I’m going to do something a little unconventional here. Over the years, I’ve come across at least three different bootlegs of the transmission that was broadcast on Kiss FM on 19th May 1993. They are all clearly from different sources (someone has tried to piece together the bulk of the show from different versions on Mixcloud). And all three of them match up perfectly with the show that was released on The Pod Room as Transmission 4. My guess is that 2 and 4 got mixed up somewhere along the lines, as the one released as 2 is very heavy on Lifeforms material that makes it very similar to shows 5 and 6. So I’m swapping them. The show I’m reviewing as Kiss Transmission 2 was released as Kiss Transmission 4, and vice-versa. On with the show…
The second Kiss Transmission of 1992 begins with ‘Arizona’, the environment that links ‘Liquid Insects’ and ‘Swab’ on Tales of Ephidrina, still unreleased. This is followed by samples of people interviewed about their thoughts on electronic music: typically, some of the responses are complaints about it music becoming faceless and talentless; others talk about the mind-altering experiences of electronic music. It’s a really strange way to open a radio show: no music, no announcements, just five minutes of abstract sound. Eventually, our familiar robotic friend announces “Moving further into the future: The Future Sound of London,” and things begin to take off.
“Well, it’s rather difficult to define. Perhaps I’m just projecting my own concern about it. I know I’ve never completely freed myself from the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this mission.” – HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey
The first track on the show is ‘Mountain Goat’ from Tales of Ephidrina. With that album’s release only a few weeks away, the appearance makes sense. Interestingly, it’s the first full Tales track broadcast since 1992, with the first Kiss Transmission focusing largely around Lifeforms material. The track leads directly into the intro of ‘In Mind’, following the album’s original format, albeit with more samples layered on top. This would be the band’s last transmission before the album’s release, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that a fair bit of it would be used in the show. It is then followed by a piece by avant-garde trumpet player Jon Hassell: the first occurrence of jazz in a FSOL show. And by no means the last: it’s followed directly by a free jazz piece by Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. It’s clear Brian and Garry want to take listeners somewhere very different from both their own past and Kiss FM’s standard fare. Of course then the show goes off into ambient techno/ambient dub territory for the rest of the first half hour. And somehow it all just about blends.
The second half hour of the show opens with ‘Cascade’s intro environment and its close cousin, ‘Flak’, the fourth track from Lifeforms to be broadcast on Kiss FM, with still a year to go before the album’s release. The experimental Morton Subotnik piece from 1967 that follows may also be familiar to Lifeforms fans. This is followed by more traditional techno fare from Detroit political producers Underground Resistance and occult-leaning Dutch outfit Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia, combined with a John Lydon interview from his Sex Pistols years (Brian being a hugePistols fan) and, obscurely, a snippet of Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’. This is FSOL in confrontational mode.
“Please ensure your audio coupling device is interfaced.”
This is imperative.
“You are entering audio copyright zone 2. Spoiler technology is in use.”
One of the most frequently used watermarks gets its debut here during a weird section blending ambient pads with jaunty jazz piano. It’s quite a chaotic moment of sound collage, and possibly one of the less successful.
“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.”
The Earthbeat central computer turning up late to the party, there.
“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all, I think, that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.” – HAL 9000, 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are loads of HAL samples in the show, I’ll stop quoting them all now.
After a fairly techno-oriented half hour, part 3 dials things back down with more exclusive Lifeforms material – ‘Room 208’ – some IDM from Link and The Black Dog, and a couple of 23 Skidoo tracks. 23 Skidoo, one of Brian’s favourites from the weirder end of the post-punk movement, have of course been sampled on countless FSOL tracks over the years. The section ends with a couple more tracks from Tales of Ephidrina.
“For further information on any aspects of this broadcast, contact PO Box 1871, London W10 5ZL. Copyright has been retained in the sound and visual.”
Fans did get in touch at the time – more on that when I get to the white version of ISDN. Part 4 sticks largely to IDM – Aphex, 808 State and Global Communication all appear – while taking a couple of diversions into early synth music. Although a huge early influence on Brian, Tangerine Dream rarely appear in FSOL mixes. My introduction to them was through this very transmission, and ‘Betrayal’ remains one of my favourite TD tracks to this day. Wendy Carlos’s Purcell interpretation used as the main theme to A Clockwork Orange blew my mind when I first heard this show in my teens, and its appearance here, flying in after the opening environment from ‘Among Myselves’ is magnificent. The bootleg mostly widely circulated among fans in the early ’00s began about 10 minutes into Part 3, with what is believed to be an unreleased FSOL track, and ran for 69 minutes, separated somewhere as the cassette was flipped. It was another that I played repeatedly during the long gap before the band returned in 2000.
“The following transmission has been conceived by The Future Sound of London. For those of you with access to an Apple Mac Quadra series, this will be an audio visual broadcast. At selected intervals throughout, image and text data will be transmitted. Please interface your acoustic coupling device. Each of the resultant images require approximately ten megs RAM and have been modelled and rendered at EBV. Stand by for data compression ratio. Test transmission begin. Start programme. Please stand by for visual data 1. Image rendering. Enjoy image.”
At which point, no doubt, anybody connected to fsol.demon.co.uk would have seen a lo-bit graphic of some sort. It’s a shame there’s no archive of the image and text data transmitted from Earthbeat at the time – frustratingly there’s nothing on the Wayback Machine prior to February 2002 – as not only would it be a fascinating look into the early days of multimedia on the web, but it’s also an aspect of the band’s history that’s completely forgotten to time. Even if only a handful of people managed to connect, it was still a FSOL experience that was completely ephemeral.
