FSOL Digital レコード& CD

Review: The Future Sound of London keep their fans busy with a steady dispatch of music via the fsoldigital.com label, but it feels like there's a sense of occasion around this new album. Rituals E7.001 is purportedly the first part in a trilogy, and it already highly prized by the devoted followers of Brian Dougans and Garry Cobain's music. It's not hard to hear why on listening to the gorgeous strains of 'Hopiate', which harks back to some of the duo's most iconic music (we'll let you guess which one we mean). FSOL have always had a particular touch in their exploration of electronica, ambient and outernational sounds, and it sounds rich with inspiration on this new, expansive album.

Review: The Future Sound Of London are well-known for their intense sectioning-off of various albums into sagas. Conceived as far back as the late 1990s, the 'Environments' album series has been routinely topped up on a slow but steady basis, and has thus far manifested as a grand total of seven psychedelectronic odysseys. 'Environments Seven', which came out earlier in 2022, is testament to the duo's madcap penchant for sagaizing; indeed, this seventh instalment in the LP is split into a trilogy, and 'Environments 7.02' is the second in said trilogy.

Review: 30 years after ditching the Humanoid alias in order to form Future Sound Of London with Garry Cobain, Brian Dougans has decided to resurrect his rave-era solo project. The result is "Built By Humanoid", a delightfully skittish, off-kilter album of raw, ragged and mind-altering cuts whose wayward, out-there electronics were partially created using two custom-built synthesizers that Dougans co-designed. The resultant album is breathlessly brilliant and magnificently mind-mangling, with the veteran producer conjuring up cuts that giddily join the dots between Aphex Twin's most intense moments, the acid-fired "Braindance" of Ceephax Acid Crew, the doom-laden ambient and IDM oddness of Future Sound Of London and the sweaty breakbeat rush of early UK hardcore.