Tracklisting:

1. 'The Line That Divides The Earth From The Sky' 09:02
2. 'Rise Of The Native' 13:46
3. 'The Victim' 11:58
4. 'When The Patient Stars Breathe' 14:46


'Redux' came about following live performances of certain tracks, which took on a life of their own and became altogether different entities, these are not remixes, they are excursions into an alternate reality. "What if...?"

'The Victim' & 'When The Patient Stars Breathe' fell out of the 'Pieces for a Condemned Piano' sessions and clearly didn't suit that release - 'The Victim' is a tribute to those locked in basements everywhere; occasional glimpses of sunlight or sleep are the only escape from the tormentors hammering on the floorboards above.

'When The Patient Stars Breathe' converted the piano's soul into an electronic signal which we then transmitted back into the universe. It has an older sister, 'The Impatient Stars' which saw the light of day on the www.darkwinter.com re-issue of 'Full Cold Moon' which was a tribute to Jhonn Balance and the musick of Coil. It now has an older brother, 'The Sufferers', which is scheduled for future release at the Lumberton Trading Company.

Originating as 'Staph Haven' from 'Crossing the Sea by Radio', 'Rise of the Native' embraces the art of chaos and the migraine - an insectoid cacophony and a tale of manic, multi-coloured wandering musicians, full volume is recommended to maximise catharsis.

'The Line That Divides The Earth From The Sky' also started life on 'Crossing the Sea by Radio' as 'This Summer' and has abandoned the train to fly over warm landscapes and oceans, brushing the treetops and spires of faraway places.

~

Redux has been a labour of love/hate/pain/joy. We hope you will not just listen but experience at the journey we embarked upon from its inception to your brain and beyond.

Over 49 dark, humid minutes of fractured distant drumming, droneful symphonic strains interwoven with mournful fragments of half remembered melodies from sleepless summer nightmares. These four disparate tracks came about independently, but together they evoke a familiarity that makes the release a unified whole.

Mark Russell & Robert Sandall played 'Rise of the Native' from 'Redux' on their BBC Radio 3 Mixing it show on 25th August 2006. See the playlist for the show here.

This review from Kerry Leimar of ei-mag:

'With Redux, we are on more practiced and familiar ground, easily more self-conscious and manipulative, alert and yet distractedly on watch offering a few childlike subversions, the track title shuffle being both admirable and sorta pointless. Trading off the same elements and techniques as Wasdale, the results demonstrate what happens when something in the system seizes up and the pursuit of the unconscious gets a little too conscious.'


boomkat.com reviewed 'Redux' here:

'Formication are a UK based duo with a penchant for droney soundscapes. They’ve amassed quite a few releases now and have been championed by the Wire, so I think it’s high time the rest of the world got on board – this particular release sees them pillaging their back catalogue, scrounging for scraps and rebuilding old tracks into gigantic pseudo-ambient masterworks. Bearing a strong resemblance to their heroes Coil, the first track ‘Rise of the Native’ begins with an analogue drum machine cycle and squelching industrial synthesizers bubbling atop, before long the ten minute piece has grown in scope to include distant vocals and dischordant stabs creating a veritable drugs haze of faded musical excess. This sets the scene for the rest of the album, which excels in pursuit of deep basses and rhythmic pounding (which I can only guess echoes the tempo of my heartbeat or something equally spiritually resounding). Apparently the duo recommend that you should play this disc on random, so the order in which the tracks appear are unimportant, I can see this working as once you set off listening to ‘Redux’ the likelihood is you’ll be eager to travel into another universe anyway, preferably one without time or order. Dark, deep and ultimately satisfying, Formication take the best of industrial experimentation and re-forge it just for us.



compulsiononline.com review 'Redux' here:

'Formication return with another high quality release with four loosely structured tracks of experimental electronica and mutated techno. As the title Redux implies these were borne from live performances where certain tracks from their previous releases Pieces For A Condemned Piano and Crossing The Sea By Radio took on a life on their own becoming altogether different entities. Frustratingly the Nottingham based duo, Kingsley John Buckland Ravenscroft and Alec D Bowman, supply track titles but don't offer the running order preferring the listener to listen to Redux on random. So you're going to have to go with my take on the track ordering. The opener 'The Line That Divides The Earth From The Sky' combines fluttering electronic rhythmic patterns over bubbling synths before a series of disembodied piano stabs and snatches of sung and spoken voices enter the fray. 'Rise of the Native' ranges from drifting synths casting off erratic rhythms alongside deep throbs and pulses as it teeters on the fringes of techno, before being blurred by a hellish concoction of shrieks and scrapes. This is the dark side of electronica, a sinister contrast to the pastoral sound of Boards of Canada, as heard on 'The Victim' which is carried on a wave of distant rumbling drums through a muffled electronic haze pierced by fragmented human chatter. The final piece in this musical conundrum is ' When The Patient Stars Breathe', an outgrowth from the Pieces For A Condemned Piano sessions. It unfolds to electro sequences, underpinned by solid bass throb strewn with disorientating tones and textures and bursts of alien noise. Amidst the electronic improvisations of the four lengthy tracks Formication appear to be toying with ruptured ambient electronica littering it with processed and fragmentary sounds taking it to a much darker place than they visited on earlier releases. Well worth seeking out before they go back overground.'



