Released on:
The Isness
The Isness & The Otherness
The Isness (The Abbey Road Version)
Runtime: 3:30 (Final and mispress), 4:03 (Abbey Road)
“Calls back a time when there were meadows as far as the eye could see, tall green grass that you could lie down and go to sleep in. There were valleys, and fresh air in the skies, flowers all over the Earth of indescribable shape and colour. I used to think as I lay in those meadows, watching clouds spinning across the sky, what would happen if all this incredible beauty were lost for all time?”
‘Meadows’ is a bit of a backwards-looking track, career-wise, in that it directly references two FSOL works: the opening monologue is newly recorded, but maybe best known to FSOL fans in its original version from the movie Silent Running, sampled during the 1993 Kiss FM Transmissions and 1994 3D Headspace Tour. The other moment is at 2:17: the girl crying in Hyde Park from the end of ‘Glass‘. It’s a moment that always gives me chills.
The track is a very mellow, pastoral piece, with slide guitar, an acoustic bass riff, banjo and strings. There’s an almost tropical feel to it, as if lying on a beach, and it bears more than a little influence from Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross’. Probably Max Richter’s biggest contribution to the album, he provides much of the instrumentation, and is given co-writing and co-production credits. For the 2018 Abbey Road version, elements of ‘The Seasons Turn’ are placed over the end, hinting that that track may have been ‘Seasons’ from the scrapped 2001 edition mentioned on the official site.
In late 2001, there was rumour of a CD promo of ‘Meadows’ being released, although no sign has appeared since.
Credits
Written by Cobain, Dougans, Richter, Trenet.
Produced by The Future Sound of London.
Engineered by Yage and Stone Freshwaters at The Galaxial Pharmaceutical.
Contains a sample from The Fluegel Knights – La Mer.
Intro voice narration – Alexa Hamilton.
Strings, double bass, Rhodes, additional production – Max Richter.
Bottleneck steel guitar – Gary Lucas.
Sitar – Baluji Shrivastav.
Piano, organ and additional guitars – Mike Rowe.
Banjo – Big Freddy Teddy.
Fractional Difference 