The Isness

Amazon.com
Six years after their future shock treatise, Dead Cities, Future Sound of London's Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans return with a psychedelic songfest. Exchanging electronic ambient loops, trip-hop beats, and alien textures for backwards guitars, sitar symphonies, and Donovan-style folk songs, The Isness captures '60s psychedelia in all its nonsense and nirvana. You can still hear the FSOL intellect and collagist aesthetic, but the duo have abandoned the sequencer-created hallucinations of their 1994 masterpiece, Lifeforms. Recording live drums, brass, strings, percussion, and vocals in their London studio, FSOL used an Apple Mac to arrange and treat the sounds into a cosmic song cycle. With Mellotrons surrounding Cobain's ethereal vocals, The Isness matches the "I Am the Walrus" dirge of "The Mello Hippie Disco Show" against the bucolic Donovan serenity of "Goodbye Sky." "The Lovers" recreates a boiling Hendrix funk meltdown. "Galaxial Pharmaceutical" recalls the epic bluster of Pink Floyd, and "Guru Song" the droning loops of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows." It all works as magically as a tab of LSD. The Isness is a psychedelic classic, 30 years late. --Ken Micallef

From URB Magazine
Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans were always a bit too hippie-trippy for The Future Sound of London to keep up with Aphex Twin or Autechre, but they never took the acid-meltdown freak-out so far as to out-weird Nurse With Wound or Alex Patterson. But they did make ambient music full of high falutin' ideas that culminated in the only mid-'90s electronic music album — Lifeforms — that Dead heads, ravers and Windham Hill fans were feeling all at once.

You can hold on to hippie reference points and still make modern, sophisticated music, but FSOL's return sounds less like Boards of Canada's dreamy conception of "1969 in the sunshine" and more like 1975 at a rainy psychedelic sweater competition hosted by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The trouble with The Isness starts with "The Mello Hippo Disco Show." "She's hiding from the yo-yo/ it's a real no-no" leads into shrill singing about "mumbo jumbo slow fellatio" over spaced-out organs, cellos and trombones. Yick. The best songs on The Isness come off like Syd Barrett B-sides, but it mostly stays in prog-rock burnout mode with too many sitars, keyboard jams and songs addressed to "Mr. Spaceman" that blow minds with tricky questions such as "where do we come from and where are we going to? "

The hippie/prog-rock thing works with electronic music if you stick to Kraftwerk cohorts such as Can and Neu!, but once you're name-checking Supertramp and ELO as major influences, it's pretty much over. Tie-dye collectors and black-light poster artists take note, all others steer clear.

Daniel Chamberlin

The Isness,The Future Sound of London,Cleopatra,Ambient House,Ambient Techno,Big Beat,Club/Dance,Dance Music,Drum Loop,Drum Machine,Electronica,IDM,Percussion,Pop,Sampling,Sequencing,Synthesizer,Techno,Trip-Hop,Vocals,Vocoder

Average customer rating: This is NOT FSOL, but its great! Set the wayback machine for 1967 and buckle in... Different... The Future Sound of London is now a thing of the past... oh the irony. Incredible

The Isness Future Sound of London Manufacturer: Hynotic Records ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Ambient | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Techno | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Dance Pop | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Dance & DJ | Indie Music | Stores | Music Ambient | Dance & DJ | Indie Music | Stores | Music Similar Items: Dead Cities Otherness Cascade Alice in Ultraland Lifeforms ASIN: B000067CO5 Release Date: 2002-08-13

Tracks:

1. Elysian Feels
2. The Mello Hippo Disco Show
3. Goodbye Sky (Reprise)
4. Osho
5. The Galaxial Pharmaceutical
6. Yes My Brother
7. Go Tell It To The Trees Egghead
8. Divinity
9. Guru Song
10. Her Tongue Is Like A Jellyfish
11. Meadows
12. High Tide On The Sea Of Flesh
13. Goodbye Sky

Product Description

1. Elysian Feels
2. The Mello Hippo Disco Show
3. Goodbye Sky (Reprise)
4. Osho
5. The Galaxial Pharmaceutical
6. Yes My Brother
7. Go Tell It To The Trees Egghead
8. Divinity
9. Guru Song
10. Her Tongue Is Like A Jellyfish
11. Meadows
12. High Tide On The Sea Of Flesh
13. Goodbye Sky

