“I suggest that you, er, reach deep down inside yourself there and and try and find something that’ll keep you awake just a little while longer, because the transmission coming up may just rekindle your your will to live.”
This Silent Running sample is an incredibly fitting way to start 1993 for multiple reasons. Firstly, the literal: this would be the start of a deeper, more atmospheric kind of transmission to 1992’s Test Transmissions. Secondly, the long term: this sample would be used to open a huge number of FSOL transmissions over the years, its use here signifying the start of that era. And thirdly, the personal: this show rekindles my will to work on this blog. Because I’m not the biggest fan of the Passion Music era. I love Accelerator and Principles of Motion and loads of individual tracks, but as a combined body of work, the band’s 1990-1992 output is not why I’m a fan; it’s certainly not why I’m the sort of fan who feels committed to writing about all 1,000+ tracks they’ve released. The start of 1993 is the point where FSOL begin to feel like the FSOL that grabbed me when I was a kid and never let go.
A quick word about dating: as discussed on the Test Transmission 2 entry, there is no solid information about these early transmissions, with only 19th May given for what is likely two shows. Neither Kiss Transmission 1 nor 2 lines up with bootlegs labelled 19th May, so I’ve given up trying to be accurate and just popped this down as an unknown date in 1993.
“You are listening to a test transmission for a new form of information transfer. Not only are you receiving audio, but you also receiving image and text data. Test transmission begin.”
It would be a few months before the Tales of Ephidrina press release announcing the start of the FSOL “Ultramedia” enterprise EBV, but at this point the Broadcast System had very much begun. A Mixmag article from later in the year confirmed this, “Their recent guest show on London’s Kiss FM featured not only all the latest sounds and pulses but also another signal. Computer code. They were simultaneously broadcasting machine code for tripped out Apple Mac computer graphics to go along with the music.” While this would be more prominently advertised for the 1994’s 3D Headspace Tour, it was evidence that even at the start of 1993, Brian and Garry were already looking beyond simply being a band.
“I want the names of all the places you live, all the schools you went to, friends, enemies, acquaintances, good memories and bad”
The opening section features further environments and spoken samples that would become part of the general transmission DNA throughout 1993 and 1994. By this point, the band had realised that, while Yage and Cyberface were certainly fun, they also added a sense of novelty to the shows that could be better replaced by film dialogue. These film clips would give a sense of continuity and some abstract narrative, tying in with the band’s desire to create actual radio shows rather than simply DJ mixes.
After the intro comes another key moment: the opening environment of Cascade. Still a year until the album’s release, and the band give us a sneak preview of Lifeforms. This is followed by an unidentified track which is largely considered to be an unreleased FSOL track. The leap between the Test Transmissions and this show is huge: this feels like several steps on, in terms of style and maturity.
At this point, we get our first non-FSOL tracks, and it’s straight in to ambient techno/IDM territory, rather than the club music of 1992’s shows. Tracks by Link, Higher Intelligence Agency, The Orb, The KLF and Brian Eno round out the first half hour in true non-dance style – who knows what Kiss made of it at the time. The tracks are overlaid with numerous film samples, many of them still unidentified.
“My mind is going, there is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. It’s called… Daisy.” – HAL 9000’s death scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, a commonly used sample throughout the Lifeforms era.
“I’m senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, wacko. But no more, no less” – Jack Nicholson as McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Yage and Cyberface reappear briefly in a reuse of part of the first Test Transmission in which they discover the Emerald Forest in the Sample Library Stage 4. This, rest assured, is their very final appearance. Indeed, the same Guy Called Gerald track follows, suggesting this is just a chunk of that transmission ported over.
It’s quite startling how much ambient music is in this show. In my mind, the ’93 Kiss shows began largely dance-oriented and the band began to deconstruct the sound over the course of the year, but even at this early point, the music has shifted very heavily away from the dancefloor. Part 2 starts in full-on ambient territory. Over a blend of Jimmy Cauty’s Space project and a Reload track, the first use of one of the band’s most sampled spoken sources appears, with two characters from a 1965 radio version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea discussing using high frequency sounds to scare off a giant squid. And then a brief appearance of Dead Can Dance, one of Garry’s loves from the 4AD (not to mention originators of a certain vocal sample). Some brief Lifeforms environments and then some atmospheric techno from Trancesetters, before a left turn back into ambient territory with a dive into a ’70s Klaus Schulze track.
