The Future Sound of London
Encyclopedia
The Future Sound of London (often abbreviated to FSOL) is a prolific British electronic music
band composed of Garry Cobain
(sometimes styled as Gaz Cobain) and Brian Dougans
. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music. Although often labelled as ambient
, Cobain and Dougans usually resist being typecast into any one particular genre. Their work covers most areas of electronic music
, such as ambient techno, house music
, trip-hop, ambient dub, acid techno
and often involves extreme experimentation; for example they have, since the turn of the millennium, experimented with psychedelic rock
under their Amorphous Androgynous alias. In addition to music composition, their interests have covered a number of areas including film
and video
, 2D
and 3D
computer graphics
, animation
in making almost all their own videos for their singles, radio broadcasting
and creating their own electronic devices for sound making. They have released works under numerous aliases.
The artists have been fairly enigmatic in the past but have become more candid with their fanbase in recent years with social websites like Myspace
, Youtube
, their forum and many interviews in which Cobain almost always speaks for the group.
and Brian Dougans
met in the mid 1980s while studying electronics at university in Manchester
, England. Dougans had already been making electronic music for some time, working between Glasgow
and Manchester, when they first began working in various local clubs. In 1988, Dougans embarked on a project for the Stakker graphics company. The result was Stakker Humanoid
. Cobain contributed to the accompanying album. A video was also produced.
In the following three years the pair produced music under a variety of aliases, releasing a plethora of singles and EPs, including the successful bleep techno
singles "Q" and "Metropolis", some of which would end up on the duo's first compilation album "Earthbeat" in 1992. "Metropolis" was also very influential in the house
scene.
"FSOL" In 1991 they released their first album, Accelerator, which was followed by their seminal breakthrough ambient-dub track "Papua New Guinea
", featuring a looping Lisa Gerrard
vocal sample from Dead Can Dance's 'Dawn Of The Iconoclast' and a bassline from Meat Beat Manifesto's 'Radio Babylon'. The track has made several (British) "Best songs ever" polls and track specific accolades. Accelerator won praise for its unique sound and atmosphere, and contained atmospheric links between tracks which would later form the unique sound of the band. In 1992, Virgin Records
were looking for electronic bands and, after "Papua New Guinea"'s chart success, quickly signed them, giving them free rein to experiment.
With their newfound contract they immediately began to play with more ambient music, resulting in the "Tales of Ephidrina
" album of 1993, the first album to be released under the Amorphous Androgynous alias; this was well received by press and marked distinct shift from the more techno driven Accelerator, retaining some dance beats, but focussing more on texture, mood and sound, most famously on the popular track "Mountain Goat". The album was adventurously released on Quigley, the band's own short-lived offshoot of Virgin. At this time, the band had begun experimenting with radio performance, broadcasting now legendary three hour radio shows to Manchester's Kiss FM from their studio.
", released as a single in 1993, introduced the commercial music world to the new FSOL sound. Despite its length, clocking in at nearly forty minutes and stretched over six parts, the track made the UK top 30, and previewed what was to come. In 1994, they released Lifeforms
to critical acclaim. The album featured unconventional use of percussion interspersed with ambient segments. The eponymous single from the album featured Elizabeth Fraser
of the Cocteau Twins
on vocals. The album itself featured epic, ambient soundscapes, with tracks flowing from one to the next with no pauses in between. Throughout the record, familiar motifs and samples repeated themselves, sitting alongside tropical birdsong, rainfall, wind and an array of other exotic sounds, lending the album a natural, organic feel, backed up by the environmental landscapes that filled the artwork booklet. The album was also a top 10 hit on the UK album chart. Cobain has said that around this time that journalists would come to talk to them and one of the first things they would ask would be if they liked Brian Eno
(whom they cite as an influence), to which they would laugh and say that they were about looking forward, not to the past. It was, to them, very much a new work rather than just another Eno-type ambient album.
That year, they released the limited edition album ISDN
, which featured live broadcasts they had made over ISDN lines to various radio stations worldwide, The Kitchen
, an avant-garde performance space in New York and several appearances on the late John Peel
's celebrated BBC radio Sessions shows, to promote Lifeforms. These shows marked the evolution of the Kiss FM
shows of 1992 and 1993, moving away from DJ sets and into ambient soundscapes, with previously released material performed alongside unheard tracks. One live performance to BBC Radio 1
featured Robert Fripp
performing alongside the band. The released album's tone was darker and more rhythmic than Lifeforms. Cobain stated that with ISDN they had wanted to achieve something epic and grand but no matter how much technological or personal support they had (and they had everything they could have possibly wanted) they never got to truly do what they envisioned; he admits to wanting too much at this time, even though the album was successful; the 90s, for Cobain in particular, were a time of frustration and feelings of not being able to do what they wanted to even though the technology at the time did not fit their ideas. The following year, the album was re-released with expanded artwork, a slightly altered tracklist, as an unlimited pressing.
s and chaotic sampling
of ISDN away from their previous lush synthscapes and toward a new, more contemporary sound. In 1996, they released Dead Cities
, which expanded upon these early demos. The new material was a mix of ambient textures and dance music. The lead single, "My Kingdom", introduced the sound, with a video featuring shots of London, and a sound suggesting a dystopia
n city. The album also featured the band's first collaboration with composer Max Richter
, which included the big beat
track "We Have Explosive
", released in 1997; it was used on the Mortal Kombat: Annihilation soundtrack
, and (before the single release) in 1996 on the video game wipE'out" 2097, along with the track "Landmass", which they wrote especially for "2097" and wipE'out"
. FSOL contributed to the WipEout Fusion
soundtrack as well. "We Have Explosive" was the second single from the album, and the band's highest charting single (beating "My Kingdom" by one spot to number 12), and over the course of its five-part extended version included hints of funk
, something which would be heard again when the band returned many years later.