Format: CD

Amazon.com

Six years after their future shock treatise, Dead Cities, Future Sound of London's Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans return with a psychedelic songfest. Exchanging electronic ambient loops, trip-hop beats, and alien textures for backwards guitars, sitar symphonies, and Donovan-style folk songs, The Isness captures '60s psychedelia in all its nonsense and nirvana. You can still hear the FSOL intellect and collagist aesthetic, but the duo have abandoned the sequencer-created hallucinations of their 1994 masterpiece, Lifeforms. Recording live drums, brass, strings, percussion, and vocals in their London studio, FSOL used an Apple Mac to arrange and treat the sounds into a cosmic song cycle. With Mellotrons surrounding Cobain's ethereal vocals, The Isness matches the "I Am the Walrus" dirge of "The Mello Hippie Disco Show" against the bucolic Donovan serenity of "Goodbye Sky." "The Lovers" recreates a boiling Hendrix funk meltdown. "Galaxial Pharmaceutical" recalls the epic bluster of Pink Floyd, and "Guru Song" the droning loops of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows." It all works as magically as a tab of LSD. The Isness is a psychedelic classic, 30 years late. --Ken Micallef

Customer Reviews:

This is NOT FSOL, but its great!.......2007-06-01

For all purposes, people need to know that this is NOT a Future Sound of London record. This is "Amorphous Androgynous", a side project of Cobain and Dougans that sounds entirely different. If you are expecting another FSOL album, you will be gravely disappointed.

Also, there seems to be at least 2 different versions of this album. The version I have is different, containing the following tracklist:

1. The Lovers
2. The Isness
3. The Mello Hippo Disco Show
4. Goodbye Sky (reprise)
5. Elysian Feels
6. Go Tell It To The Trees Egghead
7. Divinity
8. Guru Song
9. Osho
10. Her Tongue is Like a Jellyfish
11. Meadows
12. High Tide On the Sea of Flesh
13. The Galaxial Pharmaceutical

I can say that I have heard this version of "The Isness", and it isn't as good. "Goodbye Sky" is the only song you'll be missing out on if you don't get this version, and I think its part of the "Isness & Otherness" package anyway if you get that instead. Don't miss out on "The Lovers", which you will recognize from the "Papua New Guinea Translations" album by FSOL, but this is a much better version. The title track, "The Isness" is fairly decent as a slow, beatless kind of meditation too. It's a slight change, but those 2 are stronger than "Yes My Brother" and "Goodbye Sky".

Anyway, this is a really solid album if you look at it production wise. It's got great gentle grooves in it, awesome prog rock tunes like "Divinity" to balance things out, and some REALLY nutty tracks like "Her Tongue is Like A Jellyfish" to keep you wondering what is going on. Highlights are "Go Tell it to the Trees Egghead", an upbeat little jaunt that sounds like it was a jam session that blossomed into a song. The other is "The Galaxial Pharmaceutical", a huge prog rock tune (its 13 minutes long on my version, don't know about this one)that sounds like Jon Anderson wrote it. Also, "Elysian Feels" has a really neat vibe to it that's part sitar groove, part electronic madness, and part rock 'n roll. This is a solid album, from start to finish.

The difficulty will be getting used to the new sound, one far less dominated by electronics than before.

Set the wayback machine for 1967 and buckle in..........2007-02-04

...'cause we're in for the trip of a lifetime.

FSOL has reimagined the 60's and realigned the then with the now in what is far more than some kind of "tribute" album. It's a 1960's masterpiece dressed in 2002 clothing.

Of all the tracks on this sublime effort, Divinity shines the brightest. The sitars, guitars and ethereal vocals combine to form a magic portal back to a time when we were less jaded and anything was possible if we put our collective minds to it. Seriously, you can actually imagine this being played on the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour circa 1971.

It's a masterpiece.

Different..........2006-07-09

I personally liked the more ambient style found in their prior work, especially Dead Cities-downright haunting. I was hoping that this album might include the awesome "Landmass" songs and more of those styles, but that didn't happen. FSOL is remade each time they have done an album in the past, but this particular resurrection is one that didn't blow me away.

