This is an odd one. There’s no date on it at all, although it’s clearly ’94. There’s no reference anywhere online or in the band’s literature about the show. Nevertheless, the bootleg appeared online in the early ’00s on the Disenchanted FTP. The quality isn’t exceptional, but it’s not bad for an mp3 rip of a cassette recording of an FM radio show. At the time it was a particularly exciting bootleg, as it contained eight unreleased tracks; most of these would end up on the From the Archives and Environments series. Although there’s no date given, the transmission is clearly from the second half of 1994, with next-to-no crossover with the 3D Headspace Tour tracklists, and film sample sources mirroring those from the VPRO broadcast. What’s interesting is how different it is from the VPRO show, however
The show opens with an environment built around dialogue from Repo Man, treated with the same vibrato effect as the opening of ‘It’s My Mind That Works’. Included in the paranoid rant is the phrase “eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead” which no doubt led to the slightly paraphrased title of the track that closes the hour. The first piece is the only known transmission appearance of the ‘Liquid Cool’ remix. After a brief unreleased environment, this leads into ‘Nearly Home’, immediately suggesting a far less dark tone than the VPRO show. After a brief excerpt of ‘Tired’, the brighter melodic mood continues with ‘Distant Memories’ and ‘She Fell Backwards’. Tracks like these are strangely at odds with ISDN, and the show is testament to the band’s editing skills: they could easily have released an album of tuneful, emotive ambient music at the end of the year, but deliberately chose to omit the bulk of this material from ISDN to make a very different album that contrasted sharply with Lifeforms. One of the few brighter pieces from ISDN, ‘An End of Sorts’, continues the theme.
The first unknown track of the show is built around the opening environment of ‘Tired’, and is a heavily percussive piece, surprisingly at odds with the material performed so far. This then leads into an extended version of the melancholic synth section of ‘Tired’ itself. A fascinating alternate version of ‘Lifeforms (Path 4)‘ follows, with heavier beats, a squelching 303 bassline, electric guitar samples and a flute melody. Perhaps it’s the novelty of only hearing it occasionally, but I genuinely think it’s a better version than the released cut, and would love to hear a proper, full-length recording of it one day. Afterwards is a rare appearance of ‘Hot Knives’.
“Don’t you think it’s time we settled down? Get a little house. I want you to have my baby. Why? Well, I don’t know. Everybody does it.”
“You like music?” ~ more Repo Man samples.
The Fripp-sampling ‘Brujo’ is a brief intermission from Repo Man, with the “Everybody’s into weirdness right now” section following in full. As with the VPRO transmission, the new environments here seem to be largely dialogue based, with fewer layers of sound. The unknown track with dubby piano first heard on the VPRO transmission gets a second outing as the final unreleased track from the broadcast. A brief snippet of ‘Are They Fightin Us’ is heard just before the 45 minute mark, before disappearing; it’s very likely the track was lost due to the tape needing to be flipped at this point. The bootleg reconvenes with a version of ‘Nadir’ with saxophone samples. The show closes with three tracks getting their only known performances: ‘Egypt’, ‘Eyes Pop – Skin Explodes – Everybody Dead’, and ‘Deseo Reconstruction’, the latter appearing many months before the remix album it features on was released.
If the May/June 3D Headspace Tour was an experiment in variations on a theme, the late ’94 shows showed the band capable of vastly varied transmissions in a short space of time. The VPRO, Kiss FM and New York broadcasts all have incredibly varied moods, with wildly different tracklists. At this point, it isn’t at all clear what tone the following album will even take.
Credits
00:00 Transmission intro
01:02 Apollo 440 – Liquid Cool (Future Sound of London Remix)
07:44 Unknown environment
08:31 Nearly Home
11:40 Tired
12:39 Distant Memories
16:35 She Fell Backwards
19:32 An End of Sorts
23:58 Unknown
27:50 Tired
29:50 Lifeforms (Unknown Version)
31:30 Hot Knives
34:42 Unknown environment
36:36 Brujo
39:46 Everybody’s Into Weirdness environment
41:10 Unknown
43:14 Are They Fightin’ Us
43:26 Nadir
46:28 Egypt
50:27 Deseo Reconstruction
56:41 Eyes Pop – Skin Explodes – Everybody Dead
1:00:38 End
Fractional Difference 