The album was promoted by what the band described as "the fuck rock'n'roll tour" via ISDN, lasting several months and gaining much media attention by being the first band to do a world tour without leaving their studio. While 1994's tour had focused on creating soundscapes and unreleased material, the 1996 and 1997 shows were more conventional, each offering a different take on the Dead Cities experience, blending then-current tracks with occasional exclusive pieces of the time. However, the final few performances jettisoned this material for tracks from a series of unreleased sessions, containing more live sounding material, including considerable use of guitar and percussion. These "1997 sessions" were highly sought after by fans, with some tracks forming the basis of the band's psychedelic
projects of the following decade, while others appeared on the From The Archives series.
which turned out to be nothing more than exaggeration of Cobain's mercury poisoning
from fillings in his teeth, the pair returned in 2002 with "The Isness
", a record heavily influenced by 1960s and 1970s psychedelia and released under their alias Amorphous Androgynous. It was preceded by Papua New Guinea Translations, a mini album which contained a mixture of remixes of FSOL's track as well as new material from The Isness sessions. The album received mixed press due to the drastic change in sound which was inspired by Cobain's and Dougan's (separate) travels to India and immersion in spiritualism, nevertheless the majority was positive with Muzik
magazine offering the album a 6/5 mark and dubbing it "...a white beam of light from heaven..." and other British publications such as The Times
, The Guardian
and MOJO
praising the album and the bands ability to do something so completely different from what they had done before.
Three years on, they followed the album with a continuation of the Amorphous Androgynous project, Alice in Ultraland
. Rumoured to be accompanied by a film of the same title, the album took The Isness psychedelic experimentation and toned it down, giving the album a singular theme and sound, and replacing the more bizarre moments with funk and ambient interludes. The album was ignored by the press, but more favourable among fans than its predecessor. Unlike The Isness, which featured almost 100 musicians over the course of it and the various alternative versions and remix
albums, Alice in Ultraland featured a fairly solid band lineup throughout, which extended to live shows which the band had undertaken away from the ISDN cables, from 2005 onwards.
- Cobain on the new Amorphous Androgynous sound.
and created for an exhibition at the Kinetica art museum entitled, appropriately, "Life Forms". The piece contained reworked material from their archives and newer, more abstract ambient music. The piece was coupled with a video called "Stereo Sucks", marking the band's theories on the limitations of stereo music, released on a DVD
packaged with issue 182 of Future Music Magazine in December 2006 and on FSOL's own download site in March 2007.
They have also been, literally, creating their own sounds when they began constructing electronic instruments, the result of which can be heard on the 2007 release Hand-Made Devices
. At their website Glitch TV (where the motto is "[A] sudden interruption in sanity, continuity or programme function") they sell and explain their devices such as the "Electronic Devices Digital Interface" glitch equipment.
, along with a selection of newer experiments, the 5.1 experiments and a promise of unreleased Amorphous Androgynous psychedelic material, was uploaded for sale on their online shop, FSOLdigital.com. As of July 2008 the CD releases of the Archives series have sold over 15,000 units.
- Brian Dougans on the positive reaction to the site and "Archives" sales.
In early March 2008, the band released a new online album as Amorphous Androgynous entitled The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness
, which they describe as "A collection of psychedelic relics from The Amorphous Androgynous, 1967-2007". The release retains the sound of their last two psychedelic albums, while expanding on the element of funk first introduced on 2005's Alice in Ultraland
. They recorded their following album, The Woodlands of Old
, under the alias of their imaginary engineer Yage. Unlike the techno work recorded as Yage in 1992, this new record was darker, more trip-hop and world music
-oriented and featured ex-Propellerheads
member Will White.
In a continuation of the band's newer, more candid side, they revealed future plans to fans via email and MySpace, with 2008 promising archives from The Amorphous Androgynous, more solo experiments from Brian and further Environments albums, covering past and present material. An entirely new FSOL album is in the works, but no actual details have been revealed to date.
In August 2008, the band put out Environments II
online, showcasing an unseen side of the band, largely pure ambient and orchestral in style and haunting in mood, and considerably different over its fourteen icy sounding tracks to the original Environments record. On the same day, a fifth Archive
release was made available, leaving announced but unreleased tracks suggesting a possible sixth in the series.
In 2010, they made major updates to The Pod Room, with number of their live ISDN transmissions from the 1990s being uploaded and made available for sale for the first time.
The band's third Environments album
, also released in 2010, was the first record to appear on CD and MP3 at the same time, and was promoted by a series of teaser videos and tracks online. Bringing a darker tinge to the band's cinematic ambience, the release brought more emphasis on rhythm to the series. A similar release appeared for From the Archives Vol. 6
later in the year.
2011 saw the re-emergence of the FSOLDigital store's selling of other artists, with the album Safernoc by electronic musician Second Thought being made available in February.
Further archived material is expected through the online shop, including the third Zeebox record, more solo work by Brian as Six Oscillators In Remittance and EMS:Piano, Amorphous Androgynous archives and FSOL demos under the name 2" Tape Reels. Further forays into the archives have appeared in the form of The Pod Room broadcast and podcast page, featuring all of the band's ISDN broadcasts and mixes.
Noel Gallagher
of British rock band Oasis
, after hearing the first release, became a fan and asked the band to remix the following Oasis single "Falling Down". The Amorphous Androgynous responded with a 5 part, 22 minute Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble remix, which Noel liked enough to release on its own 12". Noel also invited Gaz to DJ at the afterparty for one of Oasis' gigs at Wembley Arena.
