Just under a year after the first Touched Music FSOL Night on Mixlr, Martin Boulton came back with another batch of “classics, remixes, exclusives” and the first play of the FSOL track from the third and final Touched compilation, due later in the year. Martin and Touched were beginning to be key players in the distribution of new FSOL to fans…
As with the previous broadcast, fans gathered on the Mixlr to chat and discuss the music as it played. Martin had some alcohol in and dedicated himself to playing for as long as he could (and longer – he fell asleep before his playlist ended), and he even picked up for three more hours the following morning. The show was recorded and shared as a bootleg, although some of the Friday morning set was lost.
The first exclusive music for the broadcast comes in the form of an exclusive 15 minute mix by FSOL. The mix appeared a few days later on the FSOL Soundcloud.
It opens with a clip from a documentary about innovative dance music from the early ’90s, including a “band said to spearhead the movement” called The Future Sound of London. This is followed by a gurgling synth environment, with ‘Among Myselves’ Scanners samples, followed by Gaz speaking in an early ’90s interview about how they use samples. The then-unreleased ‘Boulton’ is the first full track of the mix. A mixture of crow calls and 3D Headspace Tour-era environments follows, with answerphone recordings over the top. An unknown piece is next, with melancholic piano notes, guitar textures and more answerphone messages. An unreleased percussive with gurgling sounds and acoustic bass follows, with more than a hint of the ‘Lifeforms‘ Paths single about it. The track includes the un-fucked with answerphone message as heard over the end of ‘Factories and Assembly’. It’s always frustrating to know there are tracks like this out there unreleased, but given just how many archived tracks there are, it has to be expected (I’m lucky enough to have seen just a portion of how many archived pieces still remain unreleased, and this has resigned me to the fact that I’ll never hear everything). Up next is ‘Offers on the Table’, a track that would remain unreleased for almost four years, giving an idea of just how far ahead material is sometimes recorded, and how in the FSOLDigital era, the idea of ‘new’ material is a very nebulous concept. ‘Hidden Sign’s outro environment leads into further answerphone messages. The acoustic guitar outro from ‘Dead Skin Cells’ appears in a raw form as a wonderful little snippet. The 1994 Mixing It interview reappears once more, and the mix closes on ‘Mains Interrupt’.
The rest of the show is, as with the first broadcast, a mixture of album tracks, single tracks, rarities, and unreleased pieces provided by Brian. The first unreleased piece is ‘Eleven Hot Knives’, a track that had leaked a few years before and also appeared on a library music collection, but appears here in ‘official’ capacity for the first time. The date of the track is unknown, but it’s likely to be Tales of Ephidrina era. The second came as a big surprise to long-time fans: the long-awaited Supergrass remix, as discussed in 1997 interviews. Unsurprisingly, it sounds very much like a track from the 1997 sessions, with raw breakbeats, electric guitars, distorted synths and a general psych-tinged electronic rock sound. It’s a track nobody really expected to ever hear, and it’s unlikely to get any sort of official release, so the bootleg remains the only place to find the track. It’s not a classic remix, but it acts as another piece to the 1997 jigsaw. The third track is another ambient drone piece with an answerphone collage on top (how they continually have more unheard messages to include is baffling). As a brief aside, ‘Cold Dark Field’ made its first non-Covert appearance here, with official confirmation that it’s a FSOL track, followed by even more answerphone messages. If you had an answer machine in the the ’90s and ever found yourself going to get new tapes only to discover a shortage, you know who to blame.
The next unreleased track is the oddly named ‘Peirch’, a slightly lo-fi funky track originally recorded in 1991 for a porn film made by a friend of Gaz’s. Given later claims of FSOL causing impotence, this is particularly amusing. ‘Algae Floats the Water in Super Technicolour’, a Dan Pemberton collaboration, is one of those tracks that skirts the line between FSOL and Amorphous. Actually, had it not been confirmed to be a FSOL track, there’s no way you’d think the piece – with its distorted bass, live sounding drums, piano and cheeky chord sequence – was anything other than a follow up to ‘Mr. Sponge’s Groovy Oscillations‘. ‘Arc City’ reappears from the first Touched Mix. Alternate takes of the Stereo MC’s and Bryan Ferry remixes follow, and although neither is drastically different to the final versions, it’s always interesting to get a window into the subtler decisions made by the band. The Stereo MC’s mix includes vocals from the original, in contrast with the final version. ‘Lizzard Crawl’ is present, as decreed by law. The first appearance of ‘Night Scape’ is here, with Martin explaining how Brian’s father was diagnosed with cancer while the track was being worked on, making its inclusion on the Macmillan Cancer Support-funding compilation Touched Three particularly poignant.
