Environments 6

[DJ Three]

after Environment 5 being newly recorded material... i was thinking Environment (with no "s" at the end ) denotes new material.... ie; one single environment rather than collected reversions / previously unreleased material.

honestly, though... hardly concerned and can't believe i've awoken to what amounts to a double album of stuff today!!

[ronniedobbs]

DJ Three, is that you Chris Milo?

indeed.

dude, I remember when you worked at Alternative Record Store, haha

[DJ Three]

DJ Three, is that you Chris Milo?

indeed.

dude, I remember when you worked at Alternative Record Store, haha

fond memories. good chance then that i sold you your first Future Sound Of London stuff... hehe

[ronniedobbs]

As a matter of fact, you were working the day I heard Lifeforms on the PA, LOL small world.

[DJ Three]

As a matter of fact, you were working the day I heard Lifeforms on the PA, LOL small world.

far out

[Pandemonium]

Yut Moik

[Ross]

after Environment 5 being newly recorded material... i was thinking Environment (with no "s" at the end ) denotes new material.... ie; one single environment rather than collected reversions / previously unreleased material.

Supposedly a mix of 'old and new' again this time - but I think that definition is really losing meaning now anyway. If we consider that Environments II featured almost entirely 'old' material, including Glacier, a track from 1997, and the album was released in 2008 - and this album features Hollow Earth, a track which almost certainly dates to 2006, released in 2016, it becomes a bit meaningless. Is this a new track? And old track? A new old track? An old new track? Throw in the fact that some tracks on Archived 8 received a lot of updating and enhancing (more, indeed, than the bulk of Environments II) and the whole old/new thing definitely seems to lose its importance now. 'I Turn to Face the Sun' is technically a reworking of 'Glass', but it's so unrecognisible, and was done in the FSOLDigital era, that it's effectively a new track.

In short, I wish they'd give up with the Environments and Archives and just call these records new albums. I've been saying that for years - as long as there's nothing blatantly '90s on there (ie the obvious Dead Cities offshoots on E3 and the early dancey tracks) then I think they could very easily just put out these records as new albums. It'd certainly help their promotion and sales, because I've seen a lot of people commenting that they're tired of the band putting out album after album of outtakes, even though that's not necessarily the case (this is almost certainly just from people who heard the first three or four archives which I think most of us would admit are far from perfect). Throw out War Machines and I think everyone would have accepted Archive 7 as a newly recorded album.
I'll never, ever understand how Brian and Gaz's minds work!

[Pandemonium]

All valid points Ross.

But trying to view it from their side - they're just (not that) young anymore, they're comfortable with the current tempo, comfortable in the mainstream/underground, and as they age they slowly become something similar to Tangerine Dream - lots of output, who cares if it's imperfect, just have fun and dig deeper into the world of soundstructures [at least that's what it's look like to me...]

[Ross]

I'm not at all complaining about their output. I love the fact that they're doing everything at their own pace, that they can experiment with aliases and side-projects again, that they have two main projects, and can survive off self-releasing and doing everything in-house. Although I certainly miss the idea of them sneaking into the mainstream of the '90s, realistically what they're doing now makes most sense for them. I just think shuffling the tracks around a little and renaming the albums would make more sense.

One thing that always niggles me is that we don't really know what the Environments series is. With each album, there's always some paragraph about how this album picks up where the previous left off, and so on, and the band have spoken about albums being written as part of a series, but I don't get that at all. Environment Five, for example, has absolutely nothing in common with the first album. 1 is spacey epic soundscapes inspired by '70s German music; II is classical-infused ambient with an icy theme; 3 contrasts the classical sound with darker beats, and returns to Dead Cities, thematically; 4 is much more acoustic and psychedelic influenced, with more of an exotic feel; Five blends bits of prog rock and old analogue electronics with a film score approach and a heavy going life-after-death concept. I'm not saying that there isn't any logic behind it - I'm sure the guys have a purpose - but it's totally unclear to the outside world. And in terms of cohesiveness, I'd say that Archive 7 is a lot more coherent an album than Environments 3. But nevertheless, when an album is titled a certain way, especially with loaded names like these, that place the album as part of a series tied to the group's history, it becomes part of the album, and I can make it all a bit more confusing. Now obviously the guys like confusing, they do it better than most. But I dunno, certainly Environments II, 4 and 5, and Archives 6, 7 and 8 all have such distinct sounds as individual albums in their own right that I do wish they'd been allowed to exist outside of the constraints of their naming. And Accelerator, Lifeforms and Dead Cities are such brilliantly evocative names that match their respective albums absolutely perfectly.

The Tangerine Dream comparison is an interesting one. Once Edgar and Bianca formed Eastgate, things did go a bit mad on the release front. TD practically became a music production line in the late '00s. The main difference would be that there's very little to distinguish tracks and albums from that era of TD, whereas FSOL have retained their characteristic impossible-to-pigeonhole approach. Nevertheless, there are certain 'series' of TD albums that bug me. The later Atomic Seasons albums don't really have any connection to the plot of their supposed story, and the Sonic Poems all have the same mood, regardless of the dramatically different texts they claim to be inspired by. I know a lot of people are going to just listen to and enjoy the music for what it is, but some fans are always going to want to go deeper and find out what the music's about, why it's titled so. In many ways, naming an album as part of a series suggests there's something to 'get', much more than having each one individual.

tl;dr - this is what happens when I'm eager to hear the new album and can't yet.