Part 5 begins in ambient mode – Eno, Namlook, Global Communication, Atom Heart – before heading into darker and weirder territory with Ross 154, followed by a bunch of previously broadcast then-unreleased FSOL tracks, including, once again, ‘Kai’, not officially released until mid-’95.
“If you have encountered problems with your data compression, please ensure the smart (??) ratio has stabilised before connecting the audio coupling device. Any further problems, contact PIN M3000.”
What does it mean? What does any of this mean?
The final half hour reintroduces the answerphone environments, including an invitation to an “ambient tea party”, as well as a phone call made by The New Consciousness, an art collective Brian was involved in in Glasgow in the early ’80s. There’s plenty more Eno, a few more names from the ambient-techno ’90s – The Orb, Namlook again, Wolfgang Voigt – as well as another appearance of Dif Juz’s ‘The Last Day’, clearly a band favourite at the time. The show closes, fittingly, on HAL 9000’s death from 2001: A Space Oddity. HAL was our companion throughout the transmission, so what better way to end on his ultimate demise?
All in all, the second Kiss Transmission is an odd affair: it introduces more environments, more Tales of Ephidrina and Lifeforms material and expands the FSOL soundworld to include avant-garde jazz and ’60s experimental electronics. At the same time, it features more overtly dance-based material than the first transmission, and in doing so feels like an odd halfway house, rather than another bold step forward. The broadcasts would pause at this point, while the band released Tales of Ephidrina and the long-awaited return of FSOL with ‘Cascade’, before picking up with a weekly Kiss FM slot in November.
The six part version listed below was released on FSOLDigital for a short time before licensing complexities made it more efficient to take it offline again. YouTube and Mixcloud are good places to look for anyone interested in hearing the show.
Tracklist
Part 1
00:00 Amorphous Androgynous – Liquid Insects environment (Arizona)
03:59 Amorphous Androgynous – Mountain Goat
08:35 Amorphous Androgynous – In Mind
09:41 Jon Hassell – Unknown
11:31 Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza – Improvvisazione Per Otto (Sunrise)
12:09 Barbarella – Barbarella (The Irresistible Force Remix)
15:45 ????? – ?????
20:48 Dr. Motte’s Euphorhythm – Chill Out Planet Earth
21:35 Jah Wobble’s Invaders of The Heart – Erzulie (Temple Dub Mix by Mind Over Rhythm)
25:27 African Head Charge – Dervish Chant
29:07 End of Part 1
Part 2
00:00 The Future Sound of London – Unknown environment
00:51 The Future Sound of London – Cascade environment
01:58 The Future Sound of London – Flak
06:11 Morton Subotnick – Silver Apples of The Moon
07:21 Underground Resistance – Back Row to Nirvhana
10:32 Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia – The Challenge (Part 2)
10:56 Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells
13:47 The Future Sound of London – Unknown environment
14:23 ????? – ?????
16:52 ????? – ?????
17:46 ????? – ?????
18:19 Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia – The Valley / Beyond
20:53 A Certain Ratio – Blown Away
23:07 The Future Sound of London – Unknown environment
24:40 End of Part 2
Part 3
00:00 Intro
00:35 Klaus Schulze – Ancient Ambience (Gothic Ground)
01:11 The Future Sound of London – Room 208
04:37 B12 – Debris
07:54 23 Skidoo – Tearing Up the Plans Part 2
09:29 The Future Sound of London – Unknown
12:18 Tomita plays Debussy – The Engulfed Cathedral (Preludes, Book 1, No. 10)
13:09 Link – The Originator
13:48 Link – Amenity
16:51 23 Skidoo – Just Like Everybody
18:45 Amorphous Androgynous – Auto Pimp
26:10 Amorphous Androgynous – Fat Cat
30:10 End of Part 3
Part 4
00:00 The Future Sound of London – Unknown environment
00:57 AFX – .0180871R
03:26 808 State – Flow Coma
06:31 ????? – ?????
07:44 Global Communication – Incidental Harmony
13:33 Tangerine Dream – Betrayal (Sorcerer’s Theme)
17:14 The Future Sound of London – Among Myselves environment
18:18 Wendy Carlos – Theme From A Clockwork Orange
19:13 Model 500 – The Passage
21:50 ????? – ?????
24:14 23 Skidoo – G-3 Insemination (Part. 1 – A Winter Ritual)
24:56 Dave Angel – Brother from Jazz
28:05 ????? – ?????
30:01 End of Part 4
Part 5
00:00 Brian Eno – Final Sunset
01:21 The Future Sound of London – Abandoned Incoming
02:31 Teste – Spatial K
03:01 Air – Je Suis Triste Et Seule Ici
06:58 Global Communication – 14 31
07:38 Teste – Spatial K
08:51 Atom Heart – Pure Function
09:41 Directional Force – Airwalk
11:04 Ross 154 – Remembrance
12:50 Amorphous Androgynous – Pod Room environment (Tall Buildings)
13:12 The Future Sound of London – Kai
17:28 The Future Sound of London – Lifeforms
22:20 Pod – Northern Lights
25:29 Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia – The Tides (They Turn)
26:05 The Black Dog – Sharp Shooting On Saturn
29:34 Klaus Schulze – Airlights
30:56 End of Part 5
Part 6
00:00 The Future Sound of London – Unknown environment
00:42 Brian Eno & David Byrne – Come With Us
03:03 Brian Eno – Inland Sea
03:56 ????? – ?????
05:37 ????? – ?????
07:56 Front 242 – Crapage (The Turd Mix By The Orb)
08:36 Vinyl Countdown / Mike Ink – Paroles
12:07 Air – Arc
14:32 ????? – ?????
15:28 Dif Juz – The Last Day
19:03 Brian Eno – Task Force
20:09 Brian Eno – Final Sunset
21:53 Transmission end
Fractional Difference 