The band continue the psychedelic theme to the mixes on their podcast
site The Pod Room and on February 2010's Mojo Magazine cover CD. The Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble remixes grow in popularity with commissions from Paul Weller
and Pop Levi
, and Gaz has suggested a full album of remixes and covers will appear on their recently formed Monstrous Bubble label
about God
entitled "the GOD WARS - An Argument I Had At Speaker's Corner". It is edited in a humorous way by him with the intro title "COMIC BELIEF presents..." and has a brief spiritual guru like "musical interlude".
Between 2008 and 2010, the band showcased a series of radio broadcasts and podcasts called The Electric Brain Storms. Proton Radio
hosted the first on 16 June 2008, PBS radio in Australia were due to showcase the second, and Frisky Radio broadcast the third. The remaining shows appeared on the band's official site. The shows featured electronic, krautrock, experimental and psychedelic favourites of the band mixed in with known and unknown FSOL material, including newly recorded tracks, archived pieces, and new alias recordings such as EMS:Piano. Many of the new tracks featured on Environments 3, but some pieces remain unreleased and are planned for the next Future Sound of London album, alongside pieces featuring on the band's YouTube page. Gaz has described the album as having "the introspective, kind of euphoric sadness that was always there in the FSOL melodies".
In a possible continuation of the ambient and orchestral theme first previewed by FSOL via Environments II, and later on the previewed tracks from the forthcoming record, the band are apparently working on a collaboration Academy Award-winning short film director Hugh Welchman called Sh. They will produce a "musical remix of the film"
The duo played their first live set as FSOL for 12 years at the 2009 Bloc Weekend
in Minehead
. The show, like the band's set at the Essential Festival in 1997, was broadcast from their studio in Somerset
. Rumours of a world tour, which some believe is further evidence for imminent release of new material, were made concrete by confirmation of live FSOL appearances at 2009's Bestival event in the UK, and a festival run by Existenz in Athens, Greece, and an 11-hour Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble curated tent at 2009's Green Man festival, including a performance by Hawkwind
. The live nature of the sets (as opposed to the Electric Brainstorm DJ mix series) suggested they might feature the first entirely new Future Sound of London material since 1997, and those rumours turned out to be true with a few new tracks played, albeit currently untitled. There is promise of a DVD featuring the Athens performance, plus extras, in 2010. Further Archives are also expected in the future, along with the fourth Environments album, as advertised in the sleeve of Environments 3.
On 6 July 2011 it was announced that Noel Gallagher's second solo album will be in collaboration with The Amorphous Androgynous, and is set for release in 2012.
, which is an arm of EMI
.
They also have their own label called Electronic Brain Violence on which a few artists such as Oil and Simon Wells (Headstone Lane), both off-beat electronic artists, have released EPs and singles. Simon Wells also contributed to Dead Cities on the track "Dead Cities Reprise"
Nevertheless, Virgin records still controls FSOL's back catalog and was going to release the Teachings from the Electronic Brain compilation without them, but the duo insisted on taking control of the projects production. Cobain says that, even with Virgin, the reason they were able to do their own thing and create the music they wanted in the 1990s was because they already had some major hits under their belts such as "Papua New Guinea", "Metropolis" and "Stakker Humanoid" before joining the label.
Cobain has said that FSOL's mentality has always been about making a journey of an album rather than focusing on trying to have hit singles. He said that they had several top 40 singles (and albums) in the 90s because they had enough fans and had built up enough of a reputation to achieve these hits while still concentrating on the album rather than any potential singles during their time at Virgin.
They have been signed to Passion Records sub-label Jumpin' & Pumpin' since they started out.
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
band composed of Garry Cobain
Garry Cobain
Garry Cobain is a British electronic musician, and one half of The Future Sound of London...
(sometimes styled as Gaz Cobain) and Brian Dougans
Brian Dougans
Brian Dougans is one half of the British electronica group, The Future Sound of London.He is a "man of many thoughts and few words" almost always letting Cobain take the lead in interviews with them both...
. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music. Although often labelled as ambient
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
, Cobain and Dougans usually resist being typecast into any one particular genre. Their work covers most areas of electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, such as ambient techno, house music
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
, trip-hop, ambient dub, acid techno
Acid techno
Acid techno is the term used to describe a style of techno that developed out of late 1980s Chicago Acid house. Acid house was essentially house music made with a specific sound, obtained by using very distinctive instruments created mainly by Roland, such as the TB-303 for bass and lead sounds,...
and often involves extreme experimentation; for example they have, since the turn of the millennium, experimented with psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
under their Amorphous Androgynous alias. In addition to music composition, their interests have covered a number of areas including film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
, 2D
2D computer graphics
2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...
and 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
computer graphics
Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
, animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
in making almost all their own videos for their singles, radio broadcasting
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
and creating their own electronic devices for sound making. They have released works under numerous aliases.
The artists have been fairly enigmatic in the past but have become more candid with their fanbase in recent years with social websites like Myspace
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, Youtube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, their forum and many interviews in which Cobain almost always speaks for the group.
Formation
Garry CobainGarry Cobain
Garry Cobain is a British electronic musician, and one half of The Future Sound of London...
and Brian Dougans
Brian Dougans
Brian Dougans is one half of the British electronica group, The Future Sound of London.He is a "man of many thoughts and few words" almost always letting Cobain take the lead in interviews with them both...
met in the mid 1980s while studying electronics at university in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, England. Dougans had already been making electronic music for some time, working between Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
and Manchester, when they first began working in various local clubs. In 1988, Dougans embarked on a project for the Stakker graphics company. The result was Stakker Humanoid
Stakker Humanoid
Stakker Humanoid is an acid house track by Humanoid released in 1988 by the London based label Westside Records.-History of the track:The project behind the track started out with Stakker, a collaborative project by the video artists Mark McClean and Colin Scott...
