I’d just bought a CD single in my local indie, and on the way out I glanced at the VHS section. I almost certainly did a double-take as I spotted a video of Lifeforms, my favourite Future Sound of London album. I would probably have been 14, and FSOL’s music carried a mystery that other music didn’t. The fact that there was a video really excited me, and I ran to the car where my parents were waiting for me, begged to borrow some money, ran back to the shop hoping it hadn’t been sold, and bought it. I looked at the back cover: two tracks, ‘Lifeforms A/V’ and ‘Lifeforms Path’. I assumed ‘A/V’ meant ‘album version’, and ‘Path’ meant a version from the Paths 1-7 single. Two music videos! What would they be like? I was expecting wide natural vistas, deserts, rainforests, maybe my perceived story of what was going on in the Lifeforms booklet. So the actual content surprised me a little.
Despite the titles, no full version or path of the track ‘Lifeforms‘ is on the soundtrack. Instead, the two videos are each made up of excerpts of two tracks, as well as several linking environments. ‘Lifeforms A/V’ opens with environments from ‘Lifeforms (Path 1)’ and ‘Lifeforms (Path 5)’ and the closing environment of ‘Among Myselves‘, before a couple of minutes of ‘Dead Skin Cells‘ fade in; ‘Ill Flower‘, ‘Cascade‘ and ‘Vertical Pig‘ environments follow, before a still-unreleased track rounds out the section. Eastern instrumentation and vocals meet with bright synths and a chunky analogue beat; the track could very easily have been included on either the Lifeforms album or single comfortably. One day we may be lucky enough to get a title for the track (I’ve asked, no answer is forthcoming!). The soundtrack to ‘Lifeforms A/V’ was first broadcast on the final Kiss FM Transmission, and featured on most of the 3D Headspace Tour shows too, possibly as a way to include a huge amount of Lifeforms material in a short space of time.
The second track, ‘Lifeforms Path’, opens with a brief environment from the transmissions, before heading into two minutes of ‘Vertical Pig’, somewhat sped up to make it an even more intense piece. ‘Life Form Ends’, ‘Little Brother’, slowed down ‘Vit’ and ‘Ill Flower’ environments come and go, before the second unreleased track appears, in the form of an excerpt from ‘Deep Into Your Subconscious I Slide’. The full track would be released on Astralwerks compilation Excursions in Ambience (The Third Dimension) the same month. More transmission-exclusive environments close the video on a sinister note.
Of course, the music isn’t really the purpose of the video. What about the visuals? The Lifeforms VHS is the band’s first real attempt at taking the ultra-media broadcast system they were becoming into visual territory. Much was made of the money pumped into the band’s visual side – indeed, more of their Virgin advance seems to have been spent on graphics equipment than their already comfortable music gear. Shortly after signing to the label, Brian and Garry embarked on a series of interviews with Music Technology magazine. The series only lasted two volumes, but gave an idea of how early on they were looking at combining the various forms of media. “We’d like to be developing that side at the same rate that we’re developing our sound. So I think what we’re going to be doing here is knocking through the wall when the guy next door goes and setting up a U-matic edit suite. Our images should be as sophisticated as our music.” Garry remained positive at the time, especially about the equipment they were beginning to be able to use: “for the first time, we got access to the video gear that we’ve been after and looking towards for the last couple of years which is silicon graphics, the stuff that Jurassic Park was shot on, which I think is going to become a very, very creative medium in the next two years.”
Of course, this being 1994, a music video budget – even with access to silicon graphics and major label funding – was never going to stretch to something that looks as good as Jurassic Park. The story ‘It Sparkles and Everything’, from the Ramblings of a Madman 2 zine, recounts the difficulty in even getting the video made. With Buggy involved on a major level, using the latest Apple and Silicon Graphics hardware, the vision was in place, but when outsiders were brought in, there was some difficulty, especially as their main creative partner used a PC. Arguments ensued, while the band looked on, somewhat bewildered. Nevertheless, as a conclusion drew near, “there [was] a lot of ramble about unquantifiable wireframe menus, PCs vs Macs, and budgets – most of it pretty amusing – but it culminates, happily, in ‘PC scrotal sacks now merged perfectly with silicon Spikey and the PC world merged effortlessly with silicon'”. It’s unsurprising to learn that Spikey was the main output of the Silicon Graphics gear, given that he’s rendered far better than a lot of the other imagery.
