The Future Sound Of London - Lifeforms mp3 download

Adoranin

As reviewed by me in May 1994 (see also my less charitable review from 2005):Summary: I didn't need of change of underwear after I first heard it, but I think I just didn't have enough to eat that day. If you like electronic music at all, any kind, you must, I repeat, you MUST buy this album. If you don't like it, I'll send you a free gift in the mail.I'm sorry. At the risk of being dipped in the Bog of Eternal Stench, I have to say that Future Sound of London are as overrated as Richard D. James and their new album Lifeforms, although it is the best thing they've ever done and I really do like it, is actually in some respects a turd of a CD that gives electronic music a bad name. Now before I get a flood of hate mail from the Intelligent Dance Music mailing list, hear me out. In a recent interview in MixMag promoting the album, Gary Cobain stated that he felt ambient music was 90% bollocks, full of bandwagon-jumpers, and that it was all a bunch of regressive crap, sounding like Tangerine Dream. Anyone who knows me knows that I am rather fond of Tangerine Dream, so I didn't take to this lightly. But what really struck me as odd is that their album is so full of artificial squawks, burbly galoops, zaps and pointless "hey, listen to this novel sound! oo! wasn't that cool?! buwahaha!" distractions that I have to compare it to early electronic music, like from the 50s and 60s, when self-righteous academics played artsy-fartsy noisescapes for each other. At times while listening to Lifeforms I think that without the extra effects, the links between the proper songs are extracts from those old compositions. It's like being stuck in a noisy aquarium.On the other hand, I must say that I also listen to it and think, "This is also some of the most advanced electronic music I've ever heard." When the songs get going, man, parts of my brain I didn't even know existed turn on and start to hum, and goosebumps light across my neck. The press release says they blur the lines between ambient and techno to the point where you can't say it's either, and they're right. These two men are perfectionists of the highest order, and it shows. Taking the "noisy aquarium" analogy with a grain of salt, the textural merits of the less appealing parts are blessedly sweet, and every track is a standout. Absorbed in whole or in part, I don't come away unsatisfied. I think they don't realize that regression, no matter how unintentional, is a form of progression, and when they come to grips with that they'll be able to avoid the recklessness of making noise for the sake of noise. Perhaps with their next album, Amorphous Androgynous: Environments. As you can see, I've got mixed feelings about Lifeforms... but in the end I have to give it the highest rating. After all, I'm not one to complain. :)

Rayli

The sound, production and mixing is ahead of it's time.

Zaryagan

This is not a double album, but two albums in one package. The first has a strong nature influence and does inspire thoughts of life and nature in me. The second album is more typical ambient with more prominent drum beats and synth sounds.

Beardana

Typical ambient often doesn't have any beats at all, though... try another description?

MisterQweene

Bought this one when it first came out cos i liked the picture on the cover and inside.Not perhaps the best criteria for choosing music but it seems to work for me every now and then and in the case of this album it was the best gamble i have ever made. Plenty of long winded reviews have been written about this album but all i can say is that the two discs are to me just two very different but fantastic musical journeys that need to be enjoyed with a like minded soul on with the stereo on loud or just on your own with youre headphones on and good wine or any combination of the above. Never do i get bored of the music or switch it of early or answer the phone. You get the picture !

Dalarin

Truth be told, I bought this album on a whim when I was first getting into electronic music purely because the cover looked cool and because I liked what I had heard on the Astralwerks label. It took me a few tries to really "get" what I was listening to but what I heard grew on me exponentially once I did. It has been almost 14 years since I first heard this album and yet I still consider "Lifeforms" to be by far one of the best ambient/downtempo albums I have ever come across. The entire album is filled with very lush and layered soundscapes. Anyone interested in this album should also listen to the "Lifeforms" remixes. That release can be considered a very definite continuation of this album. I rated this album (and the remixes) 5/5. Highly recommended.

Mopimicr

This is what I would call a timeless album. To fully appreciate this music you need to devote enough time to listen to both discs in one sitting... Whether thats while you're sleeping, surfing the web or even playing videogames. The result will be the same: you will be overcome by the world The Future Sound of London have created with this release. Impossible to describe. This is just something you have to hear for yourself. If you like electronica and ambient stuff then you could never go wrong with this release. Its worth noting that 2 additions for this release exist. The first being "Cascade" and the second is "Lifeforms (remixes)". Both are EPs and include tracks from the album reworked by FSOL themselves. Must-haves if you enjoyed this release. I hope someday FSOL will return to their 90's sound.

Cogelv

This is the ambient album which pretty much got me into the whole ambient thing really back in 1993 and i can honestly say that there is rarely a month goes by when i dont listen to it inspite of having hundreds of other albums to choose from. I never get bored of it and always find myself hearing something which i hadn't noticed before.I dont think they ever really got close to this although i like pretty much all of their stuff. Still sounds way out there even now.

Wild Python

My introduction the FSOL was a different sound entirely (with the great noise-electro track "We Have Explosive") than what this album had to offer. In 1994, when more and more electronic acts were throwing together cheap ripoff music of one another, there were handfuls of bands like FSOL who evolved to make beautiful music without the use of many 4/4 kick lines and standard trance melodys. I would call this a very chill 2xCDs, mixing funky moments with ambience, mixing light-industrial drum beats with native American instruments, and taking the listener on a trip to an alien desert where all lifeforms are forced to get along and create harmony. No track on here should be considered a single (or better than others really) because the whole album has to be experienced altogether at one time. It's as if a travelling circus of sound made a CD in space and broadcast it for you to hear in your most vulnerable of times. Listen with extreme joy and experience the flavors of FSOL.