. Cobain contributed to the accompanying album. A video was also produced.
In the following three years the pair produced music under a variety of aliases, releasing a plethora of singles and EPs, including the successful bleep techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
singles "Q" and "Metropolis", some of which would end up on the duo's first compilation album "Earthbeat" in 1992. "Metropolis" was also very influential in the house
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
scene.
"FSOL" In 1991 they released their first album, Accelerator, which was followed by their seminal breakthrough ambient-dub track "Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (single)
"Papua New Guinea" is a 1991 song by the electronic music group Future Sound of London. It was the group's debut single and later appeared on their full-length album Accelerator. The single reached #22 on the UK singles chart...
", featuring a looping Lisa Gerrard
Lisa Gerrard
Lisa Gerrard is an Australian musician, singer, and composer who rose to prominence as part of the music group Dead Can Dance with former music partner Brendan Perry....
vocal sample from Dead Can Dance's 'Dawn Of The Iconoclast' and a bassline from Meat Beat Manifesto's 'Radio Babylon'. The track has made several (British) "Best songs ever" polls and track specific accolades. Accelerator won praise for its unique sound and atmosphere, and contained atmospheric links between tracks which would later form the unique sound of the band. In 1992, Virgin Records
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...
were looking for electronic bands and, after "Papua New Guinea"'s chart success, quickly signed them, giving them free rein to experiment.
With their newfound contract they immediately began to play with more ambient music, resulting in the "Tales of Ephidrina
Tales of Ephidrina
Tales of Ephidrina is an ambient/techno album by electronica artists The Amorphous Androgynous, better known as Future Sound of London , which was released in 1993...
" album of 1993, the first album to be released under the Amorphous Androgynous alias; this was well received by press and marked distinct shift from the more techno driven Accelerator, retaining some dance beats, but focussing more on texture, mood and sound, most famously on the popular track "Mountain Goat". The album was adventurously released on Quigley, the band's own short-lived offshoot of Virgin. At this time, the band had begun experimenting with radio performance, broadcasting now legendary three hour radio shows to Manchester's Kiss FM from their studio.
Lifeforms, ambience and the ISDN tour
"CascadeCascade (song)
"Cascade" is the first single from Future Sound of London's 1994 Lifeforms album. It is a series of variations on the song "Cascade", all different from the album's version as is customary for most FSOL singles.-Track listing:# "Cascade: Part 1"...
", released as a single in 1993, introduced the commercial music world to the new FSOL sound. Despite its length, clocking in at nearly forty minutes and stretched over six parts, the track made the UK top 30, and previewed what was to come. In 1994, they released Lifeforms
Lifeforms
Lifeforms is a 1994 double album by experimental electronica group The Future Sound of London. With time, it has become their best-known album and is considered to be an important and influential classic of avante garde electronic music.-The album:...
to critical acclaim. The album featured unconventional use of percussion interspersed with ambient segments. The eponymous single from the album featured Elizabeth Fraser
Elizabeth Fraser
Elizabeth Davidson Fraser is a Scottish singer best known as the vocalist for the pioneer alternative rock group Cocteau Twins...
of the Cocteau Twins
Cocteau Twins
Cocteau Twins were a Scottish alternative rock band active from 1979 to 1997, known for innovative instrumentation and atmospheric, non-lyrical vocals...
on vocals. The album itself featured epic, ambient soundscapes, with tracks flowing from one to the next with no pauses in between. Throughout the record, familiar motifs and samples repeated themselves, sitting alongside tropical birdsong, rainfall, wind and an array of other exotic sounds, lending the album a natural, organic feel, backed up by the environmental landscapes that filled the artwork booklet. The album was also a top 10 hit on the UK album chart. Cobain has said that around this time that journalists would come to talk to them and one of the first things they would ask would be if they liked Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
(whom they cite as an influence), to which they would laugh and say that they were about looking forward, not to the past. It was, to them, very much a new work rather than just another Eno-type ambient album.
That year, they released the limited edition album ISDN
ISDN (album)
ISDN is a music album by experimental electronica artists The Future Sound of London which was released in two different versions in 1994 and 1995...
, which featured live broadcasts they had made over ISDN lines to various radio stations worldwide, The Kitchen
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
, an avant-garde performance space in New York and several appearances on the late John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
's celebrated BBC radio Sessions shows, to promote Lifeforms. These shows marked the evolution of the Kiss FM
Kiss 100 London
Kiss is a UK radio station broadcasting on FM and Digital Radio, specialising in hip hop, R&B, urban and electronic dance music. It also broadcasts on DAB Digital Radio around the UK & nationally on Freeview, Sky and TalkTalk TV...
shows of 1992 and 1993, moving away from DJ sets and into ambient soundscapes, with previously released material performed alongside unheard tracks. One live performance to BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
featured Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. He was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and #47 on Gibson.com’s "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". Among rock guitarists, Fripp is a master of crosspicking, a technique...
performing alongside the band. The released album's tone was darker and more rhythmic than Lifeforms. Cobain stated that with ISDN they had wanted to achieve something epic and grand but no matter how much technological or personal support they had (and they had everything they could have possibly wanted) they never got to truly do what they envisioned; he admits to wanting too much at this time, even though the album was successful; the 90s, for Cobain in particular, were a time of frustration and feelings of not being able to do what they wanted to even though the technology at the time did not fit their ideas. The following year, the album was re-released with expanded artwork, a slightly altered tracklist, as an unlimited pressing.
