Earlier in 2021, there was a discussion on the FSOLBoard about ‘albums’, their contents, and how they’re released, and it fed into something I’d noticed: the lack of conventional album releases in the FSOL catalogue between 2015 and 2021. And yet, here in 1994, is a perfect example of them releasing an album in an unconventional manner. ISDN is a strange record: it’s not quite a live album, yet it was marketed largely as one; it was released as a limited edition of 30,000 copies internationally – a tiny number in 1994 – and then given a large-scale reissue the following year. It came out about six months after their previous album.
The album fans were expecting to follow Lifeforms was a second Amorphous Androgynous record called Environments, as advertised on the Lifeforms sleeve. There has been much speculation about how much of that album ‘became’ ISDN, from the plain black cover, to the inclusion of ‘A Study of Six Guitars’, a track that first appeared on a Virgin compilation as an Amorphous Androgynous track, listed as being “taken from the forthcoming Amorphous Androgynous album Environments“. In summer 1994, Astralwerks advertised both Environments and an ‘Eggshell’ single as forthcoming. However, given the speed the band have always worked at, it is perhaps unsurprising that by the autumn they had a wealth of new material, largely showcasing a very new sound. And so, it seems, the older releases were scrapped to make way for these new tracks.
The live nature of the album is intriguing. The 3D Headspace Tour via ISDN cables was groundbreaking: it wasn’t until 2017 that the band received two Guinness World Records stating the fact, but it’s always been understood that they were the first group to conduct a live tour from their studio. Indeed, it wasn’t until the widespread availability of broadband internet in the ’00s that this kind of thing even began to become commonplace; Orbital conducted a brief show to Radio 1 in 1995, but ISDN as a live music medium never really took off, and remained the playground of Brian and Garry through to 1997. It was a unique idea, and one the press were generally keen on: electronic music being often hard to market, anything of potential novelty value was leapt upon. And so it’s unsurprising that the album was compiled of tracks from the transmissions, and given the name ISDN (that name coming very late in the day, almost interfering with release dates). That said, without the fact being pushed in the title and credits, listeners wouldn’t be any the wiser. Live transmissions frequently featured the same arrangements of tracks – elements bolted together to play out while the band sorted out the next lot of samples – meaning the tracks on display here don’t sound live: there’s no scrappiness, no errors, no improvised jamming. And as there’s no crowd noise, and the tracks were recorded in the studio, they are, for all intents and purposes, studio tracks. It sounds exactly like a studio album, and was marketed as a live album.
The 3D Headspace Tour of May and June 1994 largely consistent of Lifeforms-adjacent material, and only ‘Dirty Shadows’ and elements of ‘Tired’ come from that tour. A second tour, later in the year, is responsible for the bulk of the material, especially the VPRO and New York transmissions; indeed, those two shows themselves feel like alternate takes on the album. According to an AllStar News article from 1996, ten US shows were broadcast in November ’94, although no evidence of these can be found elsewhere. If The Pod Room ever does get ported over to MixCloud one day, maybe we’ll find out. As it is, the only known shows from late ’94 are the aforementioned VPRO and New York transmissions, as well as one purported to be played on Kiss FM. These three broadcasts have very different feels to them; unlike the Lifeforms tour, which was very much variations on a theme, these later transmissions showcase different sides of the 1994 material: New York’s largely ambient, environment-heavy soundscapes, VPRO’s dark, oppressive beats, and Kiss FM’s brighter, melodic electronica. The latter largely ended up missing from the album, with the bulk of the record alternating between hip-hop inspired percussion-heavy tracks and spooky ambience. Garry explained the new, heavier direction in a 1994 telephone interview: “By which I think we’re actually getting back into beats, but a new kind of beat not based on dancing. It’s a very intricate, listening type beat that stimulates your mind I suppose rather than your feet.” And it’s true, there’s very little that’s danceable on ISDN. Some of it must have come as a shock to fans expecting an album released so soon after Lifeforms to be stylistically similar and were faced with acoustic drum loops, electric guitar chords, imposing tracks like ‘Slider’, and track titles like ‘Just a Fuckin Idiot’. It was at least a semi-conscious move away from the increasingly safe ambient scene: “I think people become very scared about music and mechanisms moving on because it threatens their livings. So in terms of that, that’s probably happening with ambient as well, so of course we’re against that.” On the more ambient side of the album, there are still a few tracks that would fit nicely alongside Lifeforms – ‘Dirty Shadows’ and ‘Tired’, of course, but also ‘Egypt’ and ‘You’re Creeping Me Out’; on the other hand, ‘It’s My Mind That Works’, ‘Just a Fuckin Idiot’ and ‘Eyes Pop – Skin Explodes – Everybody Dead’ contain the same claustrophobic bleakness of the heavier tracks, and feel very much of a different era indeed. The most bizarre inclusion is ‘Hot Knives’, a track which features a lead vocal by Garry. It’s one of the most unexpected moments in the band’s catalogue, and is a world away from the exotic ambience they were releasing mere months earlier. When Garry referred to new electronic music as being “quite a harsh thing” to Mixmag in late ’93, it feels like a foreshadowing.