“I’m going with you.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Listen… Dega’s got you on the x-ray list for tomorrow. The x-ray doctor, he’s a convict. Some kind of Hindu or something. He’s got somebody on the outside.” – from the 1973 prison drama Papillon.
The use of Papillon is slightly unusual in contrast with most of the film samples, which tend to come from science fiction movies. Unsurprising, given the general nature of the band’s concepts at the time, and the sci-fi babble from Yage and Cyberface that the film dialogue replaced.
“And right now, I’ve got two men. Two men with a gut full of fear. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dying time’s here!” – Edwin Hodgeman as Dr. Dealgood in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
After a bit of ambient-IDM from Speedy J, the band treat us to some more Lifeforms material, this time in the form of ‘Elaborate Burn’, one of the album’s most ambient pieces, and clearly an early track from the sessions. It’s worth remembering that at this point, Tales of Ephidrina was yet to come out, and yet here the band were, treating listeners to music from the album after that. And then Cabaret Voltaire and even some ’70s French space disco, just to confuse listeners further. Kiss FM would often play hardcore and early proto-jungle in the early hours: no wonder there are still people out there with vivid memories of their minds being blown by the weirdness in these shows.
“Every time we have the argument, you say the same thing to me, you give me the same three answers all the time, the same thing, “well, everybody has a job,” that’s always the last one. But, you know what else there is no more of, my friend? There is no more beauty, there is no more imagination, and there are no frontiers left to conquer, and do you know why? Only one reason why.”
Silent Running is by far the most heavily sampled film in FSOL history. Huge chunks of dialogue are replicated over these shows and continue to appear, in some form another, over coming years, including a re-spoken section on ‘Meadows’ on The Isness in 2002. The film’s chilling portrayal of humanity’s apathetic destruction of the final remnants of nature feels almost at odds with the future-oriented world the band liked to portray at the time, although this is only really an example of the dichotomy at the heart of everything they’ve done: their music, of course, has always been made from out of date gear and samples of music from previous decades. The appearance of a Deep Forest track at this point is intriguing, as that group always straddled the uncomfortable line between ethno-ambient and new age schlock, usually landing uncomfortably on the wrong side. I’m strangely fond of the particular track here however, and it feeds bizarrely well into the Derrick May track that follows.
The tracks in the mix are mostly linked together with environments, some of which will be familiar to fans in this form, others would be later slowed down for use on Lifeforms, but many remain exclusive. Around eight minutes into Part 3, birdsong that would later turn up on The Isness appears, tying together seemingly disparate parts of the band’s catalogue. I won’t list every time an environment appears, but listeners will no doubt find the glimpse of the gradual creation of Lifeforms‘s sonic world over the course of 1993 intriguing. Adding to that, we also get ‘Vertical Pig’ and the ‘Darshana’ remix in close succession. It would be easy to consider Lifeforms a 1994 record (that’s when it was released, after all), but the Kiss mixes go on to show that this version of the band’s sound is rooted in 1993.
“Dried, synthetic crap! And you’ve become so dependent on it that I bet you can’t live without it.”
“On Earth, everywhere you go, the temperature is seventy-five degrees. Everything is the same. All the people, are exactly the same. Now, what kind of life is that?” – More Silent Running. One wonders whether Garry relates more to this film now than he did back in 1993.
“Listen carefully. Wow, listen. I never knew that fish could be so noisy! Hey, there goes a big old fish that’s lit up like a neon sign. You could see him in the dark!”
“It’s phosphorescent.”