The Future Sound of London is now a thing of the past... oh the irony........2005-10-17

Let me start off by saying that the music on here isn't bad, not at all, I just think that it's a step backwards for FSOL. I don't know where all these people come from giving this recording five stars. I consider their best to be Lifeforms, ISDN, and Dead Cities. While these recordings were mentally stimulating, expansive, environmental, and experimental, this new direction is basically stepping in territory which is not original or exciting to me in the least bit.

Sure it is done pretty well, but what happened? Did they run out of ideas, or maybe get bored of their style? I'm just hoping they are taking a break, having some fun, smoking their pot and chilling out, and letting some real ideas build up so they can drop another album along the lines of Lifeforms, ISDN, or Dead Cities.

Incredible.......2005-09-11

As one of the reviewers below suggests, I'm starting to think that you really had to be alive in the 60s, and preferably highly sentient by 1972, to realize what an absolute masterpiece this is, with perhaps one qualification. The major one for me is that to truly appreciate FSOL one has to "conceptualize" each of their releases in terms of the initial album (i.e Dead Cities) and the subsequent "translations" that followed (i.e. My Kingdom in the case of DC's) and view them as an inseparable "whole." As such, when I think of FSOL's "Isness," I view it as a three disc set consisting of the original album, "The Mello Hippo Disco Show" and "The Otherness." Now, in light of the kind of music FSOL are making here, look both backwards (into your record collection) and sideways (at what other artists are doing presently). What compares to this? Sgt. Pepper's? Meddle? In the Court of the Crimson King? Larks Tongues in Aspic? Red? Close to the Edge? Go back and give them another listen, great as they are, and be prepared to be surprised. Radiohead? Daft Punk? The Orb? Only if you're the kind of nut who thinks that Joe Strummer was "really" a better guitarist than Jeff Beck still is.

FSOL have done something here very much like what DJ Shadow did on Entroducing, except they used their brains instead of a turntable. To my ears, this is the most intelligent, coherent, "collageist" summing up of everything that was wonderful about Progressive Rock (anybody who says "Prog" is showing their youth) and Psychedelia that one could wish for. A song by song breakdown would be tedious, and I'm not in any way slighting incredible stuff like "Dead Cities," which I consider to be their masterpiece. And one might add that if this album is missing anything, its some of the awesome rhythmic impact of their best work. But this is a masterpiece as well, and completely unlike anything else out there at present. If you ever wondered what your favorite progressive bands might have done had they not burned out (am I the only one who thinks The White Album is three sides too long or that Adrian Belew should be tried for Crimes Against Music?) pick up all three of FSOL's most recent releases and listen to them as if they were part of the same album. This is about as far as music can be taken when moved in the direction suggested by the best of the late 60s and 70s. I'm definitely not a sensitive, 90s kind of guy, but this album frequently brings tears to my eyes, its so incredibly, unexpectedly perfect. Nothing else outside of "classical" music and ultra-progressive jazz like Coltrane's "Ascension" or "Meditations" does that for me anymore. This falls into line with every other FSOL release in having more absolutely beautiful (not the same thing as "pretty") stuff on it than just about anything else released during the last 40 years. Comparing this band to such forgettable acts as Supertramp and ELO, as an editorialist did above, is like blasting Bach's Partita for solo violin in D-Minor for having no good tunes: sheer idiocy. As for me, I'll still be listening to this and loving it in the nursing home when young kids are using Radiohead CD's as drink coasters. And if you still have a proper stereo, owning and playing these three discs will make you glad you don't do most of your music listening at a computer terminal (that's about as depressing to think about as on-line gambling). Beautiful, magnificent, and yes, timeless stuff, and not to be missed, especially if you're old enough to remember when smoking was allowed in grocery stores.

Average customer rating: Ecstatic Journey Truly a deeply moving listening experience! Maniko's House of the Beloved: Music for my body and soul The many dimensions of Love

House of the Beloved - Ecstatic Grooves & Songs of Divine Conspiracy Maniko Manufacturer: Isness Records ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | New Age | Styles | Music General | Dance & DJ | Indie Music | Stores | Music General | New Age | Indie Music | Stores | Music Similar Items: Songs for the Inner Lover The Offering Dakshina Love Is Space The Essence ASIN: B0000AGUCF Release Date: 2003-07-05

Tracks:

1. Nature of Things
2. Ishq Allah
3. Just Like This
4. And Now
5. Spondo
6. Open the Way
7. Waves Upon Worlds
8. Gauchchami

Album Description

House of the Beloved is a musical remembrance - a bridge between our troubled, tired, raggedy selves and the sweetest, divine, ecstatic world. Here is music that moves people in all ways: funky grooves to seduce people off the walls and into the beat, ballads that break hearts open and turn people towards each other, ecstatic trance music that sends everyone soaring, timeless mantras that drop us into the heart of silence and stillness. Maniko clearly knows the worlds of ecstatic dance, prayer, trance and the unbearable beauties of love. Her songwriting is pure poetry of words and music, and her singing moves along the captivating edges of skill and freedom, power and grace. This album is an invitation into divine territory. Take the ride.

