Igloo Magazine, Mat Propek (09.13.06) 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. www.Boomkat.com 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... Textura September 2006 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. Vital Weekly 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. Gothtronic, Teknoir 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. Compulsion Online Formication the Nottingham based duo who perform a unique dark take on ambient and electronica release their Redux CD this month. Redux includes reworkings of tracks from Crossing The Sea By Radio and Decomposed. The idea behind Redux came about following performances of certain tracks which took on lives of their own and became altogether different entities. Formication regard these as excursions into an alternate reality - which takes the listener from dusty basements to the distant stars, from dreams to insectoid cacophony. Hassni Malik - Lumberton & Vitamin B12 Formication- Redux cdr (Harmful Records) 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. read the Cold Spring review here 'Rise of the Native' from 'Redux' was played on BBC Radio Three's 'Mixing It' Show. This can be found in the BBC Archive. 'The Line That Divides The Earth From The Sky' was played by Tony Herrington on his ResonanceFM show on the 20th July 2006.