Future Sound Of London, The - From The Archives Vol. 1

I'm not ashamed to admit I'll take old Future Sound of London over most contemporary electronic music. Their sense of atmosphere and melody were stunning, and even on the unused and unreleased tracks on _From the Archives, Vol. 1_ have a delicacy that are beautifully realized. "Lizzard Crawl," for instance, drifts forth as if you're gliding on glass, while "Hallucination" shows what they can do with sonic density. So while many of the samples that appear here can be found in other works of theirs, the different arrangements and contexts recreate these sounds anew. So even if parts of "Turn Around" sound oddly familiar, the overall effect becomes unique. The rhythmic pull of "Still Flowers" belies its haunting grace; "Woodland" sounds like a trek across a Borean tundra; mechanical whirring and acoustic guitar meld together in "Hazey Day Girl." It's a welcome return to the heyday of the Future Sound of London, even if it's only cast-offs and fragments.

Well needless to say I was pretty excited when I heard The Future Sound Of London were going to release something new on CD. Even though they were older, unreleased tracks, I still looked forward to it. The outcome was rather disappointing though... Out of all 3 volumes there are only a handful of tracks that i'd say were worth releasing from their "archives". You can pretty much go with the vinyl version as it serves the best tracks of the slew. Most of these songs seem like demos/alternate versions of previous material as I can detect many similar beats and sounds. It is rather interesting to hear the Enviroment tracks because these are from the scrapped Amorphous album from the 90s. FSOL fans will want these no doubt, but don't expect it to be on the same level as their albums... There was a reason these tracks didn't make the cut.