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Environments (1994)
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Environments (2007)
I sometimes wonder just exactly how accurate the final mix of Environments is to what it would have been in 1994. Regardless of its release now, it's comforting (in a way) to know that the mystery around the original release will always remain. Was it two long tracks like this final mix? Was it to contain A Study of Six Guitars and Tired? Why was it scrapped? Were they going to go with the black cover, or was that just a 'no cover yet' placeholder? And so on.
Anyway, the album. It's a very strange one, I have sometimes described it to others as FSOL's 'Berlin School' album. It certainly fits the Rubycon/Ricochet mould of two side-long parts, and obviously goes off into full on sequences in the middle of each section. Despite some of the album being reworked sections of other tracks - Ill Flower, Cascade Part 1 & Part 5/An End of Sorts, Wookii and so on - this doesn't bother me too much, as the pieces are largely very different from their original counterparts, and the 'alternate takes' thing never bothered me on the EPs. It also helps to think of the album as a linking point between Lifeforms and ISDN. In that context, those parts make sense.
Themeatically, it is possibly a tad more vague than some of the other albums - I get a variety of vague images compared to the more obvious atmospheres conjoured by Lifeforms, Dead Cities etc. It's partially spacey, partially ethnic, very strange overall. I think the feeling of continual change is brought on by the switching between what are their most collage-like, sample-based sections and their most synth-heavy sections.
I like the album a lot, possibly not as much as the other Environments records so far, but a lot anyway.