Xangeo

Among myselves is the core track on disc 1, although the liner notes mislead you to believe that Flak is the hit song. It says that Robert Fripp's guitar is featured, but it is just a guitar sample. They also make use of Pachelbel's Canon (did I spell it right?). Beware of the sudden volume spike in Among Myselves, though. There is a nasty arpeggiation/sweep type of effect running in the beginning of the song. On disc 2, Room 208 is the highlight. Like the artwork that is featured, the album as a whole makes you feel like an invertebrate floating in a saltwater tank. A sort of aural Discovery Channel experience. Very distant from the club scene and from wild, rampant youngsters with a die another day attitude.

Chilele

Indeed, I made the fatal mistake of listening to disc 1 in bed one night with the intention of nodding off to this sublime album. I was more than past the stage of consciousness when, one minute into Among Myselves, I nearly suffered a heart attack (well, you get the idea)!A word of warning as you rightly point out.

Jeb

Lifeforms was my introduction to FSOL. At first.. I didn't much like what I heard. The music and beats didn't seem to have any real direction and they seemed, well, weird. However I gave it a few more tries and now realise what a classic this really is. I still openly admit that a lot of the tracks seem to have no direction - but maybe thats what makes this release so fun. Disc 1 is more ambient while disc 2 seems to be a little more club friendly. Both must be listened to in 1 sitting in proper order to fully appreciate though. Some favorites of mine are Ill Flower, Omnipresence and Room 208.

black coffe

This is an incredible album. Genre-defining, a classic and a pinnacle of its genre, if such a genre exists. The soundscapes, the synthetically organic backbeats, it was all so new and innovative, and 15 years after this came out, I can't say that to much out in the ambient world has surpassed this, certainly not in terms of ingenuity. In short, get this disc !

Olelifan

As the somewhat overcooked "Cascade" single foreshadowed, the increasingly successful FSOL boys were looking to abandon the judicious use of reverb that had served them well in their string of dancefloor-friendly, sample-collage experiments from the early 1990s. Now they intended to turn all the knobs to eleven and unleash an entire sample library in their first proper album and magnum opus, Lifeforms. While many found the much-anticipated album to be an unparalleled 'ambient' headtrip worthy of repeated listens, it was, for a few skeptics, little more than a disappointing wash of mismatched samples and echoes: 'atmospherics' on overload, with no respects paid to the pioneers of dub, and only the 'illbient' non-genre dared to take it to a further extreme. As I played the album at work one afternoon in 1994, an office maintenance man told me "that sure is a noisy aquarium you got there" -- and he was right. It is a noisy aquarium that needs to be cleaned, continuously burbling and humming as it offers up sample after sample of caged, non-threatening deep-sea creatures, each revealing itself for a split-second before disappearing into the murk. Under the right influences, the parade of creations is perhaps endlessly entertaining, but to the unprepared senses, it's like background noise that's just a little too loud, repeatedly demanding the listener's attention and then failing to engage. The album's title track, released as a lengthy, remixed single with vocal contributions by Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser, manages to find the cohesion that was missing from the album, but it, too, suffers from having been paid a bit too much attention at the mixing desk. Junior space cadets consider the album and single to be classics, but this grizzled moon colonist finds only the Accelerator and Earth Beat pseudo-compilations to be essentials from the group's catalog.

Blackbrand

Context, my friend.

FailCrew

This sounds so timeless every time I listen to it and is still one of my favorites today. For me it is pure musical phonetics, the sounds represent everyday occurences, did that just sound like a ship's foghorn? Or what does that dripping noise sound like? This sounds like 'selected works of planet earth' with one human influence - rythmn. I would have no idea how long it would take to arrange and sequence all these elements into one smooth album but it works incredibely well and mastered by none other than the FSOL. Exciting, new, focused, obscure, euphoric, dark, strange, esoteric...the adjectives are endless. Just listen and enjoy and recognise the endless samples used from this work by other dance genres ever since!

Ielonere

If there are people who still do not know about the "Lifeforms", I guess I would need to write a whole assay about this brilliant masterpiece. This album will live as long as the mankind exists. Does anyone know how to describe the musical style of "Lifeforms"? Going from absolute silence and nature motives, through electronic strips and flashes, impregnated with billions of sounds and dozens of instruments, breathing in untouchable harmony as universe in the absolute silence, it looks like everlasting symphony. Is it one endless motion, captured in 80 minutes of time, or is it a reflection of eternity, made by human hands? If someone could imagine the feel of hearing the river flow by watching the painted river... That's a brief introducing into the unspeakable and countless-dimensional world of "Lifeforms. 101% pure. Just play it and forget about the Earth.

Folsa

If Accelerator is the Future Sound of London’s take on techno, then Lifeforms is their take on ambient. But instead of stillness, the ambience here is constantly in motion, with new sounds and textures weaving their way through the music. If you don’t like a certain sound, don’t worry, it’ll change in just a few seconds. But how could anyone not like the processed piano of “Dead Skin Cells” or the eerie vocals on “Among Myselves.” There’s much more darkness on the second disc -- the electro of “Spineless Jelly” or the melancholy acoustic guitar on “Cerebral.” “Vit” throws in some harsher tones (sampled from Speedy J, if I’m not mistaken), but it’s smoothed out by the time the housey “Omnipresence” comes around. An astonishingly dense and accomplied album. A must-have in every collection.

Goldendragon

this is a very ambient, downbeat, beautiful and dark release from FSOL. released in 1994, it sounds way ahead of its time. this is one of my favorite electronic albums of all time. the whole album flows together in and out from eriee, to beautiful soundscapes. if you dont have it, go out and get it, its an essential pioneer electronic release.