Something else that sets the album apart from previous releases is the artwork. With Buggy’s bold graphics normally adorning the band’s covers, the plain black cover feels like a very bold statement. Describing the release process on the old EBV site, Garry described the album’s limited edition status as being at least partially inspired by The Beatles’ 1968 self-titled album generally referred to as The White Album; the plain, embossed sleeve’s similarity to that album may be a coincidence, but it’s likely it was at least in the back of their minds when deciding on a cover. Buggy’s work gets centre-stage inside, however, with the card sleeve opening on to a three-page spread featuring an utterly surreal landscape, starring bizarrely mutated versions of the band’s faces. Stylistically not dissimilar to the visuals on the Lifeforms VHS, it depicts a stream running through a queasy green-gold, rock-laden landscape, a single tree on the riverbank, numerous orbs floating by. Brian is on the left, his head protruding upwards in three spikes, bizarrely resembling a human tooth. Garry is on the right, his head pulled back off the screen, elevated on some kind of stand and looking a bit like a sphinx. At least, that’s how I always saw them. It’s possibly the weirdest image in the whole FSOL catalogue. The extreme use of computer manipulation makes it feel oddly less subtle than earlier work, and it probably hasn’t dated as well as its gatefold equivalent in Lifeforms, but it’s an undeniably striking and memorable image. The disc comes in a sleeve with a much more understated image of cracked earth on one side, and a wire frame image on the other. The credits appear underneath one of Garry’s texts, musing on the reasons behind the ISDN tour format: the first of these stories to be published. There’s also an infographic broadly explaining how the music travelled, from sampler to home radio, and information about the email FSOL sent to Buggy with the text in. Amazingly, it’s dated 17th October 1994, only six weeks before the album was released. In an era where manufacturing lead times for vinyl can be anything up to 12 months, the idea of the artwork for a big release only being put together a few weeks before the record hit the shops is staggering. The EBV logo sits alongside the 1970s Virgin logo on the rear sleeve. The CD design matches those of Lifeforms era, while the LP labels feature the 1970s Virgin logo. Both CD and LP feature the same sleeve design: a foldout card sleeve, the disc packaged in a second cardboard inner. It’s a very unusual design for an era when albums almost exclusively came in jewel cases. Astonishingly, this means the whole 75 minute album is crammed onto a single piece of vinyl, meaning it’s an incredibly quiet pressing. No cassette edition exists.
Buggy isn’t credited at all, and Brian and Garry’s names are similarly missing from the liner notes. Some space is given over to listing which broadcasts the tracks were performed on, and in usual FSOL style, there are numerous errors. ‘A Study of Six Guitars’ and ‘An End of Sorts’ are both listed as having come from the Essential Mix broadcast, which featured neither (their only known broadcasts are on the VPRO and Kiss FM transmissions respectively); ‘Egypt’ and ‘Hot Knives’ are listed as being VPRO performances, despite only being on the Kiss FM show; ‘Eyes Pop – Skin Explodes – Everybody Dead’ is another Kiss FM track, rather than New York; and, although listed as being a New York track, that is in fact the only known transmission from the entire year not to feature at least one section of ‘Tired’. Numerous tracks are given no transmission date, instead being given sample credits instead: a John Williams bass loop on both ‘Smokin Japanese Babe’ and ‘Are They Fightin Us’, ‘The Far Out Son of Lung and the Ramblings of a Madman’ featuring, bizarrely’ “bassballs” by Phillip Pin, and guitar textures by Robert Fripp appearing on tracks labelled with a % symbol. There are no tracks labelled with a % symbol. Amusingly, some of these credits and dates change on the 1995 reissue of the album.