Customer Reviews:

Ecstatic Journey.......2003-08-24

Maniko's beautiful voice and elegant music take me dancing on the journey into the "house of the beloved." I am touched by the passion and devotional quality of her songs and by the compassion and lightness which shine throughout. I love the progression and accumulative effect of her songs, celebrating love, divine and human.

Truly a deeply moving listening experience!.......2003-08-02

Maniko's music uplifts my heart and spirit. The rythms invite me to dance and the lyrics bring me closer to my heart. I highly recommend this CD.

Maniko's House of the Beloved: Music for my body and soul.......2003-08-01

Maniko's songs are a feast for my body and soul. They inspire me to sing along and dance in celebration. Ecstatic indeed! I highly recommend this CD.

The many dimensions of Love.......2003-07-27

Maniko's latest CD invites us to enter her world of love and music as Sacred Space and, having shared in the magic and the beauty, releases us enriched, uplifted and transformed! I keep returning to the House of the Beloved as an ever increasing source of inspiration and as a reminder of the celebratory heart of all of us.

Agnes Liebhardt

Average customer rating:

Amorphous Androgynous-The Isness Amorphous Androgynous ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Ambient | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Techno | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music IDM | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Dance & DJ | Imports | Stores | Music ASIN: B00008Z1TZ Release Date: 2002-08-08

Album Description

First album since Dead Cities 1996 for F.S.O.L. aka Amorphous Androgynous this time around. This record runs wild through-the-ages of psychedelic influences - from the Beatles to Gong to mid-'70s Pink Floyd to Spacemen 3 to the Chemical Brothers. The pack

Average customer rating: Mad dogs and Englishmen Dazed and confused

Isness (Special Package) Future Sound of London ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Ambient | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music ASIN: B00006FSPZ

Tracks:

1. The Lovers
2. The Isness
3. The Mello Hippie Disco Show
4. Goodbye Sky (Reprise)
5. Elysian Feels
6. Go Tell It To The Trees Egghead
7. Divinity
8. Guru Song
9. Osho
10. Her Tongue Is Like A Jellyfish
11. Meadows
12. High Tide On The Sea Of Flesh
13. The Galaxial Pharmeceutical

Album Description

First album since Dead Cities 1996 for F.S.O.L. aka Amorphous Androgynous this time around. This record runs wild through-the-ages of psychedelic influences - from the Beatles to Gong to mid-'70s Pink Floyd to Spacemen 3 to the Chemical Brothers. The packaging is very special compared to the standard domestic. It's an attractive soft-pack that, when pulled from the right exposes the color booklet and at the same time the disc slides out from the left. 2002.

Customer Reviews:

Mad dogs and Englishmen.......2002-10-04

This CD is quite different from the US version. There is, of course, the special packaging, which most people know about. What you may not immediately notice just by looking on this page is that there are major differences in the CDs themselves. This version contains two alternate tracks replacing two that appeared on the US version, and the track order is entirely different. The music itself is typical FSOL. That's not to say that there is such a thing as 'typical FSOL music,' but that this release is like every release they have ever made- completely different from what they've done before, and entirely opposite of what you were expecting. In any case, it makes for a rich listening experience.

Dazed and confused.......2002-10-04

One of those collectors' releases here; the mix on this CD is quite different from the domestic. Not only is there a chic packaging, but there are two completely different tracks and the order of the other tracks has been switched around. As for the music itself: It's typical FSOL, not to imply that they have a 'typical' sound, but you should be warned beforehand that like all their other CDs, this one is completely different. The sound production is excellent, of course, and it makes for a rich listening experience.

Average customer rating: What is up with Divinity?

