No Frills Reviews

Track of the Day provides recommendations of new discoveries and old favourites. Today, we look back to a forgotten gem.

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Thirty years on from their 90’s heyday, Oasis fever once again grips the UK, with the Gallagher brothers and co. making the rounds on their long-awaited reunion tour. The comeback trail has seen them fully embrace 90’s nostalgia; largely erasing the second half of their original run from memory, with 2002’s Little By Little being the only post-2000 track to appear in the setlist. It’s perhaps been an astute (financial) move to focus on what made them great in their early years, rather than remind us of what they became. But, despite the diminishing returns, their later years were still peppered with occasional gems. This track is an oddity quite unlike anything else in their catalogue. Albeit, the real credit doesn’t go to Oasis themselves.

Originally appearing on 2008’s Dig Out Your Soul, this would be Oasis’s final single before their 2009 split. Sung by Noel, Falling Down in its original form is a pleasant, if largely unremarkable, flirtation with psychedelia; an ultimately safe bout of experimentation. In the hands of Amorphous Androgynous (AA), it would become something else entirely.

Noel commissioned a remix from the electronic duo (who had previously enjoyed commercial successes in the 90’s as The Future Sound of London) on the strength of their A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble compilation, which was winning acclaim at the time. Noel often spoke of his more eclectic and experimental tastes, without ever truly incorporating those influences on record; 2017’s Who Built The Moon, with his High Flying Birds, would be the most he was willing to indulge, before reverting to type with the dreary stadium rock of Council Skies. Following largely aborted collaborative sessions in the early days of Noel’s solo ventures, AA’s Garry Cobain would later suggest that a mixture of stubbornness and inability limited Noel’s experimental output. So, it may be for the best that he outsourced the weirdness here.

From its original 4 minutes, Amorphous Androgynous would radically re-imagine Falling Down as a 22 minute mini-album; a sonic metamorphosis. Ostensibly beginning in fairly standard remix territory, AA seize on and amplify the eastern flavour lent by the original’s use of mellotron, immediately proceeding with a more pronounced mystic vision of the track. Noel’s vocals are partially intact and recognisable, although they’re gently warped, re-casting him as a soothing, spectral presence. As Noel’s voice increasingly echoes and fades into the ether, and the instrumental layers pile up (there’s sitars, orchestral strings, and woodwind within the first 3 minutes) it becomes clear that there’s nothing standard about this. There’s some heavy hints of Tomorrow Never Knows; ever The Beatles’ worshippers, this is perhaps the closest Oasis would ever actually come to following in the footsteps of their sonic innovation.

I’d fail miserably trying to give a blow-by-blow description that does justice to what emerges across those 22 minutes. But, as I listen on YouTube, the comment that peers out at me captures it beautifully succinctly – “This is what heaven sounds like” (credit to @jackxld57, for their wisdom 11 years ago). This is a cosmic journey in 60’s Eastern psychedelia, via Floyd’s pioneering prog epics, and filtered through more modern-day ambient electronica. At times it’s groovy, it’s often dizzying, and it’s occasionally utterly gorgeous.

Noel’s vocals (or rather what becomes of Noel’s vocals) may be the key to the tale. By around the half way point, a child’s voice takes up the lyrics as if reciting a nursery rhyme, powerful female vocals then take the reins (the voice of Alisha Sufit from 70’s psych-folk group, Magic Carpet), before Noel finally re-appears in the closing moments. Amorphous Androgynous transformed Falling Down into a spiritual awakening; the sound of re-birth.

Ultimately, this would be somewhat of a false dawn, Noel was never quite willing to commit to this level of weirdness again. But Amorphous Androgynous gave a glorious glimpse of what could have been. Once their initial brilliance faded, there was a world where a different version of Oasis could have existed … 20 minute psych epics probably don’t pay million pound divorce bills though.

Listen to the Falling Down remix via YouTube below.

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