The Future Sound Of London are Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans, one of the most influencial and outstanding electronic acts of the last 15 years.
The band met while working in a bar in Manchester in 1985 or 1986 (it depends which interview you read). Brian had moved to Manchester from his hometown of Glasgow to study sound engineering. An industrial electronica fan and creator, he came from an entirely different music perspective to Cobain, who moved from his quiet life in Bedford to study electronics in the city that gave the world Factory Records and The Smiths: your typical 80s Brit indie kid. A friendship formed and they began considering making music together, working the clubs, doing scrapped video work for The Stone Roses, introducing each other to sounds substances.
In 1988, Brian embarked on a project for the Stakker graphics company with his friend Mark McClean. He created a track called 'Stakker Humanoid', which was accompanied by a mad video. Garry got involved with the project and its accompanying album, featuring soulful vocal house and a couple more acid house cuts. Brian's solo work as Humanoid and Zeebox at the time was extensive but largely unreleased, the album and its accompanying singles aside.
When the Stakker project collapsed, the two joined forces properly and began to create music as a duo in their newly created Earthbeat Studio in the Dollis Hill area of London. Or many duos. Smart Systems, Yage, Indo Tribe, Mental Cube: all sorts of names, each with its own distinctive take on then contemporary dance styles. With 'Stakker Humanoid' re-entering the chart in 1992, followed by the breakthrough ambient dub track 'Papua New Guinea' (the first full "Future Sound Of London" release), they were getting more recognition. After hearing 'Papua New Guinea', the major labels came running. A series of bizarre interviews (rumours include getting record company execs to sit on a soaking wet chair) whittled the list down to Virgin Records, who became the band's new label following their delivery of the Accelerator album to Jumpin' & Pumpin', their original label.
Taking advantage of the larger company's less restrictive thoughts and budget, they immediately lurched into experimentalism with their Tales Of Ephidrina album under the Amorphous Androgynous alias. Released on their own Virgin spinoff Quigley, the album was a link between the techno FSOL of old and the organic sound the band are most known for.
With ISDN technology beginning to become more widely available at this point, the band utilised it as the best way for people to understand their vision of being a 'broadcast system' rather than a band. Broadcasting to Kiss FM on a regular basis, playing a mixture of ambient and techno with spoken sections and guest DJ spots. In 1994, the band took this to the next level, broadcasting to a variety of radio stations, art spaces and whatever they could get their hands on, with live visuals streaming from their fsol.demon.co.uk website for those with internet capabilities at home. These shows were distinctly more abstract and ambient than even Tales Of Ephidrina, and led to the band's second full-length FSOL album, Lifeforms. Although the title track had been recorded during the band's time with Jumpin' & Pumpin' (and denied release due to being too leftfield), the album was distinctly ambient. The rhythms were placed low in the mix, bursts of environmental sound and field recordings tied the pieces together, and the overall sound and accompanying artwork gave the impression of lush forests and desolate deserts. The reviewers loved it, it hit top 10 in the UK album chart, and went down as one of the greatest ambient/electronica albums of the 90s. Preceeded by a 40 minute six-part single based vaguely on the album track 'Cascade', and followed by another 40 minute EP following seven largely unrelated 'paths' of the album's title track, the band had finally secured their place alongside such artists as The Orb in the world of organic ambient, and away from the clubs they had tired of years before.
Fans eagerly awaited the follow-up album, promised in the sleeve of Lifeforms to be Environments by Amorphous Androgynous. What came, instead, was another FSOL album, entitled ISDN. Containing exclusive material from the band's 1994 ISDN shows, including their Radio 1 Essential Mix and a performance to New York's The Kitchen, the album was distinctly darker, more claustrophobic and rhythmic than Lifeforms. But instead of heading back into the clubs, the music was more inspired by acid jazz, trip-hop and hip-hop. The album, housed in a plain black digipack (as homage to The Beatles' White Album) was limited to 10,000 copies and sold out almost immediately. An accompanying EP, The Far-out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman contained ISDN material and unreleased tracks. These exclusive pieces were used on ISDN's re-release in 1995, with a white sleeve and unlimited in number.
In 1996 they returned again, with a tale of urban decay and hell on earth, Dead Cities. A mixture of the flavours they had experimented with before before, plus drum'n'bass, modern classical and IDM, the album was greeted with almost uniformly glowing reviews. One of the album's standout tracks, My Kingdom, received the 40 minute single treatment on possibly the band's most successful EP, and the band began what they described as the "fuck rock'n'roll tour" - a world tour without leaving their studio. Each night one or two radio stations would receive an ISDN transmission as the band would perform a unique take on the album, providing a different 'dead city' each time. By mid 1997, the tour was coming to a close, and the band's final three shows to Fun Radio, BBC Radio 3's Mixing It show and a John Peel Session contained entirely new material. These tracks were a little funkier, a little groovier and very un-Dead Cities in their approach. Not entirely surprising if compared to the freeform funky breaks both Oil and Headstone Lane had performed on their respective EP's for FSOL's short lived label EBV. But nothing could quite prepare listeners for their next move.
