| Artist |
The Future Sound of London |
| Album Title: |
A Space of Partial Illumination E7.02 |
| Album Cover: |
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| Primary Genre |
Electronica/Dance: Ambient Electronica |
| Format |
Vinyl |
| Released |
10/12/2022 |
| Label |
Fsoldigital.Com |
| Catalog No |
LP TOT 86 |
| Bar Code No |
5 013993 904991 |
| Packaging |
LP Sleeve |
| Tracks |
| A1.
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A Space of Partial Illumination (5:29)
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| A2.
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If That Were to Occur (3:16)
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| A3.
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Intents and Purpose (4:05)
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| A4.
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Embodied Cognition (4:02)
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| A5.
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Long Green Field (2:24)
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| A6.
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Temporal Aliasing (5:16)
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| B1.
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In Solitude We Are Least Alone (Waltz) (2:38)
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| B2.
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Frozen Light (3:06)
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| B3.
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Informal Horizon (5:27)
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| B4.
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Ephemeral (2:58)
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| B5.
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All This Has Happened Before (5:41)
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| B6.
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How Forests Think (4:56)
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| Date Acquired |
11/13/2023 |
| Personal Rating |
 |
| Acquired from |
Juno Records |
| Purchase Price |
16.25 |
Web Links |
All Music Guide Entry:
Bandcamp entry:
Discogs entry:
Wikipedia Entry: |
Notes |
Credits:
Written-By – Dougans, Cobain
Companies, etc.:
Distributed By – Essential Music & Marketing
Manufactured By – Passion Music Ltd.
Marketed By – Passion Music Ltd.
Published By – Future Song Publishing
Barcode and other Identifiers:
Matrix / Runout (Etched A side runout): FSOL E 702. A1
Matrix / Runout (Etched B side runout): FSOL E 702. B1
Barcode (Text): 5 013993 904991
Barcode (Scanned): 5013993904991
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| Reviews |
Rate Your Music Review:
It's fascinating to see the evolution of FSOLDigital era FSOL, as well as the fan perception of it. After a somewhat lukewarm response to the initial Archives and Environments 1, outside of the hardcore fanbase, at least, the general perception began to become more positive, especially as Gaz Cobain made heavier contributions to big, emotive albums such as Environment Five and Life in Moments. It wasn't until Environment 6.5, however, that responses seemed to be almost uniformly positive, with that album's blend of ambience, electronics and live instrumentation resembling the group's '90s work, but being sonically very new.
Since the positive response to that album, there seems to have been a conscious decision to play down the 'environments' aspect of the series, with the Environment 7 trilogy all having their own titles, and the series name cut down to simply e7. We're finally at a point where FSOL are saying "here, these are new albums" and listeners are happy about it. This seems to have drawn more people in, and the continued shift towards chunky breaks, IDM and unusual ambient interludes has remained incredibly popular.
It's interesting to see how many people are comparing the e7 trilogy to the group's '90s heyday, because although on the surface there's some truth to that - we're a long way from the 'it sounds like The Amorphous Androgynous' and 'it's too minimal' complaints of the early volumes - these albums are also sonically quite different. As with e7.01, Rituals, A Space of Partial Illumination's main musical components are synths, drum machines, and chunky, mid-tempo drum loops. The weird, impossible-to-identify gurgling samples and God-knows-what-used-for-the-rhythm aspects of albums like Lifeforms and ISDN aren't to be found here. Indeed, the current FSOL sound seems, in part, to have grown out of the more recent Humanoid material, which found Dougans mashing up sharp digital noise with hectic analogue drum machine rhythms. It's dark and often intense, and clearly a love letter to a bunch of hardware by a guy who knows it inside out. On the whole, ASOPI is more melodic than Rituals, with the acoustic guitar-led 'Embodied Cognition' and the gloriously melancholic 'Frozen Light' being particular highlights, while 'Sophies Path', an ode to Dougans's cat, closes the album on a sombre note.
Between these there are a few oddities: 'Mangy Burger' is as odd as its title, a trancey track stuck through a filter that seems to have sucked away its energy; the title track is an incredibly minimal ambient glitch piece which feels like an update to the kind of material released on labels like 12k and Mille Plateaux in the early '00s, and is by far the most baffling album opener in the entire FSOL catalogue. Meanwhile, Cobain's presence is most obvious on the new 'Waltz' mix of Environment Five's 'In Solitude...', which is a very strange choice to include - it's a fine piece, but reworking a track from several albums ago isn't typical FSOL behaviour - and the chunky 'All This Has Happened Before', an intriguing reversal of Rituals's most obvious Gaz track 'Hopiate': I described that as like FSOL with a serotonin boost, while this piece could be thought of as an Amorphous track on a proper downer.
As with Rituals, the album is perhaps a bit lacking in the cohesion and atmosphere front: A Space of Partial Illumination isn't going to give you the same immersive experience as an album like Lifeforms. That said, it's an album of wonderful electronic music, and it's great to see FSOL getting so much attention once more. The e7 trilogy looks to be concluding in autumn 2023, and from the tracks previewed already via Mixlr, it looks set to be another winner.
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the-future-sound-of-london/a-space-of-partial-illumination-e7_002/
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