On January 12th 1998 Faith No More released Stripsearch, the third single from Album Of The Year.
Kerrang | May 1997
'Stripsearch' is a supremely atmospheric chunk ol sci-fi funk that succeeds despite the lack of any discernible chorus because it sounds just fantastic. Young Gods producer Roli Mosimann has worked his usual magic here, 'Album Of The Year' sounding so good that even if there wasn't a sniff of a decent melody anywhere (which is always a risk with Faith No More) you'd still come back to it time and time again to marvel at the full-blooded luxuriance of the thing.
Roddy Bottum | 2015
"Going into Album of the Year felt like a changing of the guard. In a technological sense, and in an ownership sense. We'd been doing what we'd been doing for a long time - recording five records, touring for more than a decade. The production had gotten bigger, the stakes had gotten higher and the playing field was changing. Suddenly, making a record on our own was completely and realistically doable. Billy was kind of the first in our camp to get savvy with the Pro Tools setup, and as a result, a good part of AOTY was made in Billy's basement. We did all the tracking at Brilliant Studios and Razor's Edge in SF, but the editing and production were done on our own. It was our first step in taking back what was ours in a technical sense. Kind of ironic that it was our final record....at the time, anyway. We all knew where it was going, the writing was most definitely on the wall - we were all branching out, everyone had a side project, and it felt like FNM was becoming harder and harder just to schedule. Collectively, unconsciously, individually and as a group, we were acting out. Dressing in black suits for the tour, referencing a funeral, the death of the band, the audacious titling of the record, we were fucking with our own destiny. We were definitely referencing our musical roots as well, going back to the melancholy, the sombre, the monotonous loops, the brooding keyboards. Last Cup Of Sorrow, Ashes To Ashes, Jon's involvement and writing in songs like Stripsearch and Collision; in retrospect it feels really strong and an undeniably prolific chapter in what we ultimately set out to do. It might have been a hard pill to swallow for our fans and critics who kept looking to us for a radical change, which of course was understandable... we'd changed so many times. Maybe the change this time around was more of a 'behind the scenes' change. The way we recorded, Billy and the basement, bringing in Roli Mossiman, writing with Jon. Internally, to us it was radical. Roli had worked with Young Gods, a band we loved. He worked a lot with computers. He came in to help track and record, but stuck around to help mix. A testament to his work, we all liked him a lot and appreciated what he brought. Looking back, it seems like a good album to the world with, because it was almost a full circle return to the core of what FNM was. Of course, we had no idea at the time that we'd revisit it, it was the last thing on anybodies mind. We all needed to leave it and walk away, and not look back for a long time. The amount of angst we'd shared as a group of friends was devastating. I don't know how we survived as young people doing what we did. Friends writing together, creating together, making business decisions together, living together, 24/7 for the most part. Looking back on it, they were truly special days of our lives, particularly at the end, when the seams were busting, and the glass had overflowed. The spillage was Album of the Year, and it was an end and a beginning."
Bill Gould | Keyboard Magazine | 1997
"The song "Stripsearch" was a prime example of Mosimann's magic. Roli programmed the beginning of the song, but then he took a drum loop from the intro, chopped it up in [Steinberg] ReCycle, and matched each piece of it to Puffy's drum track, one by one. I think he said there was something like 30,000 edits, or something ridiculous like that. But that was the kind of thing where it's Puffy playing so it doesn't sound like a machine, but it really makes a difference, Coming from an analog recording background, we would have never thought of doing things like that. But still, those weren't extreme edits: It was just putting little sounds in there, making it grittier, and it made the whole sound change.
The loop in the beginning made such a difference. Before we put it in, the song sounded more like Queensrÿche. But after the loop, it sounded more like Portishead or something. It gave it a darker, different slant. It didn't sound like a rock band anymore. "
Bill Gould | Metal Hammer | 1998
"The kernel of that song came from John Hudson, our guitar player on the last album. Writing wise, we just weren't speaking the same language as Dean, the guitarist we were touring with, I had known John for years, and he said he could provide what were looking for... so he produced this midi file of an idea he'd had and it was pretty good. We changed it just a little bit, but it was his song. The most amazing thing was he wrote a song which worked with us and we didn't have to teach him to do it! Musically we connected. I think he was the first guitar player we had where that happened."
Roddy Bottum | Keyboard Magazine | 1997
"The percussive noise effect in the intro is Patton making noises with his mouth. My favorite part on the whole record, is the simplest thing...and that's the bleeps [in the intro of this song]. It was just a simple tone that we tapered down so it sounded like an SOS, or Morse code."