Released on:
Alice in Ultraland
Runtime: 4:50
First heard on the Abbey Road/mispress version of The Isness as 53 second sketch ‘Yes My Brother‘, the funk interlude was taken back to the studio for a radical upgrade. Now appearing as a five minute jam session, ‘The Prophet’ owes much to Mikey Rowe, whose various improvisations lead the track; Stu Rowe’s guitar completes the track. Inspired by Miles Davis’s fusion era, the piece is very much tied into ’70s jazz-funk. It’s probably also the epitome of the chaotic side of the album, with guitar, hammond, bass, moog and samples often playing all at once; I, for one, wish it had more room to breathe. Still, there’s dynamic in the structure, if not the layers, with plenty of stop-start sections, and countless different elements coming and going. The final minute of the track forms the album’s second environment, with layers of synth strings and twisted guitars fading into a bed of twinkling synth arpeggios, acting as a brief prelude to ‘Another Fairy Tale Ending’; the track ends on some synth sweeps first heard over a decade before on ‘Life Form Ends‘.
Intriguingly – and slightly disappointingly – the Philip Pin credit for “crotch-o-matic bass modulation” on ‘Yes My Brother’ is changed to the less porn-esque “‘Growler’ bass’ for Alice in Ultraland‘s credits. As for the Soundprok K46? Probably another FSOL invention.
Credits
Written by Cobain/Dougans/M. Rowe.
Produced by The Future Sound of London.
Engineered by Stone Freshwaters, One Man Band of Cosmos, His Motherness and Yage.
Additional recordings at the Mikey Rowe Sound Laboratory, engineered by MIkey Rowe.
Cobain/Dougans: Sounds/guitars/synths/FX twists/SoundPROK.
Mikey Rowe: Piano, hammond, moog and slap bass.
Stu Rowe: Electric/FX ‘wasp’ guitar.
Mutant Funkoid: ‘Growler’ bass.
Stakrak: Additional FX processing using the Soundprok K46.
Fractional Difference 