Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

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

Post by Ross »

It's been seven years since my Second Thought site went offline, and three since I accidentally buggered up the Wiki, and I have no place to document my thoughts on FSOL. Moreso, there isn't anywhere online that has a detailed, up-to-date discography of everything they've done. The best at the moment are a version of my Wiki from the Web Archive, and Pande's thread, which looks set to be quiet for some time yet.

So I decided I'd set up a blog and go through every FSOL and FSOL-related track, album-by-album, song-by-song, writing known facts as well as my own thoughts on each one.

The site is called Fractional Difference and is here. I'll be tweaking the design as it goes along, and adding posts from tomorrow (hopefully). As it is, I've got an About page explaining the purpose of the project, and the biography copied over from the dead wiki. Anyway, I'll update this thread whenever I complete an album's worth of reviews, for anyone insane enough to read the whole thing!
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mcbpete
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by mcbpete »

Is the 'Galaxial Pharmaceutical' section of this site now no longer then? If so I might see if I can link that bit of the forum to your new site instead

Went in there hunting for something earlier today funnily enough - Trying to remember the side project from the last few years that ends with a big 10 minute (I think) epic beaty track - Thought it was called something with odd characters (a la τροχός) but my brain just can't remember what it's called (or what it was on (or which alias)).
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by billybatts »

that's the curse of having spent your teens to forties listening to loads of music. you can remember half bitten fragments on a good day, then they're gone. I have 3-4 tracks i'm always trying to complete. One sounds like Spooky's Shelter, but isn't. The one which sounds like Cola Boy, Seven ways to Love. The one which is of a mum leaving a voicemail for her son who's living on a space station. slightly easier now you can sing to Shazam and google sound search. The other day I was yodelling into my phone. My son looking at me as if I'm crazy, but it bloody worked - Elton John, Passengers! Good luck anyway
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by mcbpete »

And to go on a (not at all) similar tangent. Someone posted this today trying to locate the composer and was convinced I'd heard it on a Dead Cities era ISDN set:

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

Post by Ross »

If you’re ok to leave the Galaxial part of the site there for the moment that’d be great - there’s actually some stuff in there I don’t have backed up anywhere at the moment (particularly the interviews!)
If you need the space I can copy it all down somewhere though.

10 minute epic closing track? No idea. The nearest thing I can think is Leak Stereo from Environment Six, or the penultimate track from Yage 2019, both of which are fairly long by modern FSOL standards and come near the end of their respective albums. Unless it was one of the fifteen minuters on S:X One Improvisations?

And yeah, the older I get, the less room I find in my head for new music and info about it. At one point I could have named every FSOL track, but when they dropped 180 tracks in one go in 2007 that started to falter a lot. Environments 4 is the last one I know titles from, since then my knowledge is really scattered. I’ve actually been revisiting the Archives recently because there are so many tracks there I still don’t know that well.
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by mcbpete »

Absolutely - I'll happily leave the Galaxial Pharmaceutical section for as long as you need it, the entire forum database (both this bit and the galaxial bit) only takes up like 64mb so it's really not an issue!

And you were bang on with the guess.... It was indeed the final 15min track of S:X One Improvisations (Minimally Conscious - no idea why I thought it was just symbols), less beat-y than my memory remembered but just as epic sounding. Like an entire warehouse full of analogue gear spurting sound around the building - kinda like Chis Cunningham's Jaqapparatus 1 but sounds wise rather than laser wise:

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

Post by Neil »

Ross wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 6:50 pm It's been seven years since my Second Thought site went offline, and three since I accidentally buggered up the Wiki, and I have no place to document my thoughts on FSOL. Moreso, there isn't anywhere online that has a detailed, up-to-date discography of everything they've done. The best at the moment are a version of my Wiki from the Web Archive, and Pande's thread, which looks set to be quiet for some time yet.

So I decided I'd set up a blog and go through every FSOL and FSOL-related track, album-by-album, song-by-song, writing known facts as well as my own thoughts on each one.