Vital Weekly reviewed 'Redux' here:

'If understood well, Formication are a two piece group from the UK, who might not be around for very long: their first release is from last year. On the website we read: " The music of Formication strays into dark territory, inhabiting forgotten grounds; less of a showcase for new technology and more an essential medium for the expression of the human psyche where the soul is the interface." The four long pieces captured on 'Redux' show an interest in reduction - I think. I didn't hear their previous work. It's not easy to categorize this, and that's always good. The four pieces are held together by string of sequencer like sounds and samples, over which other instruments, like mumbling voices, synths and perhaps processed guitars play a more or less free role. It's a meeting place for psychedelic music (especially the German cosmic music, say Ash Ra Temple or Conrad Schnitzler's non-keyboard electronics), industrial music along the lines of Throbbing Gristle (area 'Heathen Earth'), very vague minimal techno (even when Formication don't use any danceable beats, more a highly reduced - again - rhythm pattern along the lines of Porter Ricks), all touched by a lick of dark paint - the Coil influence. The sound is a bit muffled, but that is not a bad thing here: it works as an extra cloud to cover any instruments to stand out of the mix. Normally this sort of thing would be a bit too dark for me, but I must admit there is something quite captivating about this. Perhaps it's somewhat muffled sound? The darkness, but with a touch of light always lurking around the corner? I don't know, but it's captivating indeed. (FdW)'



Textura.org reviewed 'Redux' here:

'As its title implies, Redux isn't new material in the conventional sense but it's not a collection of standardized remixes either. The album's four lengthy tracks developed out of live performances where Formication's (Kingsley Ravenscroft and Alec Bowman) original material became so radically transformed it seemed more natural to regard it as ‘reworked.' The duo's music has been likened to Tangerine Dream and Coil and the references aren't inaccurate as nightmarish epics like “When the Patient Stars Breathe” merge the meandering propulsion of Phaedra with the disturbed altered states associated with Coil.

The album isn't entirely harrowing, however. “The Line That Divides the Earth from the Sky” inaugurates the set relatively peacefully with a fluid concoction of distant voices, light percussive splashes, burbling keyboards, and half-glimpsed hints of melody. Obviously darker, “The Victim” is an aural evocation of imprisonment, with its protagonist only capable of monitoring the funereal stream of footfalls and noises resounding from afar (“a tribute to those locked in basements everywhere,” the sleeve notes). “Rise of the Native” is even more intense, an industrial-flavoured, pulsating monstrosity that grows into a dizzying mass of string scrapes, piano loops, and piercing whistles. Despite the change in mood, the music retains its fluidity as instruments rise to the surface and then dart below, engendering an hallucinatory effect over its 14-minute duration. As with much of the album, elements come into sharp focus at one moment before retreating into haze the next. Despite an aura of chaos and disorientation promoted by the group, Redux, Formication's fourth independent release, hardly sounds random but instead methodically structured and controlled, a dark experience to be sure but by no means an unmusical one.'

~

DJ Teknoir of gothtronic.com review 'Redux' here:

'Formication can be placed in a tradition of bands such as Throbbing Gristle, Psychick Warriors ov Gaia, Future Sound of London and Coil. As soon as you hear the first sounds of the maelstrom on this Redux recording you’ll know you are dealing with musick in best Coil tradition in which there is chaos as well as structure, deep sometimes symphonic sounding drones, merged together with half remembered melodies from sleepless summer nightmares. I had to think of the music of the Lifeforms album by Future Sound of London more than once while listening to the 4 pieces of music on Redux. This is not music for delicate types, yet is meant for the musical connaisseur. On Redux are 4 tracks which are remakes of existing tracks from the band discography which were already performed live. These tracks are reworked in such a way that profoundly different compositions have been created. ‘The Line That Divides the Earth from the Sky’ is a richly sounding track full of samples and built around a especially well performed exercition in tribal percussion and therefore deserves an explicite mentioning. This is a recording that is recommended to the adventurous listener of electronic sounds.'



