Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming releases

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Ross
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by Ross »

Apparently this is CDTOT 75. Which means we have a missing 74. Curious.
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Ross
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by Ross »

Ocea - from the Touched FSOL Night last year. DnBish drums with gorgeous synths. Absolutely incredible track, what an opener! Drums suggest it's probably a '90s one.
Semi Conscious Participant - choirs and beats. A short one but a palette cleanser after the opener. Nice twinkly percussion in the middle.
Silent Midnight - not very silent. Unassuming intro, goes into some lovely synth work. Those pads definitely feel early '90s to me.
Halfer - Slightly jazzy melodies that sound very '90s. Glitchy drums that sound very, very recent. Drum machine at the end is a bit older. I reckon this is an enhanced one. Nice track.
Embodied - ooh that plodding arpeggio is lovely. Flute is great, haven't heard such an overt sample in a FSOL track for a long time. Strings! What an uplifting piece.
Super Tide - this has to be an Environment 6 outtake. Lovely little piece.
Without You it's Meaningless - Breakbeats, big synth melodies. Another rich and uplifting track. Glorious.
Osaka Traveller - oh bloody hell this is brilliant. Some of the synths are reminiscent of 'Tokyo Travel', even a touch of an '80s sound to them. Nice stuttered and chopped up breaks as beats.
Slow Moving World - very pretty guitar-based ambient interlude. Both Gaz and Brian started out in guitar-based bands and I think some people downplay the frequency the instrument turns up in FSOL stuff. Probably from this century.
Propagate - ah yes, the Humanoid track from the 2017 calendar. The general response was that this track sounded more like FSOL than Humanoid, so this makes sense. This is only the second time we have actual confirmation that a FSOL track is created by only one member (Brian's other entry being 'First Death in the Family'). Nice track, although strange to hear it in a new context after gradually getting used to the calendar album. I'm going to guess it was maybe considered not acid enough for the Humanoid album.
Photographs of an Object - a brief environment. Field recordings, samples, some synth drone, bit of flute. Usual stuff. No matter how much my music improves, I never seem to be able to make environments as evocative and full of space as FSOL. Leads into..
A Constantly Changing Mind - synth arpeggios, stuttered beats that fit in well with the drums elsewhere on the album. That funky-ish guitar sample is familiar, although I can't place it. Definitely a '90s bit there though. Acoustic guitar on top. Loads of space in this track, really vast sounding.
Confirmation Bias - dark stuff, booming synths, skittering breaks. 1995? 2015? Who knows. I'd say it's certainly had some recent treatment as the mix is similar to 6.5 / Environmental / My Kingdom Re-Imagined.
These Days - synth arps, although they don't sound like those found on recent tracks. Female vocal sample sounds very '90s. Nice moody mid-tempo track. Ends on a bit of that '90s FSOL staple, the muted trumpet.
Riverbed - another track ported over from last year's calendar album. Gorgeous guitar based ambience again. Once again, going to take a while to get used to this in a different context.
Extruded - back into dark, sinister breakbeat territory again. Becomes unexpectedly dreamy with layers of synth pads and arps later on though. Interesting stuff.
Views of an Empty Sky - a new views track is always welcome. Field recordings, guitar notes, EMS squelches, violin loop? Ah, there are the piano chords, gorgeous as ever. Airy and abstract, closes the album well.

I'm wondering if the title change from FTA to Archived is based around the enhancement of older tracks and the presence of more modern ones, as neither this nor the previous volume feel or sound remotely like the earlier volumes. So many of those tracks on 1-6 (and 7, to an extent) sound like they would fit on any of the '90s albums, but there's pretty much nothing on here & 8 that would, and even 7 felt like it had its own vibe, a few recognisable tracks aside (and at least a couple of tracks are more recentish). But yeah, this doesn't feel like a collection of '90s tracks at all, but more like 'if these tracks were released today, this is what they'd sound like'.
If this was released as Environment Seven, I don't think anybody would have noticed there was '90s material in here. Also helps that I think this is the first Archive release without and material from the '90s ISDN transmissions / mix at all.

And to echo what just about everybody else has said, this is definitely the best Archive release to date.
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Ross
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by Ross »

Dennis wrote:One thing about the cover, I think it does not quite fit the mood of the album - it looks great but there's is definitely something scary about it, whereas the overall mood of the album is rather mild and dreamy. A weird kind of dreamyness, a bit like the "Standing Ground" track from Archived 8 with some epic sounding peaks.
I'd agree with this, the music here definitely doesn't have the same trippy / psychedelic sound as their '90s stuff and would suit of the more landscapes & polygons approach of the Environments and Archived 8 artwork. Have to wait to see what the booklet contains, that's always fun to look through.

Also, first physical FSOL release not to have the title on the cover since Lifeforms?
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Ross
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by Ross »

Behind the scenes: "quite a few" of the tracks predate Lifeforms, although only one of them features no new editing / overdubs: Osaka Traveller.
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by 808Spense »

Slow Moving World sounds like it uses part of Antique Toy which makes me wonder if it is Dead Cities era, the vocal snippets also remind me a little bit of dead Cities. Apart from the Calendar tracks, which were great the first time around, standouts for me are Ocea and Without You It's Meaningless. I love how Ocea takes that ubiquitous 90s chill out guitar sound and beefs it up, FSOL style. Archived series has been killing it since number 5.
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Ross
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by Ross »

I wasn't sure if that was part of Antique Toy or another recent track, but I just realised that other recent track was actually one of mine, so yeah it's Antique Toy haha.
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by mcbpete »

Is Osaka Traveller a Zeebox prototype of Papua New Guinea ?
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Ross
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by Ross »

I have no idea what that sentence means, but Osaka Traveller is from 1993. Early Lifeforms sessions I believe.
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by ronniedobbs »

I hope this hits iTunes / Google Play soon, as I'm away from my laptop, but have a looong flight coming up this weekend.
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Ross
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by Ross »

CD came.

It's actually called From the Archives Vol. 9.

...
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by gabo86 »

Ok.
So, how should I call it on my iTunes (and then, subsequentially, on my last.fm account)?
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Ross
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by Ross »

It's up to you! Seems both are valid.
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by mcbpete »

It's tagged as 'From The Archives Vo.9' on the ID3 tags of the download version too (well, except the two bonus/vinyl tracks which are tagged as 'Archived 9'.... damn you FSOL - gonna rename it all 'From Our Environmental Archives Vols. Nin8' in spite)
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by epitome »

Just had my first listen to Archives 9 now. Very nice on a dark, quiet (apart from the sounds of FSOL) morning! :) Even after one listen I can see this becoming one of my favourites of the series. I actually really like all of the Archive releases and until now I would say 7 was my favourite, if I had to pick one.

When I put the CD in to import to iTunes it couldn't find it in the database, so I had to manually enter all the information (jeez!). As it says "From The Archives Vol. 9" on the side of the CD case, that's how I've titled it, which, slightly annoyingly, now makes Archived 8 the only one of the series not conforming to the "From the Archives..." name (although curiously, as said above, the bonus tracks are tagged as being from "Archived 9").
-- I should point out, the only reason that the naming of the 8th in the series is slightly annoying is because now they don't show up in order in iTunes (not that it's really important). Obviously it's a similar issue with the Environments series too. At least they're in a nice order on my shelf, irrelevant of the name :)
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Re: Archived 9 - out 5th October, and other upcoming release

Post by moxlox »

Ross wrote:Apparently this is CDTOT 75. Which means we have a missing 74. Curious.
CDTOT74 is probably Archived 9!!! :roll:
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