Dead Cities
The 1995 edition of John Peel Sessions featured three entirely new tracks, which took the breakbeatBreakbeat
In 1992, a new style called "jungalistic hardcore" emerged, and for many ravers it was too funky to dance to. Josh Lawford of Ravescene prophesied that the breakbeat was "the death-knell of rave" because the ever changing drumbeat patterns of breakbeat music didn't allow for the same zoned out,...
s and chaotic sampling
Sampling
Sampling may refer to:*Sampling , converting a continuous signal into a discrete signal*Sampling , converting continuous colors into discrete color components*Sampling , re-using portions of sound recordings in a piece...
of ISDN away from their previous lush synthscapes and toward a new, more contemporary sound. In 1996, they released Dead Cities
Dead Cities (album)
Dead Cities is a 1996 album by electronic music group The Future Sound of London.-Overview:Though almost without lyrics to speak of, most of the first half of the album is dark and full of well structured malevolence in that its songs combine synthetic sounds with samples to create an apocalyptic,...
, which expanded upon these early demos. The new material was a mix of ambient textures and dance music. The lead single, "My Kingdom", introduced the sound, with a video featuring shots of London, and a sound suggesting a dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n city. The album also featured the band's first collaboration with composer Max Richter
Max Richter (Composer)
Max Richter is a German-born British composer.-Biography:Richter studied composition and piano at University of Edinburgh, the Royal Academy of Music and with Luciano Berio in Florence. After finishing his studies, Richter co-founded the contemporary classical ensemble Piano Circus...
, which included the big beat
Big beat
Big beat is a term employed since the mid-1990s by the British music press to describe much of the music by artists such as The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, and Propellerheads typically driven by heavy breakbeats and synthesizer-generated loops and patterns in...
track "We Have Explosive
We Have Explosive
"We Have Explosive" is a song by The Future Sound of London, released in 1997. It is a digitised mix of big beat drums, mono-tone basslines, aggressive guitar stabs, robotic voices and clinical electric beeps. So far it is the bands most successful single, getting to number 12 in the UK Singles...
", released in 1997; it was used on the Mortal Kombat: Annihilation soundtrack
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (soundtrack)
-Tracks :In order by movie appearance#"Theme From Mortal Kombat "##Main title sequence##Liu Kang vs. Shao Kahn#"X-Squad "##Shao Kahn's invasion on Earth...
, and (before the single release) in 1996 on the video game wipE'out" 2097, along with the track "Landmass", which they wrote especially for "2097" and wipE'out"
Wipeout (video game)
Wipeout is the first in a series of futuristic racing video games developed and published by Psygnosis. It was originally released in 1995 for Sony PlayStation and PCs running MS-DOS, and in 1996 for Sega Saturn...
. FSOL contributed to the WipEout Fusion
Wipeout Fusion
Wipeout Fusion is a 2002 racing video game that has been the only original release of the Wipeout series of racing games for PlayStation 2...
soundtrack as well. "We Have Explosive" was the second single from the album, and the band's highest charting single (beating "My Kingdom" by one spot to number 12), and over the course of its five-part extended version included hints of funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, something which would be heard again when the band returned many years later.
The album was promoted by what the band described as "the fuck rock'n'roll tour" via ISDN, lasting several months and gaining much media attention by being the first band to do a world tour without leaving their studio. While 1994's tour had focused on creating soundscapes and unreleased material, the 1996 and 1997 shows were more conventional, each offering a different take on the Dead Cities experience, blending then-current tracks with occasional exclusive pieces of the time. However, the final few performances jettisoned this material for tracks from a series of unreleased sessions, containing more live sounding material, including considerable use of guitar and percussion. These "1997 sessions" were highly sought after by fans, with some tracks forming the basis of the band's psychedelic
Psychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
projects of the following decade, while others appeared on the From The Archives series.
New millennium, new sound
After a four year hiatus, and rumours of mental illnessMental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
which turned out to be nothing more than exaggeration of Cobain's mercury poisoning
Mercury poisoning
Mercury poisoning is a disease caused by exposure to mercury or its compounds. Mercury is a heavy metal occurring in several forms, all of which can produce toxic effects in high enough doses...
from fillings in his teeth, the pair returned in 2002 with "The Isness
The Isness
The Isness is a 2002 album by experimental electronica group The Future Sound of London, released under the alias Amorphous Androgynous...
", a record heavily influenced by 1960s and 1970s psychedelia and released under their alias Amorphous Androgynous. It was preceded by Papua New Guinea Translations, a mini album which contained a mixture of remixes of FSOL's track as well as new material from The Isness sessions. The album received mixed press due to the drastic change in sound which was inspired by Cobain's and Dougan's (separate) travels to India and immersion in spiritualism, nevertheless the majority was positive with Muzik
Muzik
Muzik was a UK dance music magazine published by IPC Media from June 1995 to August 2003.Muzik was created by two former Melody Maker journalists, Push and Ben Turner. Push was the editor of Muzik from its launch until he left the magazine in 1998, at which point Turner took over as editor...
magazine offering the album a 6/5 mark and dubbing it "...a white beam of light from heaven..." and other British publications such as The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and MOJO
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
praising the album and the bands ability to do something so completely different from what they had done before.
Three years on, they followed the album with a continuation of the Amorphous Androgynous project, Alice in Ultraland
Alice in Ultraland
"The Witchfinder" was released as a promo-single in 2005. The one-track promo is a radio-only version, which also featured on the song's animated video....