Late in 1997 the duo reappeared briefly for a DJ set on Kiss FM entitled A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind. When the station heard it for the first time, during the live transmission, they were surprised and shocked. A mix of psychedelic sounds and acid rock was coming from Earthbeat Studios.
And then... nothing. Were they embarrased by the Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble show, and had gone into hiding and split up? Not exactly. After Dead Cities, the band decided they had begun to move into the wrong direction, with their music becoming more masculine and noisey, and their true selves had begun to hide behind these sounds. Garry (now Gaz) began to feel ill, and decided to get away and travel, first to the United States with ex-Cult singer Ian Astbury, who helped him to start writing songs on his guitar again, and then to South America, Mexico and finally India. On these travels, his health problems had been identified to mercury in his fillings slowly poisoning his blody. A spiritual journey followed, completely rebuilding his life and his body. Many influences came from this intercontinental journey, which began to contribute to his music when he made it back to the UK. Meeting back up with Brian after many months without contact, they began to make music again.
And once again, the studio doors shut. Except this time it's for the last time. Earthbeat was no longer. They moved to the new studio, named The Galaxial Pharmaceutical after some lyrics Gaz had written. Hours, days, months, years are spent in the studio with musicians, both friends and famous, coming by to jam and record. Hundreds of pieces of music were recorded or mixed over a five year period, culminating in the band's sudden reappearance onto the music scene.
Fans who had all but given up on the chance of future material weren't quite ready for the bombardment of new material between 2002 and 2004. 'Papua New Guinea' and 'Stakker Humanoid' were remixed and re-released, with 'Papua New Guinea' receiving its own longform single format, Translations, ten years after it deserved it. Critics noted the very distinctive change of sound for the release, though, with backwards guitars, sitars, tablas, vocals, pianos and other psychedelic sounds in the mix alongside FSOL's trademark electronica. 2002 witnessed one of the most album releases of all time, with the band's new album - under the old alias Amorphous Androgynous - The Isness being recalled and re-released with a different tracklist, a vinyl-only exclusive song, the band's US label releasing the record under the FSOL name (much to the band's anger). Most confusing, however, was the style, with pieces in the style of Indian classical music, psychedelic instrumentals, prog rock epics and skewed pop songs. The album received mixed reviews, with some claming the album to be an embarrassment, and others believing it to be a modern classic (Muzik Magazine famously rewarding it 6/5, only to revoke this rating when the album was recalled and placed with what is largely seen as an inferior mix). The album's most infamously silly piece, 'The Mello Hippo Disco Show', received the extended single treatment, and reworkings from the scrapped Divinity EP turned up on 2003's The Otherness bonus disc, alongside some lost songs and mixes from the recalled 'Abbey Road' mix of the album, and exclusive new tracks. Fans of the band's more electronic side were still kept entertained with Rephlex records releasing two discs of sessions and soundtrack work by Brian from the Zeebox and Stakker Humanoid days.
It was almost two years until the band were heard of again, late in 2005, with a new album, Alice In Ultraland, by the now definite article-boasting The Amorphous Androgynous. With tracks previewed on a 'Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble' mix for BBC 6Music, the album took the sound of The Isness and took it further, with elements of funk and blues, and a more traditionally FSOL feel of tracks merged together with ambience, synths and effects. Uniformly ignored in the press but largely more favourable with fans than The Isness, Alice In Ultraland was a brief diversion in an otherwise obvious silence in the FSOL camp. It was not until the end of 2006 that things began to pick up again.
After a brief tour with The Amorphous Androgynous, the band came back home and began working on new music again. Virgin Records, long out of contract with the band, decided it was finally time for a "best of" release to push to punters. At the same time, some of the band's hard discs were damaged, and while rooting through the rest for backups and material for the best of - titled Teachings From The Electronic Brain - they discovered a wealth of material worth hearing. This material, alongside solo work Brian had been composing using his own circuit-bent synthesisers and new home studio at his church in Somerset, was uploaded to the internet in early 2007. Also online was the mini-album A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static, an experiment in 5.1 surround sound the band had conducted as a soundtrack for a piece entitled 'Life Forms' at Kinetica, the UK's first museum dedicated to moving art. The site was FSOLDigital.com, and became the band's official voice. Old CDs, vinyl and tapes turned up online, with more archives culminating in two exciting releases: the first, a new album by The Amorphous Androgynous, The Peppermint Tree & The Seeds Of Superconsciousness, and secondly, fourteen years late, Environments - now credited to The Future Sound of London, to avoid confusing with later day Amorphous material. Reminiscent of 1994's ISDN shows, it turned out to be the first in a series of three Environments releases, with related material promised to be from 'past and present'. Other FSOLDigital releases included a new album under the Yage alias featuring ex-Propellerheads drummer Will White, an archive of pre-Accelerator material and a mix originally designed for Greek magazine Freeze.


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