The site is called Fractional Difference and is here. I'll be tweaking the design as it goes along, and adding posts from tomorrow (hopefully). As it is, I've got an About page explaining the purpose of the project, and the biography copied over from the dead wiki. Anyway, I'll update this thread whenever I complete an album's worth of reviews, for anyone insane enough to read the whole thing!
Thanks man, this is really cool. Just read your 'About' section - it's really interesting, and I had a similar experience with the My Kingdom video on TOTP, and then combing the internet in it's early days (at least in terms of my access to it!) for any morsel of info about FSOL. Those were exciting days. Looking forward to reading stuff as it develops. Good luck with the project!
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Ross »

mcbpete wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:16 pm And you were bang on with the guess.... It was indeed the final 15min track of S:X One Improvisations (Minimally Conscious - no idea why I thought it was just symbols), less beat-y than my memory remembered but just as epic sounding. Like an entire warehouse full of analogue gear spurting sound around the building - kinda like Chis Cunningham's Jaqapparatus 1 but sounds wise rather than laser wise:

That album is exceptionally good, and I hope the sound seeps its way into future releases. Something about the slowly morphing looseness of it, but with so much going on at the same time. It's low key but retains the epicness of the best bits of '90s FSOL.
Neil wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:23 pm Thanks man, this is really cool. Just read your 'About' section - it's really interesting, and I had a similar experience with the My Kingdom video on TOTP, and then combing the internet in it's early days (at least in terms of my access to it!) for any morsel of info about FSOL. Those were exciting days. Looking forward to reading stuff as it develops. Good luck with the project!
I think fandom is a genuinely interesting concept in its own right, and what I loved about the FSOLLIST back in the day, and to an extent this forum in its early days, was people discussing their experiences of listening to FSOL and how it affected them. Any artist who has a genuinely original take on their medium, or exposes a particular honesty through their work, tends to incite fascinating responses from fans. Being fortunate enough to witness early FSOL internet fandom, like yourself, I'd quite like to try and replicate that experience in modern terms, to try and stand out among the typical greyness of Facebook / Discogs / Wikipedia - all of which are fine, but shouldn't dominate what we get from researching a band online.
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by gabo86 »

Ross wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 6:50 pm It's been seven years since my Second Thought site went offline, and three since I accidentally buggered up the Wiki, and I have no place to document my thoughts on FSOL. Moreso, there isn't anywhere online that has a detailed, up-to-date discography of everything they've done. The best at the moment are a version of my Wiki from the Web Archive, and Pande's thread, which looks set to be quiet for some time yet.

So I decided I'd set up a blog and go through every FSOL and FSOL-related track, album-by-album, song-by-song, writing known facts as well as my own thoughts on each one.

The site is called Fractional Difference and is here. I'll be tweaking the design as it goes along, and adding posts from tomorrow (hopefully). As it is, I've got an About page explaining the purpose of the project, and the biography copied over from the dead wiki. Anyway, I'll update this thread whenever I complete an album's worth of reviews, for anyone insane enough to read the whole thing!
Ross,
thanks, actually.
I found very interesting the Wiki (I had asked to revive it, but you told me it was very difficult) because I'm a "newbie" (as a fan; I've been knowing FSOL since forever but I dived in only seven years ago). So I'm very curious about all this project; I was curious about also the Pande one, but it seems to be stopped, and I asked him to continue but he told me that it will be difficult, and I can understand.
So thank you, I will take as a beacon to surf the sea of FSOL music (so vast).
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Ross
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Ross »

Yeah, Pande has a lot of real life concerns that put this kind of indulgence on the back seat. Luckily (or not) I have more free time so I'm happy to use some of it for this. I had a feeling you'd be happy about it!
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Pandemonium »

Ross wrote: Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:50 am Yeah, Pande has a lot of real life concerns that put this kind of indulgence on the back seat.
My only concern is how to make a couple of million canadian dollars to get a house here in Vancouver :)
You're doin' too much, do less.
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by 2nnt »

I remember both Second Thought and the Wiki. Used to be super obsessed with all the weird trivia and details about some of my favourite albums back in my teenage years. I'll be sure to follow this project, sounds promising.
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by Ross »

I've done a brief overview of Bacteria From a Baboon's Stomach, and a look at the release of Stakker Humanoid. Doing a track-by-track for the Stakker single tomorrow.
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Re: Fractional Difference - Exploring FSOL song-by-song

Post by mcbpete »

Ross wrote: Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:41 pm I've done a brief overview of Bacteria From a Baboon's Stomach
Woah first time I've even heard that alias mentioned. Plus it pointed to the Humanoid - Global album that (I'm ashamed to say) I've not actually heard. Interestingly I looked up Sunshine and Brick and the first result was this, labelled as being by Homeboy



The top comment being:
@MrJuicejohn did a bit of digging. the original mix of this appeared on humanoid's global album but this was apparently an exclusive edit recorded under the one-off alias of homeboy for the deep heat 5 compilation.
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