Customer Reviews

Amorphous Androgynous: The Otherness

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Unlike reviews that state this album is worthless and simply old material repackaged, only five of the tracks here are available elsewhere (one of those, Chawawah, is only available on the UK vinyl edition of the album). Of the other nine, the alternative version of Elysian Feels and Goodbye Sky may be familiar to you if you're lucky enough to have picked up the accidentally released alternative version of the album. Otherwise, the album is comprised of unreleased tracks and remixes.

So what to expect in terms of quality? Well, the music is still in the new-Amorphous Androgynous vein of the band, largely psychedelia influenced, with guitars and sitars playing a large part in the proceedings, although due to the remix-nature of the record, things are a little more electronic than The Isness. The four versions of Divinity from the now-scrapped EP vary in quality... the live "Band" version is a touching take on the original, whilst The Conga Run adds in overly-fret-wanking solos which ruin the piece. The Mello Hippo remixes are all excellent, however, and it's worth tracking down the full EP there. The new remix of The Lovers is the best of the three commercially available versions, adding a whole new eastern groove to the otherwise slightly lacking piece. The new songs also vary in quality; Goodbye Sky is a brass-led run through Beatles psychedelia - a definite opinion splitter - whilst Rural Green is slow, relaxing trip-hop, which would feature nicely on one of the band's earlier FSOL releases. Theram is, however, an unfocussed sketch with a similar vibe to The Isness' Guru Song.

Overall, the record is a good companion to The Isness, but should be treated as such. If you're a fan of the original record, it's definitely worth getting ahold of. Luckily it seems to be pretty cheap everywhere, meaning it'll probably be worth the cash.

I give this three stars because it has four-star content matched against the one- or two-star album release quality. Almost all of this stuff you can get elsewhere, and in reality this disc is sort of irrelevant and probably shouldn't have been made.
For those who don't know, it's an amalgamation of The Isness retreads (the Abbey Road edits all sound basically the same, nothing new here), and samples from three EPs: The Mello Hippo Disco Show, the Divinity Reinterpretations, and yet another slightly new interpretation of The Lovers (an incredible song regardless of the version) from the Papua New Guinea Translations. Amidst all of this, there are only a couple of previously unreleased tracks in all. It's all of FSOL's post-2001 '60s experimental electro-rock revivalist material jammed together with an artsy cover (which, like the content, is also a touched-up remake of the Isness cover).
Point is, if you've already got all or most of the aforementioned releases there's no point to this album whatsoever, but the less of them you've got, the more worthy a pickup this becomes.
And if you know nothing of the aforementioned releases, do check them out first.

This album actually is the second CD from the 4000 copy limited edition import - Present Amorphous Androgynous - The Isness. The tracks order is changed a bit and the songs have been shuffled, with one or two actually being swapped out, but in essence, it is that CD plus an extra track. If you already have the limited edition "Isness" then there is little need for the album. But if you don't and are a fan of FSOL, then you can't go wrong with this release.

Maybe it's not their strongest collection of songs, but still head and shoulders above most electronica/psycadelica/ambient. Here is the track listing for the limited edition second disc, and you can see for yourself the similarities and differences.

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

As a fan of the aforementioned genres and FSOL in general, this is a must have for me. I don't have the limited edition Isness.

This album is an astounding piece of ambient work that carries across a good bit of FSOL ambient style but leaning more toward the cosmic, spiritual sonic rendition instead of the acid house, trip-hop elements. It can be considered experimental but I would not consider it to sound so abstract as some of the work of other ambient producers. The album definitely has that cinematic flavor and is a great album to listen to if you want to escape the cares of this world for a little while. I very much look forward to more releases from Amorphous Androgynous!

Future Sound of London's Lifeforms and Dead Cities were two of the truly original records to come out of the mid-'90s techno boom. A decade later, FSOL have finally released not one but two follow-ups. Too bad they have changed their sound to something tantamount to Yanni.

