, I actually think it works better as it is, as there are long environment sections that don't really feel like 'tracks' in their own right as such. I also quite like the long untitled pieces, in some senses they give the music a touch more 'purity' - a lot of titles seem to exist out of necessity rather than creative reasoning. So E1 just allows the music to be without any exterior suggestion.
Chris3d wrote:Interesting that you have put the section after Her Face Forms In Summertime as an outro, when I always believed it was the intro to We Have Explosive (as it was on the 5 part EP too).
Now this is an interesting comment, as I'm not sure how well the CD indexing actually reflects the intended running of the album. The LP edition has the 'pig' environment at the start of Everyone in the World rather than at the end of Explosive (and is mentioned as such in credits); the kid's voice at the end of My Kingdom is listed in the credits as part of Max,
They made a bit of a return to seguing and flowing tracks together on My Kingdom Re-imagined. They listed the tracks separately, but I'm sure the FSOL of old would have just merged tracks like Transient Empires, Sound Shadow, Implanted Memories and Populate with the previous track.
'Populate' feels like an individual track, but the other three I'd definitely agree with - 'Implanted Memories' feels like it's part of the same track as Path 8.
mtnsportr wrote:I've always thought of it as the 2 minute rule - if a song isn't 2 minutes long then it is either: an intro, outro, or interlude. Anything less needs to be tacked onto another song.
I'd hate to think how Wire's Pink Flag would work in that context!

There are a couple of FSOL tracks I think don't work in that context - 'Boulton' and 'Interstat' come to mind - but on the whole I agree that in soundscapey contexts, that approach does seem to work better.


The Yage 2019 LP is 11 tracks running to 42 minutes, so I reckon we'll be getting a few more short pieces.
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by Chris3d »

Ross wrote:Now this is an interesting comment, as I'm not sure how well the CD indexing actually reflects the intended running of the album. The LP edition has the 'pig' environment at the start of Everyone in the World rather than at the end of Explosive (and is mentioned as such in credits); the kid's voice at the end of My Kingdom is listed in the credits as part of Max,
I don't think the indexing matches much at all. The intro to the Dead Cities track is at the end of Herd Killing. Same for the intro to My Kingdom. Only 2 or 3 tracks start at an index point (Antique Toy, Glass). It feels more like the index points were put in when the main part of a track kicks in.
Ross wrote:'Populate' feels like an individual track, but the other three I'd definitely agree with - 'Implanted Memories' feels like it's part of the same track as Path 8.
Agree. That was just off the top of my head. With more thought I actually think it goes more like this...

1. My Kingdom - Path 7 / Transient Empires
2. Collapsed Structures
3. Sound Shadow / My Kingdom - Path 8 / Implanted Memories
4. My Kingdom - Path 9
5. Populate
6. Water Garden
7. Old Empire
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Ross
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by Ross »

Chris3d wrote:It feels more like the index points were put in when the main part of a track kicks in.
Yes, that's probably right. I always found it interesting how the index point of Slider changed between the black and white versions of ISDN - the former has a few seconds of the Escape From New York sample before it starts, while the latter kicks in straight with the beat. The latter works far better.

There are never any hard and fast rules with FSOL, though, which is something that makes them them. Titling, indexing, album structures, artwork, there's always the feeling they do what they want at that time rather than following an internal consistency. It bugs my anal side, but I wouldn't have it any other way. That touch of a scrappy DIY approach is FSOL through and through.
Agree. That was just off the top of my head. With more thought I actually think it goes more like this...

1. My Kingdom - Path 7 / Transient Empires
2. Collapsed Structures
3. Sound Shadow / My Kingdom - Path 8 / Implanted Memories
4. My Kingdom - Path 9
5. Populate
6. Water Garden
7. Old Empire
I'd probably throw 'Sound Shadow' in after 'Collapsed Structures', just because it's very rare they have intro and outro environments on one track, but otherwise I agree. It would make Path 7 over 13 minutes long, by far the longest FSOL track (not counting long collagey pieces like E1 and Globular).
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by Chris3d »

Ross wrote:I'd probably throw 'Sound Shadow' in after 'Collapsed Structures', just because it's very rare they have intro and outro environments on one track, but otherwise I agree. It would make Path 7 over 13 minutes long, by far the longest FSOL track (not counting long collagey pieces like E1 and Globular).
Ha! Now we are getting into whether or not they would have indexed it like that before, and not just whether they are part of the same track.

MK Part 1 is not far behind at almost 11 minutes. I actually found it quite refreshing to find much longer tracks on the Re-imagined release, as much of their post 90s releases feature short tracks.
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by Ross »

The short tracks thing is partially because of the issue in this thread - my proposed tracklists in the opening post would have provided more 5-7 minute tracks - but at the same time there's definitely something to that when you look at Environmental and many of the side-project releases. Plenty of tracks around the three minute mark. I'd definitely take something like The SX-One Live Improvisations as an approach over another 16 track 50 minute album, although a good balance between both extremes is obviously best. The real thing is being able to really get lost in the tracks before they end.
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by epitome »

mtnsportr wrote:I've always thought of it as the 2 minute rule - if a song isn't 2 minutes long then it is either: an intro, outro, or interlude. Anything less needs to be tacked onto another song.

Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit was 2:31 and is the greatest "short" song ever so don't try to beat it!
Haha, there are so many great songs that are under two minutes! :ugeek: :)
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Re: The structure of the Environments

Post by epitome »

Interesting discussion, Ross and I see what you mean when you say that the recent albums do actually adhere to a similar structure to the older albums, if you just re-think where the tracks start/end.

To be honest, it isn't really a big deal to me as I just listen to the whole thing as an album and pay little attention to individual tracks anyway. I don't think I'd be too bothered if the albums were released as just one track (although it would seem a bit odd to do that) and whether it's 10, 15 or 25 tracks, if the music is exactly the same either way then I don't think it matters to me. That said, I still found this concept very interesting! :)
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