[DJ Three]

at risk of stating of the obvious... or, stating against popular opinion here (or facts unbeknownst to me)... Environments (including 6 & 6.5) seem to mostly play as collections of songs but i've always felt they're implied to be more than a mere "archive" of tunes and the fact Environment Five was presented the way it was confirms that (IMHO). for me, Environments II flows impeccably and could have been a proper album and Five plays like an album because it is one... but not made with the type of unified immersion they do for a proper album. they clearly have overtly high standards for what they are willing to let be an artist album. i have so much respect for that given the amount of music they have and / or create.

regardless of how good the music on 6 / 6.5 may be.. it does not play like a "proper album" to me and i think by their own standards based on what they said after Five --- that they are starting to resonate with "FSOL" again and are warming to the idea of making a "proper" album again --- i can only presume that means investing all-in time and dedicated focus with the music creation for that purpose. so, today my hope is with this installment (regardless of how new or cool the music is) that they are purging and, as they've hinted, are actually going to go all-in on a proper FSOL album once new AA is done and dusted. sorry for the run-on here...

a boy can dream... but im happy enough with what FSOLdigital does what it does already.

will defo check Archive 7 based on your musings, Ross... i have missed out on most of those installments.

PS - also, picked up up Zeebox Vol. 3 today.... wow

[DJ Three]

i also have never been as excited as i am now for the new AA album. by thats for another thread, i guess...

[Pandemonium]

Well I think you answered your own question Ross - but also think that you wouldn't be satisfied with that answer and still seek deeper meaning

- As you said, each ENV album has a theme, a current of music that influenced the guys, and all of them have Environmental music - so I think that's about it - those two things are the (loose) connection of the series. We (the old fans) tend to forget how little is the number of albums (worldwide) that has segues and environments used in this way.

- Archives are the same thing, just, you know, archives. A track can be 2 months old and end up as archived since they'd feel it doesn't fit anywhere else...

Their concepts seem 'old' to us here on the board, but in fact concepts like MPB that started in 1997; it took the world 10-12 years to 'see' what they're doing and throw some awards at them

@DJ Three:
It's been almost two full years since I totally quit thinking about a 'proper new' FSOL album. And I don't miss it at all - like Zero.
If there is a voting poll on fsoldigital weather there should be a 'new' FSOL or not - I'd vote NO.

People of our generations are too used to 'albums' forgetting the fact that the LP concept is a music industry product that was awesome and peaked through the 60s / 70s / 80s / 90s but that's about it.

- I really like this series thing - and talking with Brian hints that there may be even more than a few new series

[DJ Three]

@DJ Three:
It's been almost two full years since I totally quit thinking about a 'proper new' FSOL album. And I don't miss it at all - like Zero.
If there is a voting poll on fsoldigital weather there should be a 'new' FSOL or not - I'd vote NO.

People of our generations are too used to 'albums' forgetting the fact that the LP concept is a music industry product that was awesome and peaked through the 60s / 70s / 80s / 90s but that's about it.

- I really like this series thing - and talking with Brian hints that there may be even more than a few new series

well, there are plenty of non-albums for you to enjoy... no doubt. agree to disagree, if you please.

until just now, i hadn't given Environment 6.5 a proper listen (just skimmed)... found it to be a fantastic ride end-to-end (plays through like an album, but i digress...). anyone being moved by one more than the other upon the days first listens?

[Dennis]

Fantastic stuff as always is what I can tell after a few listens. Not much I know

But it will definitely take a couple of listens to really sink in. Extremely varied stylisticly. Beautiful haunting melodic stuff, along with some really weird ones (at the end of Six there is one EXTREMELY disturbing track, not unlike vast landscape at the end of E4) but overall definitely more electronic this time. I think best comparison are indeed the EBS-mixes, very similar in mood and structure.

[Ross]

There's definitely been talk of doing a 'proper' album, which is what keeps me wondering. DJ Three is probably right, the 'proper' album is going to be something quite different, something bigger and bolder in concept and execution. But I would still prefer if they were all considered separate albums rather than connected when they really don't sound connected. But that's just me...
The series thing is obviously something they're very much into these days though, with the MPB CDs, the EBS series beginning to creep away from standard mixes (I wonder when they will return), the Viewed from... tracks (which I believe are missing from E6 as they're planning on doing something different with them in the future), plus the numbered EPs by BHT, EMS: Piano... It almost feels like their output is beginning to become a steady stream of connected output, different facets of one creative consciousness. They described FSOLDigital as the embodiment of the Electronic Brain, so that kind of works. Maybe we should consider FSOLDigital as the main artist now