Actually, FSOL's Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans have been releasing material under the Amorphous Androgynous alter-ego for years, but now it seems to be the primary focus of their efforts. And even on their FSOL works, you could hear prog influences: the musical left turns, the continuous sequencing, the general sense that some grand scheme beyond the simple creation of music was at work. Now, though,they have reaped all of the ugly effects of diving whole hog into King Crimson territory while realizing few of the rewards.

A collection of outtakes, leftovers and re-workings from 2002's The Isness (which was released under the FSOL banner), The Otherness aims for Pink Floyd circa Meddle but sadly lands closer to Ummagumma. Like that album, The Otherness is ungainly, bloated, self-indulgent, and saved only by a handful of decent tracks.

Elements of the general FSOL style remain, to be sure. The sheer sprawl of the compositions, the eerie bleeps and whooshes and lumbering nature of the whole thing will be familiar. But on top of that you also get faux-Eastern droning, codpiece-rock guitars that have more in common with Joe Satriani than David Gilmour, and rather generic, sneering Syd Barrett/Roger Waters vocals that say things that sound like "Mumbo jumbo snow fellatio". Hmmm...

Not all is lost. Cobain and Dougans are clearly possessed of talent, and they haven't managed to hide all of it. "Goodbye Sky", with its orchestral flourishes, should please Polyphonic Spree fans, "The Lovers" gets funky with some wah-wah guitars, and "Maharishi Raga" is pretty and mellow, like FSOL stuff of yore. "Theram" applies some drum-and-bass-inspired beats, one of the album's unexpected turns that really works.

"The Band", melodramatic and overblown, however, sounds like Suede doing self-parody, which is saying something as Suede are perfectly capable of doing that themselves. "Charvarvah" shows promise by sampling the rhythm from ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down", but squanders it on some genuinely hokey honky-tonk.

Maybe the best that can be said about The Otherness is that it's allowed Cobain and Dougans to get this wankery out of their system. Not that they need to reprise Lifeforms or Dead Cities, but some wankery is ultimately good and this ultimately... is not.

FSOL's love child and experimental album "Isness and Otherness" (under the name Amorphous Androgynous) is the culmination of two hard facts: The Beatles did all the drugs in India, and while it made their music palatable, the experience cannot be repeated a generation or more later.

Isness is the "feel good album" for strung out wannabe hippies with no viable entity to rebel against. Since Everest has already been climbed and movie stars are kidnapping native children from the 3rd world to match their luggage, there are no truly "Foreign" frontiers when it comes to music and culture. I mean, hell, I've never been to India, but my buddies girlfriend makes some killer samosas and National Geographic takes me anywhere I want to go for $30 a month - and that's just basic cable.

The style, a fusion that gets lost somewhere between "contemporary elevator" and "Little India Restaurant and Pub" whilst taking strange detours through the Beatles and Joplin (when she was sober enough to walk) is one that took a full 6 listen throughs to actually make any sense of. There's simply too much going on in this album to really comprehend what they were going after: if they were going after anything at all. One occasionally latches on to an overall theme, and then it gets pissed away with discordant blips and bleeps - much like someone with Tourette's Syndrome trying to perform CSNY's "Daylight Again". Good melody buildup, variations on a theme they established three tracks earlier...then suddenly "BLEEP BLIP!"

That being said, it's groovy stuff, I'm beginning to really dig on it. Feel like I should be wearing plastic frame glasses and a turtleneck and be sipping fair trade coffee from small, ceramic mugs with "indigenous" script from a make believe tribe of non discriminating, happy and prosperous custodians of the earth.

Either that, or I just didn't do enough drugs in college.

My hangup, perhaps, is that I honestly believe Future Sound of London peaked with "Dead Cities", although I'm only passingly familiar with their newer releases. I'm not saying they should hang up the keyboards - but I'd be interested to see who guru'ed them in the studio to produce this rather "eclectic" or otherwise random vomiting of sound bytes.