Igloomag.com reviewed 'Redux' here:

Wandering in a dream landscape somewhere between the ritual ambience of Coil and the electronic space drift of Tangerine Dream and Pete Namlook, Formication culls together aspects of their back catalog to create four long tracks of symphonic nocturnes for Redux. During the organic evolution of live sessions, these tracks began to take form -- opening as portals into alien soundscapes, windows through which alternate motifs and variations could steal.

"The Line That Divides The Earth From The Sky" is the shortest of the four tracks, a nine-minute ballad of warbling synthesizers, aquatic drum patterns and ghostly voices that try to channel opera singers but sound more like specters lost in empty tin pails. Like a mist rolling over water, "The Line That Divides The Earth From The Sky" is a movement of fluid dynamics wherein nothing really takes hold and everything has rounded edges. Quivering and chattering with digital orthopteran noises and rolling in waves of purified noise (like softened steel wool), "Rise Of The Native" is a symphony of locust and grasshoppers, crickets and cockroaches, all making music in simultaneous cacophony.

"The Victim," dedicated to those who are locked in basements, is a tympanic soundtrack to subterranean captivity. Drums with bruised heads clatter like confused mental patients over an alien ambience, a drone that gradually takes on more and more of a sinister quality. "When The Patient Stars Breathe" is a retread from their previous Pieces From A Condemned Piano and the warmth of the piano notes have been transformed into squiggles of cold space noise, bursts of alien communication that squirt off towards the edge of the solar system's heliosheath like a Rapoon-style transmission of shamanistic ambience.

Instructions on the CD recommend playing the record on random and even go so far as to list the track names in "no apparent order" so as to facilitate the magical mystery of applied chaos to the work. As an evolving ritual, Redux isn't a permanent record as an aural snapshot that can be further manipulated by the listener, opening stranger vistas with every listen.



Hassni Malik, of The Vitamin B12 & Lumberton Trading Company, reviewed 'Redux':

'It’s such a strange experience when this begins. It’s straight forward
enough, with the bubbling emergence of sound but it’s more like the
appearance of an image during a particularly lucid lysergic experience.
Simple and yet from the off it carries you hurtling into the world held
within their Alec and Kingsley’s strongly colourful minds.

It’s steady and relentless. It has an epic scale, a panoramic vision,
the feel of an electronic ritual conducted by those who have done this
before. We are in safe hands. The journey is deceptively rapid and
there is little pause for breath as the scope of the experience is all
too much to take in the first time around. The glints of light soon
dazzle and blind, the skin becomes over sensitized to the pulses of
sound and the ears bring in too many layers of information to process
sensibly. It is a multi-dimensional representation of the soul at its
most glorious. No hurt, no memories of loss, no fears. Only colours and
fragmenting pulsing tones.

While I understand the similarities drawn by some reviewers to the
likes of Tangerine Dream, Formication may hint at that sonic palette,
there is so much more at stake here. Formication are here to hold your
hand and take you to other planes. Safely. I urge you to go with them.'

Jumbo Records described 'Redux' as 'A dub, motorik, industrial CDR... 4 long tracks like a collision between Can, Pole and Throbbing Gristle.'



Thanks to Kontra of Subcity Radio for including 'Redux' in his top 20 of 2006:

Made Out of Babies - Coward
Sunn O))) / Boris - Altar
Dub Trio - New Heavy
Wolf Eyes + Anthony Braxton - Black Vomit
Yellow Swans - Psychic Secession
Jazkamer - Metal Music Machine
John Zorn - Moonchild
Kylie Minoise - Spank Magic Lodge
Jesu - Silver
Om - Conference of the Birds
Merzbow + John Wiese - Multiplication
Yellow Swans + Birchville Cat Motel - S/T
Khlyst - Chaos Is My Name
Burial - S/T
Final - 3
Blut Aus Nord - MoRT
The Angelic Process - Coma Waering
Formication - Redux
Unicorn Love - CDR


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THE WIRE PRESENTS ADVENTURES IN MODERN MUSIC ON RESONANCE 104.4 FM


Tony Herrington, Editor-in-Chief of The Wire magazine, includes a track from 'Redux' in his show which was broadcast on 20th July 2006 and can be downloaded or streamed: http://www.thewire.co.uk/web/air.php to its logical conclusion.

Tony was understandably perplexed by the curious 'Redux' tracklisting stratagem, naming 'Rise Of The Native', when the featured track is actually 'The Line That Divides The Earth From The Sky'. The published tracklisting (see at the top of this page) is designed to help those of you for whom order is preferable to the ecstatic oblivion of confusion and misunderstanding. Either way, we thanks Tony for his continued support.