26 December 2005

Circuitry!

I just made a new CD-R compilation of Front Line Assembly singles. A number of the singles were bought over eBay a few months ago. I have always found Front Line Assembly (for that matter, a lot other industrial bands) to be a lot more inventive with sounds, unconventional structures, use of samples (especially from films!) than the crowd-pleasing Nine Inch Nails with its supposedly themes of teenage angst. Front Line Assembly, and the many incarnations*, has always been building 'soundtracks' for the dystopia, the wasteland and the police state of the near future, cliched in a sense but the soundtracks are aural experiences, sonic journeys.

1. Millennium (1000 Years of Decay Remix)
2. Circuitry (Predator Mix)
3. Plasticity
4. Fatalist (Remix)
5. Iceolate
6. Columbian Necktie (Tongue Fed Edit)
7. Surface Patterns (Surveillance Remix)
8. Prophecy
9. The Blade (Technohead)
10. Vanished (Re-Entry Mix)
11. Virus
12. Mindphaser (Edited Version)
13. Everything must perish (Radio Edit)

Front Line Assembly is the quintessential cyberpunk band according to some. This compilation is to be played LOUD.

*Intermix, Delerium, Equinox, etc.

"Yet, always on the point of disintegrating, he contrived somehow always to hold himself together for he sincerely believed that, since the world was full of a number of things, it was a moral imperative to be happy as a king. This was the final modification of his puritanism; that if he had enough to eat and a roof over his head, he knew he ought to be content even if the king he always thought of in connection with the smiling couplet he repeated to himself every morning was Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria."
'Love' Angela Carter

5 comments:

V said...

That's a nice mix! I especially like "Mindphaser." All the samples were taken from Robocop. So everytime I see the movie, I can't get that song out of my head.

I do agree with you that FLA has the be the definitve of the word Cyberpunk. I wonder if William Gibson knows about them. I think those Matrix movies should have included some FLA to their soundtracks.

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

You can identify samples! I guess I can barely remember any because I usually only watch a movie once. Yeah, I love the original 'Robocop'.

I should think that Gibson should know a little about them? Anyhow, there was a Walter Jon Williams book titled 'Hardwired'.

The Matrix movies had Juno Reactor and some techno stuff if I am not wrong. FLA would really fit right in.

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

I forgot to put 'Maniacal' in there. I love the energy in that single. Anyhow, there isn't any space left in this 72-minute compilation.

V said...

Yeah, when bands have such a good body of work ranging many years, it's hard to limit them to a 72 minute CD. You may have to make this a two CD compilation then. :)

BlackRX said...

The 700MB capacity CD-R can store up to 80 minutes of wave files, yes?