In terms of actual content, Buggy’s initial idea was, apparently, typically oblique, described amusingly as opening with “wide angle – ANAL”. In the end, more surreal but imaginable ideas came up, described by Garry with the usual wry cynicism as “we’ll go underwater and from a pod opening a giant seed will emerge and from the hand of a dying man it’ll travel up into the sky with giant scrotal sacks with a golden palace rotating in the distance”. It’s fair to say the graphics haven’t all aged that well. They look very impressive for 1994 – compare them to other music videos of the time, and they create a pretty immersive world – but at the same time, they’re also very, very CG-looking. Compared to the largely timeless music, they definitely fall down. To watch the video now is partially an exercise in nostalgia, although it’s also enjoyable to see what they were trying to do. The potential in the imagery is wonderful, and conjures up a strange, imaginary world.
‘Lifeforms A/V’ opens with an alien swamp, trees and fungi growing, a fungus explodes, excreting spores. Underwater, a turtle and a ray swim over strange looking plants, and a ball of light floats past. As ‘Dead Skin Cells’ fades in, we see what is possibly the first Silicon image, a morphing shape made of what looks like reflective liquid, texturally far more detailed than the landscapes seen so far. A very unconvincing bird flies over a rocky landscape. So far, so abstract. Then Sheuneen appears, arms stretched wide, and Spikey unfurls his tentacles. Spikey is more fluid in his movements than previously seen on the ‘Cascade‘ video, and is the most impressively rendered model in the video. Then a headless figure appears, and light radiates from its neck. Then we enter dead man seed, scrotal sack and golden palace territory. Final shots of Spikey and Sheuneen come along, as well as a flying horse, and the landscape fades away.
‘Lifeforms Path’ has a slightly different feel, opening with black and white super-8 footage of the band in and around the studio. The imagery is startling after the previous trippy six minutes. As ‘Vertical Pig’ hits, the video moves to quickly cut (read: should come with an epilepsy warning) footage of Sheuneen, film of a forest, studio shots and CG landscapes. It’s the only time where the video directly corresponds to the music, and is possibly the best part, the fast moving imagery adding to the disorienting nature of the track. More super-8 footage and new CG polygons are interspersed throughout the remaining video, but the main material repeats shots from ‘Lifeforms A/V’, only with different colour gradients.
When I first watched it, I was incredibly disappointed. This wasn’t my Lifeforms! The odd, unwelcoming, almost claustrophobic alien landscapes, the computer imagery which already looked dated a few years on. Having seen the ‘My Kingdom’ video as my introduction to the band, I’d expected this to be the same: life action footage with superimposed graphics. To this day, the visuals still seem somewhat detached from the music for me. It is a work of remarkable imagination, though, with a lot of striking and incredible imagery, and a great inclusion of both Sheuneen and Spikey. The graphics are very much of their time, and haven’t dated anywhere near as well as the music.
The video was advertised at the time as being a “pilot for the forthcoming film YAGE”, and seen in that way, it’s quite successful. Bemoaning the fact that “the people who are making the music haven’t been the ones making the videos,” in The Wire, Garry was positing a future where high quality music, videos, graphics and live music broadcast could all exist side-by-side as a form of ultra-media. Acknowledging that the technology available at the time was both cost-prohibitive and still too basic to fully represent the band’s desired immersive world, Garry believed that “when the new video technology comes down to an affordable level, a street level, the kids are just going to wipe the floor with what the suits and the privileged creatives are doing with it”. Although commonplace now, this democratisation of video was still many years in the future in 1994, and so Lifeforms was simply a teaser for the kinds of things that could be created in the future, and on that level, it’s a definite success.
The front and rear covers match the original album art.
Release date: 31st May 1994
Tracklist
VHS (VID 2722 | 7243 4 90023 3 3)
1. Lifeforms A/V
2. Lifeforms Path
Credits
Concept FSOL/Buggy G. Riphead for EBv.
Construction/design Buggy G. Riphead – EBv bug@optik.demon.co.uk.
Stuart Gordon – digital arts, Prisms Animation and Design.
Hyperbolic Systems – concept/construction/design of intro and fly sequences – psim@hyperbol.demon.co.uk – Paul Simpson – James Boty with Darren Lee, Andy Haveland, Justin Cornish.
Special thanks to Nick Manning and Gary Youst, Autodesk UK, Lightworks, Darren – ESP, Mark Constentine, Lilith.
Spike modelling and rendering – Olaf Wendt.
Girl photography – Far Out Films.
Landscapes animation & rendering – Digital Arts – London, principle animator Stuart Gordon, special thanks Martin Poole.
Girl model – Sheuneen Ta.
Editors – John Smith/Owen Tyler – TSI.
Producer/director – FSOL/Buggy G. Riphead.
Special thanks to Freedom Management – Martin Barter/Keith Web.
This is the beginning of YAGE.
Fractional Difference 