At the two hour mark there is a drum n bass track which sounds totally unlike anything else in the FSOL catalogue it’s quite remarkable. Martin lost the title, adding to the piece’s mystery. Jazzy chords and weird sounds feature over the dnb beats, making it pretty FSOLish, despite not sounding remotely FSOLish. The “you are destined for great things” sample from the Dead Cities tour features, as an identifier of the era and confirmation that it is indeed FSOL. Another totally unexpected track comes in the form of a FSOL remix of The JAMS’s ‘It’s Grim Up North’. No context yet exists for this track, although Brian is a big fan of Cauty and Drummond. Given the amount of bootleg remix collections of KLF tracks that go around – one of which I’ve even contributed to myself – I’m still hoping this comes out in some form or another one day.
It’s not long after this that Martin fell asleep, and once the original five hour set finished, the entire thing started again. After the playlist had run its course, he woke up and started again, throwing in a few tunes that Brian sent over in the morning, including the fittingly titled ‘Morning Mist’, which later appeared on a library music release, and ‘Ever Really Happened’ which not only remains unreleased, but unrecorded. The final hour was recorded, and has been shared. Among the new tracks here is ‘Ocea’, released later on From the Archives Vol. 9, and ‘Oboliss’, a gorgeous melancholic synth track that is unlike anything the band had released up to this point.
With a look forward to upcoming tracks, a bunch of unreleased pieces and a lot of interesting discussion, the night (and following morning) was a wonderful point where FSOL felt as exciting and relevant as they had in years.
Tracklist
00:00 Lakeside
02:32 FSOL Mix
-02:32 Mix intro
-04:11 Boulton
-05:15 Unknown environment
-05:58 Unknown
-06:59 Answerphone collage
-07:27 Unknown
-09:14 Offers On the Table
-13:46 Hidden Sign environment
-14:30 Answerphone collage
-15:49 Dead Skin Cells environment (alt)
-16:33 Mixing It Interview
-17:52 Mains Interrupt
19:30 Space Hippy
23:24 Eleven Hot Knives
27:25 Supergrass – Sun Hits the Sky (FSOL Remix)
32:12 I Turn to Face the Sun
35:25 Answerphone collage
39:39 Cold Dark Field
41:35 Answerphone collage
45:16 The Final Inner Breath
50:13 Bring Me Home
54:13 Room 208
59:24 Peirch
1:04:03 Recollection
1:07:19 Algae Floats The Water in Super Technicolor
1:11:12 Arc City
1:15:20 Stereo MCs – Connected (FSOL Alternate Remix)
1:22:35 Abandoned Housing Blocks of Prypiat
1:26:07 Bryan Ferry – I Put a Spell On You (Yage Alternate Remix)
1:32:29 Lizzard Crawl
1:37:39 Acturum Esse
1:41:23 Talisman
1:44:16 Robert Sandall Interview
1:47:47 Night Scape
1:51:20 Lifeforms Path 6
1:54:52 Lifeforms Path 7
1:58:48 Unknown
2:02:17 My Kingdom
2:07:58 Glass
2:13:11 Santana
2:19:36 River Delta
2:23:44 Outer Heaven
2:28:51 Curve – Rising (Headspace Mix)
2:37:40 Long Day
2:40:37 Osamu Sato – Face Savers Online (FSOL Remix)
2:50:25 Moscow
2:53:53 Just a Fuckin’ Idiot
2:59:25 Induced Coma
3:00:41 Papsico
3:10:43 Triospheres
3:14:01 In Solitude We Are Least Alone
3:22:10 Sylvian/Fripp – Darshana (Re-constructed by FSOL)
3:31:56 Bring
3:38:07 Apollo 440 – Liquid Cool (FSOL Remix)
3:44:55 Clear Light of Reality
3:47:25 Distant Memories
3:51:32 Climbing
3:55:45 Dirty Shadows
4:01:47 The JAMS – It’s Grim Up North (FSOL Remix)
4:06:02 Jon Anderson – FSOL Deseo Deconstruction
4:13:35 Still Motion
4:18:26 Jelly Legs
4:20:53 Private Psyche and Inner Life
4:26:27 Colour-Blind
4:29:55 Field of Flowers
4:35:07 Everyone in The World Is Doing Something Without Me
4:39:12 Mango Tree
4:43:20 Spineless Jelly
4:48:49 Insides
4:52:48 Offerings
4:56:17 Lakeside
4:59:34 End of part 1
00:00 Outer Heaven
04:23 Ocea
11:11 Curve – Rising (Headspace Mix)
20:24 Peirch
25:04 Recollection
28:07 Oboliss
29:58 Algae Floats the Water in Super Technicolor
33:51 Papsico
43:49 Triospheres
47:06 In Solitude We are Least Alone
55:11 Bring
1:01:23 Apollo 440 – Liquid Cool (FSOL Remix)
1:04:00 Transmission end
Fractional Difference 