For its release, the band were hoping to make a grandiose statement and limit the release to 100,000 numbered copies, much in the vein of The Beatles. However, this went again standard music industry practice of limited editions being runs of 10,000. If that figure seems high today – an era when 1,000 album sales can get you a charting position – they were staggeringly low for the time. As Garry questioned, “why, with Lifeforms selling well in excess of 100,000 copies, should we wish to return to this shrivelled state of ambition?” A compromise was made: 10,000 copies for the UK, 10,000 for the US (UK versions with an Astralwerks sticker on the front), 10,000 for the rest of the world. They sold out almost immediately, the album limping to number 62 in the 1994 Christmas charts, hampered by its limited copies. Interestingly, Garry’s story states a further 70,000 were later made at the start of 1995, although there appears to be no evidence of this anywhere. Even more interestingly, he blames this second release as the reason ISDN 2 never happened. Were the band planning to release a second album of material from the transmissions, and was this scrapped because of the re-press, or more likely, the repackaged version released the following summer? It would certainly explain the huge amount of ISDN-era material on the From the Archives releases. I have a lot of thoughts about ISDN, but by the time I bought a copy of the black version, I’d been living with the 1995 white reissue for four years, and so I’ll keep them to the entry for that version.
Release date: 5th December 1994.
Tracklists
CD (CDV 2755 | 7243 8 40066 2 4 / ASW 6144)
1. Just a Fuckin Idiot
2. The Far-out Son of Lung and the Ramblings of a Madman
3. Appendage
4. Slider
5. Smokin Japanese Babe
6. You’re Creeping Me Out
7. Eyes Pop – Skin Explodes – Everybody Dead
8. It’s My Mind That Works
9. Dirty Shadows
10. Tired
11. Egypt
12. Are They Fightin Us
13. Hot Knives
14. A Study of Six Guitars
15. An End of Sorts
LP (V 2755 | 7243 8 40066 1 7)
A1. Just a Fuckin Idiot
A2. The Far Out Son of Lung and the Ramblings of a Madman
A3. Appendage
A4. Slider
A5. Smokin Japanese Babe
A6. You’re Creeping Me Out
A7. Eyes Pop – Skin Explodes – Everybody Dead
A8. It’s My Mind That Works
A9. Dirty Shadows
B1. Tired
B2. Egypt
B3. Are They Fightin Us
B4. Hot Knives
B5. A Study of Six Guitars
B6. An End of Sorts
Credits
All tracks written and produced by The Future Sound of London.
Engineered by Yage for EBV.
Recorded live at Earthbeat Studios London 1994 during various ISDN transmissions.
‘Just a Fuckin Idiot’, ‘Slider’, ‘You’re Creeping Me Out’, ‘Egypt’, ‘Hot Knives’ live to Holland via VPRO Radio 9/9/94.
‘The Far Out Son of Lung and the Ramblings of a Madman’ bassballs – Phillip Pin.
‘Smokin Japanese Babe’, ‘Are They Fightin Us’ John Williams – acoustic bass loops sourced from the album Cavatina – put through the machines.
‘Eyes Pop – Skin Explodes – Everybody Dead’, ‘It’s My Mind That Works’, ‘Tired’ live to The Kitchen New York 5/11/94.
‘Dirty Shadows’, ‘A Study of Six Guitars’, ‘An End of Sorts’ live to Europe via Radio 1 FM 14/5/94.
% guitar textures sourced from Robert Fripp live with FSOL Radio 1 FM 14/5/94.
Published by Sony Music Publishing.
Fractional Difference 