. Rumoured to be accompanied by a film of the same title, the album took The Isness psychedelic experimentation and toned it down, giving the album a singular theme and sound, and replacing the more bizarre moments with funk and ambient interludes. The album was ignored by the press, but more favourable among fans than its predecessor. Unlike The Isness, which featured almost 100 musicians over the course of it and the various alternative versions and remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
albums, Alice in Ultraland featured a fairly solid band lineup throughout, which extended to live shows which the band had undertaken away from the ISDN cables, from 2005 onwards.
- Cobain on the new Amorphous Androgynous sound.
5.1 & Digital experimentation
The FSOL moniker re-appeared in 2006 with a piece entitled "A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static", intended as an experiment in 5.1 Surround Sound5.1 surround sound
5.1 is the common name for six channel surround sound multichannel audio systems. 5.1 is now the most commonly used layout in both commercial cinemas and home theaters. It uses five full bandwidth channels and one low frequency enhancement channel . Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS, and...
and created for an exhibition at the Kinetica art museum entitled, appropriately, "Life Forms". The piece contained reworked material from their archives and newer, more abstract ambient music. The piece was coupled with a video called "Stereo Sucks", marking the band's theories on the limitations of stereo music, released on a DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
packaged with issue 182 of Future Music Magazine in December 2006 and on FSOL's own download site in March 2007.
They have also been, literally, creating their own sounds when they began constructing electronic instruments, the result of which can be heard on the 2007 release Hand-Made Devices
Hand-Made Devices
Hand-Made Devices is an album by The Future Sound of London under the alias Polemical, the first album under the pseudonym. The nature of the music is very experimental and is created almost entirely using Dougans' electronic creations including glitch devices and the like. There are videos on...
. At their website Glitch TV (where the motto is "[A] sudden interruption in sanity, continuity or programme function") they sell and explain their devices such as the "Electronic Devices Digital Interface" glitch equipment.
FSOLdigital and the Archives
In 2007, the band uploaded several archive tracks online, for the first time revealing much of their unreleased work and unveiling some of the mystery behind the band. The old FSOL material, including the previously unreleased album EnvironmentsEnvironments (album)
Environments is the first part in a series of planned releases by The Future Sound of London over 2007/2008 via digital download and then CD; released after years of speculation the series is like the long lost album of FSOL.-The album:...
, along with a selection of newer experiments, the 5.1 experiments and a promise of unreleased Amorphous Androgynous psychedelic material, was uploaded for sale on their online shop, FSOLdigital.com. As of July 2008 the CD releases of the Archives series have sold over 15,000 units.
- Brian Dougans on the positive reaction to the site and "Archives" sales.
In early March 2008, the band released a new online album as Amorphous Androgynous entitled The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness
The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness
The Peppermint Tree & the Seeds of Superconsciousness is a 2008 album by the Amorphous Androgynous, it was released on FSOL's webpage to buy as a digital download and was released on CD on June 2008....
, which they describe as "A collection of psychedelic relics from The Amorphous Androgynous, 1967-2007". The release retains the sound of their last two psychedelic albums, while expanding on the element of funk first introduced on 2005's Alice in Ultraland
Alice in Ultraland
"The Witchfinder" was released as a promo-single in 2005. The one-track promo is a radio-only version, which also featured on the song's animated video....
. They recorded their following album, The Woodlands of Old
The Woodlands of Old
The Woodlands of Old is a 2008 album by the Future Sound of London under the alias of their "engineer" "Yage". It is an electronic record foremost but using more traditional drums and percussion, ex-Propellerheads member Will White contributes drums, along with a number of ethnic sounding...
, under the alias of their imaginary engineer Yage. Unlike the techno work recorded as Yage in 1992, this new record was darker, more trip-hop and world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
-oriented and featured ex-Propellerheads
Propellerheads
Propellerheads were a British big beat musical ensemble, formed in 1995 and made up of electronic producers Will White and Alex Gifford. The term propellerhead is slang for a nerd, and when Gifford and White heard a friend from California use this in a conversation, they thought it the perfect name...
member Will White.
In a continuation of the band's newer, more candid side, they revealed future plans to fans via email and MySpace, with 2008 promising archives from The Amorphous Androgynous, more solo experiments from Brian and further Environments albums, covering past and present material. An entirely new FSOL album is in the works, but no actual details have been revealed to date.
In August 2008, the band put out Environments II
Environments II
Environments II is the second release of The Future Sound of London's "Environments" series, of which another is planned. It was released on 29 August 2008...
online, showcasing an unseen side of the band, largely pure ambient and orchestral in style and haunting in mood, and considerably different over its fourteen icy sounding tracks to the original Environments record. On the same day, a fifth Archive
From the Archives Vol. 5
From the Archives Vol. 5 is a release of The Future Sound of London's "From the Archives" series; released in 2008. A CD version was released on 5 January 2009.-The album:...
release was made available, leaving announced but unreleased tracks suggesting a possible sixth in the series.
In 2010, they made major updates to The Pod Room, with number of their live ISDN transmissions from the 1990s being uploaded and made available for sale for the first time.
The band's third Environments album
Environments 3
Environments 3 is the third in The Future Sound of London's "Environments" series of albums, released on 7 June 2010. Unlike previous FSOLDigital releases, the album was not made available as a download several months before the CD release. Because of this, the record was heard several weeks in...
, also released in 2010, was the first record to appear on CD and MP3 at the same time, and was promoted by a series of teaser videos and tracks online. Bringing a darker tinge to the band's cinematic ambience, the release brought more emphasis on rhythm to the series. A similar release appeared for From the Archives Vol. 6
From the Archives Vol. 6
From the Archives Vol. 6 is the most recent release of The Future Sound of London's From the Archives series; released in 2010. A CD version was released on 25 October, seven weeks after the initial mp3 release.-The album:...
later in the year.
