The FSOL Message Board

Yeah, the style is very 90ies IDMish (or IDM-esque?), maybe that´s it. Very 'Aphexy' (or Aphexesque? ) in places, like in 'Yut Moik' or 'Dark Seed'.

I honestly don't get that much of a '90s vibe from either. Mountain Path, Electric Pastrol and Dark Seed are the only real callbacks I hear. It's certainly more electronic and IDMish I suppose, but not in a way that reminds of the '90s actually - certainly not FSOL's '90s output, at least.

Anyway, this guy likes both of them:

Really good to see younger, contemporary reviewers like this picking up on FSOL instead of just sticking to the obvious Warp & Rephlex artists.

Ha, this guy is funny - [in a good way]

I don't know why but I got a mental image that Ross looked like this when he was young(er)

This guy's from USA right?

It was generally good except ... why is he calling PNG a 'techno-rave' (and he's not the only one, but this gets me every time)
- And he doesn't like ISDN (???) well... OK...

Well I suppose Accelerator in general could be vaguely judged as "techno-rave" from a younger person's perspective. Just one of those things. I think it's partially because it's an area of music which has yet to have a massive critical reappraisal, so it's still a bit of a foreign thing to a lot of people who don't have the references or language to properly discuss or even understand it.
I've come across a few people in my time who don't like ISDN - I was one for a very long time myself. I think it's by far their most difficult album. It doesn't have anywhere near as many accessible tracks as the other '90s ones.

A lot of Gaz´n Brians early stuff (from the 'alias days') can be clearly labelled as 'techno' or 'rave' or both imo, I don´t see a problem with that. I read a thousand times PNG being called a 'rave anthem', I think basically that´s somehow what it is. I think 'rave-music' is not nessecarily describing bad music, in those early days a lot of actually quite good tunes are associated with that term. I think the genre description 'rave music' started sounding like something to avoid, when it was connected with stuff like Marusha or Westbam and those myriads of 'DJ´s' in the mid 90ies, popping up fusing cheap 180 bpm techno with smurf-vocals

I didn't meant to say Rave is bad music at all - I love early 90s rave, but PNG simply isn't rave (in probably 9 out of 10 definitions)

It's often described as a hugely important piece of music in the post-rave movement, intentionally working away from the trappings of turn of the decade dance music. So it's definitely from that culture, whilst being at odds with the music. Like I say, I think there's generally not that much coverage of this kind of stuff in the wider music media, so for people who weren't even born at the time it definitely makes sense to tie them together.

Just a thought on a lack of voice samples or any obvious samples in general on these albums. I think it would be difficult for them to get away with sampling what they did as much as they did now. I think the price would just be too high these days.

Ross wrote:It's certainly more electronic and IDMish I suppose

I really don´t exactly know what it is, but I get a heavy flashback of the feel I had when I was first listening to FSOL back in 98´ when playing the new albums. I swear, no drugs involved it´s like inner time travel via music...

Blinker wrote:Just a thought on a lack of voice samples or any obvious samples in general on these albums. I think it would be difficult for them to get away with sampling what they did as much as they did now. I think the price would just be too high these days.

I dunno, there's Serengeti from a few years ago...

I believe it's been an artistic / creative decision, anyway.

True, that was a pretty big sample. I also didn't mean suggest it wasn't a creative decision.

I kind of get the whole flashback to the nineties thing, especially on Environment Six. I can only attribute it to the increased use of beats. It has generally been very sparse in the Environments series up until now compared to their nineties output. I found it quite amusing when the beats they introduced in Environments 4 amounted to a very primal whacking of a single drum. It was almost like that scene from 2001 with the monkey wielding a bone.

Environments 6 has much more complex rhythms to it. I still haven't come to terms with either album but have to say I am really enjoying them both. That said I've been playing them end to end like one release only so far, even though there is a noticeable difference in style as well as volume levels.

The whole rave scene thing must be a little confusing to a younger person. I'm not sure the politics behind it would be that obvious now, what with the quite frankly insane attempt by the government to ban music with repetitive beats in it for example. The government seemed intent on quite brutally suppressing any vaguely successful alternative culture, be it raves, the Stonehenge festival, and a significant proportion of society were deeply suspicious of the government and police as a result. To some extent I think that's now perceived as just people getting off their heads for a laugh and not thinking about to tomorrow.

I´m not really a 'younger' person anymore, but those genre definitions still confuse me a bit. To be honest, I couldn´t really tell the difference between 'dance', 'techno' or 'rave' and what that words meant back in 92´... I´m afraid my view on this kind of stuff is quite the same this guy on youtube seems to have (btw there really is something 'Harry-Potter-esque' about his appearance )

So for the hair-splitters (guess I´m one of at the moment ): PNG is a track that´s definitely still rooted in this whole acid-house/manchester-rave movement/culture (like the whole Accelerator album), but tries already to escape it with some (back then) innovative features, a new vision in general, leaving all kinds of 'club culture' behind. (I now remember some very old interview where Gaz stated sth like that about their purpose of musicmaking at the time around the release of lifeforms)

Blinker wrote:True, that was a pretty big sample. I also didn't mean suggest it wasn't a creative decision.

Given the lack of any credited samples on the Archives and Environments I reckon they're actually safer now they're not on a major label. When you're selling 1,000s instead of 100,000s it's easier to sneak stuff in.
I've actually spoken to Brian about samples / the lack of, and he's assured me they haven't given up forever.

Pandemonium wrote:Ha, this guy is funny - [in a good way]

I don't know why but I got a mental image that Ross looked like this when he was young(er)

This guy's from USA right?

It was generally good except ... why is he calling PNG a 'techno-rave' (and he's not the only one, but this gets me every time)
- And he doesn't like ISDN (???) well... OK...

This guys is exactly like me when I was younger, haven't changed that much either, I'm still a geek who loves FSOL.