Lost In Flower marks the debut of F7, a project born from the meeting between All Rest No People and Canadian artist Jean Brazeau. Released on Acting Press, the album fits into the label’s ten-year path and expands its analog, visionary world, pushing it into areas that had only been hinted at before. The label has always stood out for its ability to bring together ambient techno, outsider house and IDM, reshaping electronic heritage and giving it new life. Its records, rare but essential, have built a sound identity that has become one of the most recognizable in recent club music, shaped by low-profile figures as PLO Man, All Rest No People and C3D-E.
In this context, Lost In Flower is a natural but unexpected step. The familiar spaceship-like aesthetic is still there, but the record also moves into new directions: the high-speed progressive house of “Picatrix, abstract bleep techno, and electro traces that recall the raw intensity of Drexciya. There are also hints of the minimalism related with Tektite Recordings, here turned into something more atmospheric and metaphysical. F7 do not follow a minimal approach, except in moments like the leftfield brainquake of Four Corner. Their focus is a dense, enveloping sound that goes beyond tradition, echoing the most imaginative side of 1990s electronic music.
A key aspect of the album is the deliberate choice to keep the sound rough, imperfect, even scratched, as if the duo wanted to explore what happens when machines are pushed without safety limits. They are not trying to recreate the past: they experiment, push the hardware, allow the signal to get dirty, saturated, unstable. This attitude, rooted in the pioneering spirit of the 1990s, shows a desire to explore freely beyond genre boundaries. It is both an aesthetic and technical stance, shaping an identity that embraces irregularities rather than avoiding them.
Echoes of earlier eras are rebuilt and accelerated, revealing details that would once have stayed hidden: pads dissolving into air, dissonant chords repeated in micro-structures, small sonic particles scattered across the mix. These anomalies give the album its internal coherence. The 4/4 pulse changes shape from track to track: sometimes a single kick holds everything together (My Cloud Is A House), sometimes shadows of early Steve Bicknell appear (Phantom), or otherworldly resonances emerge in Shooting Rulers. Freeze blends an ambient rise with a fragile techno foundation, while Icarus offers a polyrhythm that recalls the wandering, semi-improvised spirit linked to PLO Man’s universe.
The generous format (a triple LP) allows for a shifting, rich internal narrative, a sequence of chapters that works both for DJs and for listeners looking for a coherent but evolving storyline. It’s a record full of different entry points, each one fitting into the larger whole while also standing on its own.