That 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea sample is interesting because the voices are slowed down – or at least pitch-shifted down – in a manner that more and more voice samples would be as the mixes evolved. This effect gives the voices a detached, somewhat inhuman quality that adds to the psychedelic, unearthly nature of the mixes. Excerpts from this radio play continue throughout the mix: you’ll spot them, they’re usually about fish. The sample is followed by a track by Dif Juz, another 4AD favourite of Garry’s from the ’80s; the FSOL would cover the track around the same time – although it remains unreleased – and Dif Juz member Richie Thomas would work on Dead Cities and The Isness, as well as recording an unissued album for EBV. The Dif Juz track is followed by ‘Agog in the Ether’ by Ozric Tentacles, the track sampled on ‘Cascade’ and ‘Flak’. The Ozrics were a favourite of Nick Philpin, manager of the studio block Earthbeat was a part of. More of him later.
“How do you feel, Johnny?”
“A little sleepy.”
“Well, try to relax. We mustn’t use up any more oxygen than we have to. We only have a half hour’s supply left.”
Things have got a bit darker since we last met Johnny and his fish-spotting. This rather bleak sample is directly followed by an organ performance of music hall favourite ‘Beside the Seaside’. It’s extremely amusing, and a pairing that would be used well into 1994. It’s at this point that Brian and Garry throw in the first proper dance track of the show (currently unidentified). Over two and a half hours in, and apparently it’s time for some techno. They like to confound. It’s the start of a short section of dance music, before heading into some Peter Gabriel soundtrack work and, astonishingly, ‘Kai’ from ISDN, a track that would not be released until well over two years later. While much of that album was recorded after Lifeforms, it’s remarkable to think that chunks of it were recorded at the same time as Lifeforms‘s earlier material.
“Great Spirit, Maker of All Life. A warrior goes to you swift and straight as an arrow shot into the sun. Welcome him and let him take his place at the council fire of my people. He is Uncas, my son. Tell them to be patient and ask death for speed, for they are all there but one: I, Chingachgook” – Russell Means as Chingachgook in The Last of the Mohicans.
More than two years after its release, Mental Cube’s ‘Chile of the Bass Generation’ feels a little out of place on the mix, even overlaid with samples from The Last of the Mohicans.
“You don’t think better on marijuana, you just think you think better” – radio advert by Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
“Everybody does it, it’s not my problem” – Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner.
Midway through Part 5, a new sound appears: hip-hop. The instrumental version of Run-D.M.C.’s ‘Beats to the Rhyme’ is quite a tonal shift after two hours of ambient and IDM, but in hindsight it feels like the start point of a particular sound Brian and Garry would begin to develop, particularly on the 1994 material recorded for ISDN. One can clearly hear the roots of tracks like ‘Wanting’ and ‘Snake Hips’ here.
“Our world is at an end. All evidence of our existence will be washed away. We must attempt to send those we have saved into a distant future that may lie beyond the gate” – Chapelle Jaffe: as The Council Chamber Stockholm in Millennium. Part 5 ends, quite remarkably, with ‘Cascade Part 2’, all nine minutes of it. It’s a hefty chunk of the show to dedicate to one track, and particularly unusual as material from the band’s singles was rarely played on transmissions.
Mildly interesting aside: there are two totally different artists called Space on this mix: Jimmy Cauty’s project based on his part of the initial Orb sessions, and the French space disco outfit responsible for ‘Magic Fly’. The final half hour of the show returns to the format of the opening section, with Space playing alongside other ambient-techno material from the period, including names who would come to define the era like Biosphere, Aphex Twin and Higher Intelligence Agency; further material from Eno & Cluster (with a track that would reappear on the Electric Brainstorm series 25 years later) and Dead Can Dance manages to bring together the musical interests of both Brian and Garry. And then the mix closes on the ‘Dub’ and ‘Dumb Child of Q’ mixes of ‘Papua New Guinea’, in an unusually backward-looking move for the band.
While the development between the first two Test Transmissions showed FSOL shifting away from straight-forward dance music towards more cerebral sounding techno, nothing could really have prepared listeners for how much further out they were travelling. It’s an astonishing show, and one that was only a hint of things to come. Brian and Garry began 1993 with a bang, and they were only just getting started.
