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My copies haven't arrived yet and I am dying while being held reading all your comments. I am however totally hyped and been on FSOL playback only lockdown all week, so enjoying plenty of stuff.

Conclusion after a week of E6+ heavy rotation:

6.5 is clearly the stronger one, a flawless listen from start to finish. Tracks like Hollow Earth, Viral Blue or Gradual... are just otherworldy bliss, epic to the max whilst deeply touching emotionally. This thing is a definitive peak in their sprawling discography.

Six is of course great too, but it is definitely a more introvert and melancholic affair. The tracks appear a bit more minimal here what makes it a bit less spectacular sounding compared to 6.5. And I still have to make friends with "Leak Stereo 70", not that it´s a bad track, but it still sticks a bit out again compared to the rest.

Needless to say that this is the album of the year for me, guess I´m not alone with that here around
(I don´t know why but on watmm noone seems really interested in this... instead they prefer discussing new Metallica & Radiohead... very strange.)

After a week of solely listening to Six, I'm beginning to get a handle on it. Reckon I'll be starting on 6.5 tomorrow, see if I can properly get my head around that one. Interesting that, so far, I seem to be the only one who prefers Six though... We'll see how that fares over the week.

The Future Sound came through my letter box today.

Just listened to Environment Six, and immediate first pass impression (typing whilst on last track) is that it is a luscious soundscape closer to the perceived concept of an environment than any preceding album in the series since the very first Environments.

Stand out tracks for me on first pass were: Symphony for Halia (worthy of a Mogwai title if ever I saw one - no bad thing) and the quite frankly awesome Leak Stereo 70.

Needless to say I love it.

Now about to enter ENVIRONNMENT 6.5

Ross - interesting approach to focus on one album all week, then move to the other one. I couldn't do that! I commend your will power.

I am amused that the CD Text on Six says Region 1, Region 2 etc for each track rather than the track name.

ENVIRONMENT 6.5 appears to do it by track name as per the sleeve.

moxlox wrote:Ross - interesting approach to focus on one album all week, then move to the other one. I couldn't do that! I commend your will power.

Having listened to them together a couple of times last weekend I realised:
a) they're two separate albums
b) there's too much to take in

So this is the only way I can really get my head around the pair of them. Obviously I had to listen to both at the start, I couldn't have put 6.5 off for a week without at least a couple of listens!

I can't help feeling that maybe the albums are the wrong way around. 6.5 feels so much more like the previous two that it seems really odd to have Six in between, listening chronologically. 6.5 really feels like a halfway point between Five and Six.

Generally much more favourable views on 6.5 listening on its own rather than going straight in after an hour of Six. It definitely feels quite vast in comparison to the incredibly insular Six. That said, I'm still finding these two albums difficult. Not in a bad way at all. In some ways they're reminding me of first attempting to understand Lifeforms when I was a kid. The feeling of something being so vast and sprawling that you'll never get to understand it. The previous Environments have given away their secrets quite easily, I think, in FSOL terms at least - they've definitely not seemed as dense as the '90s albums. These two, though, are a puzzle I've barely unlocked. Lots of interesting listens ahead still I think.

I've just been going with the flow with these two. I feel I'm starting to get in to Six a bit more now. These albums very much feel like two sides of the same coin. The great thing is that I know over time I'll really come to love these two albums. It's so exciting to have a couple of albums like these to get in to!

Question for those who have the physical version: are there any interesting liner notes? Can anyone transcribe them here? Thanks in advance.

gabo86 wrote:Question for those who have the physical version: are there any interesting liner notes? Can anyone transcribe them here? Thanks in advance.

The only inlay text was already posted above somewhere, the field-recording source of "Wild Weather", the use of EMS-Instruments and SKYFLOW PROJECT message. Beyond that there´s only the usual CD-text (written by Cobain/DOugans, Images by BG Riphead), the main secrets of these albums is wrapped in the music as always!

Which brings me to this idea I had when listening, there was a guy complaining on watmm forums about the recent Aphex Twin releases on which one can clearly hear which instruments he uses (mostly analog gear), compared to earlier Aphex albums where you had to guess from where he sourced that weird sounds from, was it recorded, sampled or generated from which strange instrument. I mean FSOL just released an two hour album full of enigmatic sounds like that with some of them obviously created in the most unorthodox manner one can imagine (and nonetheless listenable, clearly recognizable as 'music'). I bet this weird "Wild Weather"-track creation is just an example, the album (and all other FSOL albums) is certainly full of stuff like that.

PS: Btw, what was that SKYFLOW-PROJECT thing again? I remember having read something here on the forums about it some time ago.

Not 100% sure what the name Skyflow refers to, but FSOL are in the process of creating a synth called the Digitana. Whether Skyflow is the name they're using or the name of the company who are developing it I dunno. Symphony for Halia is created using nothing else.

Listened to 6.5 now and 'The Day the Poles Shifted' blew me away. Love it.

I listened to Six and 6.5 back to back yesterday and by the end of 6.5 it was too much to take in, so can't really give a coherent opinion yet.

Interestingly like Ross, I preferred Six on the first listen of both. But a day later I have been listening to 6.5 more as I don't think my brain could take it all in one go on the first day!

Anyone found any decently large artwork on line for 6.5? The largest I have found is only 500x500. Have a 1200 x 1200 image for the Six artwork. I can't remember if someone posted some pics on this very thread?

A week of listening to 6.5 now, I think I got my head around it much more than I have with Six. It definitely seems the more accessible one, definitely ties in with a 'classic' FSOL sound a lot more. Big, wide-screen sound, more samples, chunky drum loop, plus a few Amorphous hints in there.
The one thing I'm not getting with this one is a very distinct 'world'. In the way that Lifeforms had its obvious tropical/exotic landscapes, Dead Cities its urban decay, Environments 2 the vast icy scenes - I don't get much visual geography from 6.5. It's a set of very strong tracks, but it's lower on atmosphere than I'd usually expect from FSOL (that said, I have a similar thing with Five as well).

I am totally undecided on which I prefer now. They're both very similar yet incredibly different.

Ross wrote: The one thing I'm not getting with this one is a very distinct 'world'. In the way that Lifeforms had its obvious tropical/exotic landscapes, Dead Cities its urban decay, Environments 2 the vast icy scenes - I don't get much visual geography from 6.5. It's a set of very strong tracks, but it's lower on atmosphere than I'd usually expect from FSOL (that said, I have a similar thing with Five as well).

I am totally undecided on which I prefer now. They're both very similar yet incredibly different.

I was actually wondering what the "environment" for each of these might be.

I still just about prefer 6.5, but these are my favourite two albums of the year and I think FSOL's best releases since the 90s. I agree with your last comment, Ross, well said