The Isness & the Otherness Amorphous Androgynous Manufacturer: Import [Generic] ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Ambient | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Techno | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Electronica | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Big Beat | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Trip-Hop | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music IDM | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Dance & DJ | Imports | Stores | Music ASIN: B0000UM07Q Release Date: 2004-01-06

Tracks:

1. Lovers
2. Isness
3. Mello Hippo Disco Show
4. Goodbye Sky (Reprise)
5. Elysian Feels
6. Go Tell It to the Trees Egghead
7. Divinity
8. Guru Song
9. Osho
10. Her Tongue Is Like a Jellyfish
11. Meadows
12. High Tide on the Sea of Flesh
13. Galaxial Pharmaceutical

Tracks:

1. Elysian Feels [Abbey Road Version]
2. Yo-Yo [Abbey Road Version]
3. Goodbye Sky
4. Lovers (Love Is the Lover)
5. Maharishi Raga
6. Band (Divinity)
7. Rural Green
8. Chanvanvah
9. She Sells Electric Ego
10. Chinese Whispers
11. Slo-Mo
12. Conga Run
13. Theram
14. Toy Piano

Album Description

Full title - Present Amorphous Androgynous - The Isness. Special edition digipak limited to 4,000 copies, features 27 tracks including 'The Otherness' album, featuring 14 brand new previously unreleased tracks & exclusive mixes from the original masters. Packaged in a deluxe sliding-digipak/slipcase with 8-page full-color booklet featuring photos & extensive liner notes. Artful Records. 2003.

Customer Reviews:

What is up with Divinity?.......2004-12-08

Overall this is a pretty great CD. One big exception is the singing on this album. The song "divinity," is a perfect example. The opening of this song is gorgeous, but at about the 3 minute mark there comes this nasal repulsive voice over the track, sucking the beauty straight out of the song. A few others had similarly bad singing but none quite as bad as "divinity." I hope that in the future FSOL either sticks to what it does best or gets better vocalists.

Tracks 1, 6 and 11 on the first disc are my favorite.

Average customer rating:

Trance Fusion ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Dance & DJ | Imports | Stores | Music ASIN: B000HBJQPW Release Date: 2007-03-06

Average customer rating:

The Isness The Future Sound of London ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Ambient | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Techno | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Electronica | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Big Beat | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Trip-Hop | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music IDM | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music ASIN: B000BD9NT0 Release Date: 2006-01-31

Tracks:

1. Elysian Feels
2. Mello Hippo Disco Show
3. Goodbye Sky (Reprise)
4. Osho
5. Galaxial Pharmaceutical
6. Yes My Brother
7. Go Tell It to the Trees Egghead
8. Divinity
9. Guru Song
10. Her Tongue Is Like a Jellyfish
11. Meadows
12. High Tide on the Sea of Flesh
13. Goodbye Sky

Album Description

2006 release by this ground-breaking electronic/dance duo, recorded under their druggy, psychedelic Amorphous Androgynous pseudonym.. Featuring the single 'Alice In Ultraland', this release collects out-takes from The Isness sessions, several previously unreleased tracks, a song from the original U.K. vinyl version of the album, and a handful of remixes from associated singles and EPs. Future Sounds.

Average customer rating:

Mind Your Own Isness ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Compilations | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music | Ambient | Dance Pop | Disco | Drum & Bass | Electronica | Freestyle | Techno-House | Trance | Trip Hop ASIN: B000HBJQQ6 Release Date: 2007-02-13

Average customer rating: Good, but... Best Undiscovered Album of 2003

Amorphous Androgynous-The Isness Amorphous Androgynous Manufacturer: Import [Generic] ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Ambient | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music General | Techno | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music IDM | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Dance & DJ | Imports | Stores | Music ASIN: B0000931LK Release Date: 2003-04-22

Customer Reviews:

Good, but..........2005-12-21

I've always liked The Future Sound of London, particularly the 'Dead Cities' and 'Lifeforms' albums, but I'm not so sure about this. To cut a long story short, there are definitely great songs here with a real psychedelic feel, but on the other hand, there's a bit too much sitar and a couple of terrible songs that simply should have stayed out.

Best Undiscovered Album of 2003.......2004-02-12

Do you like Pink Floyd,AIR,Thievery Corporation?
Then Amorphous Androgynous (Ex Future Sound of London)
is for you. It is a pity that a lot
of people haven't yet discovered this album.

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