2011 saw the re-emergence of the FSOLDigital store's selling of other artists, with the album Safernoc by electronic musician Second Thought being made available in February.
Further archived material is expected through the online shop, including the third Zeebox record, more solo work by Brian as Six Oscillators In Remittance and EMS:Piano, Amorphous Androgynous archives and FSOL demos under the name 2" Tape Reels. Further forays into the archives have appeared in the form of The Pod Room broadcast and podcast page, featuring all of the band's ISDN broadcasts and mixes.
A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind
Following on from the band's 1997 DJ set of the same name, a series of "Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind" mix CDs were begun in 2006. The first two were released under the Amorphous Androgynous alias, subtitled "Cosmic Space Music" and "Pagan Love Vibrations" respectively, with the first taking over two years to compile, mix and gain sample clearance, both featuring the band's psychedelic influences. A third is set for release sometime in 2010, and will be more electronic, mixed by The Future Sound of London. Further mixes in the series are expected in the future, to be curated by related artists, and the band took the concept live with an eleven hour spot at 2009's Green Man festival, to contain live bands and DJ spots.Noel Gallagher
Noel Gallagher
Noel Thomas David Gallagher is an English musician and singer-songwriter, formerly the lead guitarist, backing vocalist and principal songwriter of the English rock band Oasis. He is currently fronting his solo project, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.Raised in Burnage, Manchester with his...
of British rock band Oasis
Oasis (band)
Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...
, after hearing the first release, became a fan and asked the band to remix the following Oasis single "Falling Down". The Amorphous Androgynous responded with a 5 part, 22 minute Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble remix, which Noel liked enough to release on its own 12". Noel also invited Gaz to DJ at the afterparty for one of Oasis' gigs at Wembley Arena.
The band continue the psychedelic theme to the mixes on their podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
site The Pod Room and on February 2010's Mojo Magazine cover CD. The Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble remixes grow in popularity with commissions from Paul Weller
Paul Weller
Paul Weller is an English singer-songwriter. Starting with the band The Jam , Weller then went on to branch out musically to a more soulful style with The Style Council...
and Pop Levi
Pop Levi
Pop Levi is an English singer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and filmmaker. Pop Levi's career started in Liverpool. He was the founding member, along with Snap Ant and Loka, of Super Numeri, and has played bass for Ladytron both on record and on tour...
, and Gaz has suggested a full album of remixes and covers will appear on their recently formed Monstrous Bubble label
Future of the band
On 2 April 2007 Garry Cobain posted a video onto his YouTube account of him arguing with a lady at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, LondonHyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
about God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
entitled "the GOD WARS - An Argument I Had At Speaker's Corner". It is edited in a humorous way by him with the intro title "COMIC BELIEF presents..." and has a brief spiritual guru like "musical interlude".
Between 2008 and 2010, the band showcased a series of radio broadcasts and podcasts called The Electric Brain Storms. Proton Radio
Proton Radio
Proton Radio is an internet electronic music station. Founded in 2002 by Sam Packer, Alex Ambroziak, and Eric Liberda, the station features over 200 exclusive shows from various DJs around the world. They have featured guest DJ sets from such DJs as Sasha, Luke Chable, James Zabiela, Anthony...
hosted the first on 16 June 2008, PBS radio in Australia were due to showcase the second, and Frisky Radio broadcast the third. The remaining shows appeared on the band's official site. The shows featured electronic, krautrock, experimental and psychedelic favourites of the band mixed in with known and unknown FSOL material, including newly recorded tracks, archived pieces, and new alias recordings such as EMS:Piano. Many of the new tracks featured on Environments 3, but some pieces remain unreleased and are planned for the next Future Sound of London album, alongside pieces featuring on the band's YouTube page. Gaz has described the album as having "the introspective, kind of euphoric sadness that was always there in the FSOL melodies".
In a possible continuation of the ambient and orchestral theme first previewed by FSOL via Environments II, and later on the previewed tracks from the forthcoming record, the band are apparently working on a collaboration Academy Award-winning short film director Hugh Welchman called Sh. They will produce a "musical remix of the film"
The duo played their first live set as FSOL for 12 years at the 2009 Bloc Weekend
Bloc Weekend
Now in its 5th year, Bloc is firmly established as a truly international music festival devoted to electronic music of all genres including electro, hip hop, IDM, techno, House music, reggae, drum and bass and dubstep, and incorporates both DJ sets and live shows...
in Minehead
Minehead
Minehead is a coastal town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It lies on the south bank of the Bristol Channel, north-west of the county town of Taunton, from the border with the county of Devon and in proximity of the Exmoor National Park...
. The show, like the band's set at the Essential Festival in 1997, was broadcast from their studio in Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...
. Rumours of a world tour, which some believe is further evidence for imminent release of new material, were made concrete by confirmation of live FSOL appearances at 2009's Bestival event in the UK, and a festival run by Existenz in Athens, Greece, and an 11-hour Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble curated tent at 2009's Green Man festival, including a performance by Hawkwind
Hawkwind
Hawkwind are an English rock band, one of the earliest space rock groups. Their lyrics favour urban and science fiction themes. They are also a noted precursor to punk rock and now are considered a link between the hippie and punk cultures....
. The live nature of the sets (as opposed to the Electric Brainstorm DJ mix series) suggested they might feature the first entirely new Future Sound of London material since 1997, and those rumours turned out to be true with a few new tracks played, albeit currently untitled. There is promise of a DVD featuring the Athens performance, plus extras, in 2010. Further Archives are also expected in the future, along with the fourth Environments album, as advertised in the sleeve of Environments 3.
On 6 July 2011 it was announced that Noel Gallagher's second solo album will be in collaboration with The Amorphous Androgynous, and is set for release in 2012.