As with Test Transmission 1, the version sold on The Pod Room in 2008 came in six half-hour segments, no doubt how it was created before supplying a single blended mix to Kiss, and this version forms the basis of the tracklist below. No bootleg version is known to exist.
Tracklist
Part 1
00:00 Transmission intro
01:48 The Future Sound of London – Cascade environment
02:53 23 Skidoo – Tearing Up The Plans Part 2
03:26 The Future Sound of London – Unknown
08:01 Link – The Originator
08:40 Link – Amenity
13:34 Amorphous Androgynous – Auto Pimp environment
14:34 The Higher Intelligence Agency – Orange
15:33 Brian Eno – Triennale
17:33 Yellow Magic Orchestra – Tong Poo (The Orb Remix I)
19:23 The KLF – Madruganda Eterna
20:13 Tranquility Bass – Mya Yadana
24:34 Brian Eno – Final Sunset
25:55 Yage & Cyberface – In the sample library
27:04 A Guy Called Gerald – Eyes Of Sorrow
28:27 Virgo (aka Virgo Four) – Take Me Higher
29:26 End of Part 1
Part 2
00:00 Space – Venus
01:10 Reload – Rota Link
03:02 Dead Can Dance – Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to The Book
04:17 Trancesetters – Fantasizing
10:21 Klaus Schulze – Floating
16:09 Speedy J – R2 D2
19:15 The Future Sound of London – Elaborate Burn
23:11 The Future Sound of London – Unreleased environment
24:24 A Certain Ratio – Knife Slits Water
27:47 Space – Magic Fly
31:02 End of Part 2
Part 3
00:00 Edgar Froese – Aqua
01:00 Deep Forest – Sweet Lullaby (Ambient Mix)
03:19 Rhythim is Rhythim – Icon
06:58 ????? – ?????
07:58 The Black Dog – Cost I
12:24 African Head Charge – Dinosaur’s Lament
15:24 Reload – Le Soleil et la Mer
20:26 The Future Sound of London – Vertical Pig
21:35 Richard Horowitz – Marnia’s Tent
23:30 ????? – ?????
26:12 Robert Fripp & David Sylvian – Darshana (FSOL Reconstruction)
31:20 End of Part 3
Part 4
00:00 ????? – ?????
01:43 Dif Juz – The Last Day
05:19 ????? – ?????
06:21 Ozric Tentacles – Agog in The Ether
09:36 ????? – ?????
11:25 Unknown – I Do Like To be Beside the Seaside
12:40 ????? – ?????
15:47 Exocet – Safety Zone
18:40 Vapourspace – Gravitational Arch of 10
25:27 Peter Gabriel – At Night
27:58 Amorphous Androgynous – Pod Room environment (Tall Buildings)
28:14 The Future Sound of London – Kai
31:23 End of Part 4
Part 5
00:00 The Future Sound of London – Unknown environment
01:59 Mental Cube – Chile Of The Bass Generation
06:35 The Higher Intelligence Agency – Orange
11:04 Run-D.M.C. – Beats To The Rhyme (Insterumental) (1987)
13:38 ????? – ?????
18:38 The Future Sound of London – Cascade Part 2
27:55 End of Part 5
Part 6
00:00 The Future Sound of London – Unknown environment
01:44 Space – Neptune
04:10 ????? – ?????
05:26 Dead Can Dance – Bird
06:53 ????? – ?????
07:23 Eno / Moebius / Roedelius – Broken Head
10:30 Dr. Motte’s Euphorhythm – Chill Out Planet Earth
11:22 Biosphere – Cloudwalker II
15:56 Aphex Twin – Schottkey 7th Path
18:54 ????? – ?????
19:48 Rising Sun – Ocean View
23:11 The Higher Intelligence Agency – Conoid Tone
26:33 ????? – ?????
27:07 The Future Sound of London – Papua New Guinea (Dub Mix)
28:20 The Future Sound of London – Papua New Guinea (Dumb Child of Q Mix)
32:40 Transmission end
Fractional Difference 