Independence
Since the turn of the millennium, FSOL took a more independent turn with their career, releasing their more psychedelic Amorphous Androgynous on an independent label; The Isness on Artful Records and Alice In Ultraland on the progressive Harvest RecordsHarvest Records
-References:* Harvest Records collectors guide ISBN 978-5-9622-0021-7...
, which is an arm of EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
.
They also have their own label called Electronic Brain Violence on which a few artists such as Oil and Simon Wells (Headstone Lane), both off-beat electronic artists, have released EPs and singles. Simon Wells also contributed to Dead Cities on the track "Dead Cities Reprise"
Nevertheless, Virgin records still controls FSOL's back catalog and was going to release the Teachings from the Electronic Brain compilation without them, but the duo insisted on taking control of the projects production. Cobain says that, even with Virgin, the reason they were able to do their own thing and create the music they wanted in the 1990s was because they already had some major hits under their belts such as "Papua New Guinea", "Metropolis" and "Stakker Humanoid" before joining the label.
Cobain has said that FSOL's mentality has always been about making a journey of an album rather than focusing on trying to have hit singles. He said that they had several top 40 singles (and albums) in the 90s because they had enough fans and had built up enough of a reputation to achieve these hits while still concentrating on the album rather than any potential singles during their time at Virgin.
They have been signed to Passion Records sub-label Jumpin' & Pumpin' since they started out.
Aliases
- Aircut
- Amorphous Androgynous
- Art Science Technology
- Candese
- Deep Field
- Dope Module
- EMS:Piano
- Heads Of Agreement
- Homeboy
- Humanoid
- Indo Tribe
- Intelligent Communication
- Mental Cube
- Metropolis
- Part-Sub-Merged
- Polemical
- Q
- Semtex
- Semi Real
- Six Oscillators In Remittance
- Smart Systems
- T.Rec
- The Far-out Son Of Lung
- The Orgone Accumulator
- Unit 2449
- Yage
- Yunie
- Zeebox
Discography
- Accelerator (1991)
- LifeformsLifeformsLifeforms is a 1994 double album by experimental electronica group The Future Sound of London. With time, it has become their best-known album and is considered to be an important and influential classic of avante garde electronic music.-The album:...
(1994) - ISDNISDN (album)ISDN is a music album by experimental electronica artists The Future Sound of London which was released in two different versions in 1994 and 1995...
(1994) - Dead CitiesDead Cities (album)Dead Cities is a 1996 album by electronic music group The Future Sound of London.-Overview:Though almost without lyrics to speak of, most of the first half of the album is dark and full of well structured malevolence in that its songs combine synthetic sounds with samples to create an apocalyptic,...
(1996) - The IsnessThe IsnessThe Isness is a 2002 album by experimental electronica group The Future Sound of London, released under the alias Amorphous Androgynous...
(2002) (as Amorphous Androgynous, except in the USA) - EnvironmentsEnvironments (album)Environments is the first part in a series of planned releases by The Future Sound of London over 2007/2008 via digital download and then CD; released after years of speculation the series is like the long lost album of FSOL.-The album:...
(2007) - Environments IIEnvironments IIEnvironments II is the second release of The Future Sound of London's "Environments" series, of which another is planned. It was released on 29 August 2008...
(2008) - Environments 3Environments 3Environments 3 is the third in The Future Sound of London's "Environments" series of albums, released on 7 June 2010. Unlike previous FSOLDigital releases, the album was not made available as a download several months before the CD release. Because of this, the record was heard several weeks in...
(2010)
Singles charts
| Year | Single | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | "Stakker Humanoid" | UK Singles Chart UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... |
#17 |
| 1989 | "Slam" | UK Singles Chart | #54 |
| 1992 | "Papua New Guinea" | UK Singles Chart | #22 |
| 1992 | "Stakker Humanoid '92" | UK Singles Chart | #40 |
| 1993 | "Cascade" | UK Singles Chart | #27 |
| 1994 | "Expander" | UK Singles Chart | #72 |
| 1994 | "Lifeforms (feat. Elizabeth Fraser)" | UK Singles Chart | #14 |
| 1995 | "The Far-Out Son of Lung and the Ramblings of a Madman" | UK Singles Chart | #22 |
| 1996 | "My Kingdom" | UK Singles Chart | #13 |
| 1997 | "We Have Explosive" | UK Singles Chart | #12 |
| 2001 | "Stakker Humanoid 2001" | UK Singles Chart | #65 |
| 2001 | "Papua New Guinea 2001" | UK Singles Chart | #28 |
Album charts
| Year | Album | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | "Accelerator" | UK Album Charts | #75 |
| 1994 | "Lifeforms" | UK Album Charts | #6 |
| 1994 | "ISDN" | UK Album Charts | #44 |
| 1996 | "Dead Cities" | UK Album Charts | #26 |
| 2002 | "The Isness" | UK Album Charts | #68 |
External links
- Future Sound of London.com - official website.
- Yage.co.uk - official tech & video site.
- The Future Sound of London at Rate Your MusicRate Your MusicRate Your Music is a metadata database where musical albums, EPs, singles, videos, bootlegs, and movies are rated and reviewed by users. This data is then used to generate recommendations for users and to create rated lists of albums...
- Amorphous Androgynous at Rate Your MusicRate Your MusicRate Your Music is a metadata database where musical albums, EPs, singles, videos, bootlegs, and movies are rated and reviewed by users. This data is then used to generate recommendations for users and to create rated lists of albums...
- The Future Sound of London at YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
- Welcome To The Galaxial Pharmaceutical - fansite with official news and information from the band, plus in depth discography.
- an overview of their studio equipment et cetera from 1994