from mixmag october 1993 issue...
`Papua New Guinea' made the charts and a Hollywood soundtrack. After
that, Future Sound Of London signed to Virgin Records for #200,000, so
you might think the pressure is on. No chance. These two are
determinedly staying out on the edge. This ain't just the future
sound of London, but the future sound of music. And it starts with a
31 minute, instrumental head tune. David Davies tunes in.
TWO people make up Future Sound Of London. Their names are Gary
Cobain and Brian Dougans, they're 26 and 28 and they come not from
London but from Bedford and Glasgow. If their plans come off, it's a
lot more than the future sound of London we're talking about.
Not probably even just the future sound of electronic music. What's
up for grabs here is music's very place in the modern world. For
these boys are planning projects that envisage music as just one part
of increasingly incredible audio-visual experiences. Some futuristic
combination of Terminator 2's morphing special effects and Lawnmower
Man's virtual reality sequences, united with electronic music deep
enough to move the strongest emotions.
Ambitious. But they are already well on their way.
`PAPUA New Guinea' made their name. And their bank balance. Not only
did it lead to them signing to Virgin after a bidding war that
included Sony, Arista and London Records, but Hollywood also got
involved. Cool World is a part-animated thriller that never made
theatrical release in Britain, going straight on to video earlier this
year, but its inclusion of `Papua New Guinea' on its soundtrack has
led to some very well-padded royalty cheques for FSOL. Enough to top
up their profits, they reckon, to give them the business freedom to do
whatever they want to artistically.
So they say. And they have their new single on their side.
"We could have done another `Papua New Guinea'," says Brian, "we've
got several tracks lying around with big ethnic vocals but that's too
easy. It would be so easy to do that and do a dance track because
we're very good at it but we want to question ourselves."
"It's about discovering ourselves," says Gary. "I'm finding out about
me. We're experimentalists."
And so we have `Cascade'; 31 minutes and 50 seconds of vocal-less,
life-affirming music and about as radio-friendly as the big new tune
on Detroit's Underground Resistance label. It is though fucking
brilliant. Intergalactic head music that strips it right down to the
cranium, pours in the molten acid and sends you out the door with a
suitcase and a one-way ticket to Saturn. Not though that this is any
kind of hippie drivel. There are incredible breathing, sucking sounds
in here that don't require an eighth of weed and a blowback to really
appreciate.
WALK into FSOL's Earthbeat studio and it's easy to see where Virgin's
investment has gone. Stripped, wooden floorboards; monster flash
mixing desk; banks of gadgetry; top of the range Apple Mac for sleeve
graphics; black leather sofa and more space than some dance producers
actually live in. It is sleek and powerful. But somewhat strangely,
the focal point of all this is a TV monitor. In front of the mixing
desk and set dead centre between the speakers it sits, playing,
repeatedly, Koyaanisqatsi - a film without dialogue that (like the
recent Baraka film) just screens shot after beautiful shot of life.
From escalator riders to sausages coming through a machine, from
From: ???
Date: ???
Subject: ???
Status:
It's just after one in the afternoon, Brian is rolling a spliff and
this Head TV runs on.
In quick, simplistic pop terms, Brian is the studio whiz. Dressed
blankly in t-shirt, skate trousers and Converse trainers, he's quiet
and almost shy, pacing nervously back and forth across the studio
while we wait for Gary. Maybe it's just the dope. "I'm totally
stoned," he says.
Gary is almost the opposite. Flash, thrusting and garrulous. He
sits, swivelling in the studio's only executive chair, the
good-looking one with no shirt under his unbuttoned leather waistcoat
and the words just spilling out of him.
"Electronic music," he opines, "is the most genuine music you can do
because you have to go to hell and back to get something good enough.
But I don't want to give the impression we're boffins in a studio 'cos
we're not..."
"I don't know," interrupts Brian, "We're always here."
And they go on to debate whether they're getting their personal lives
back in balance or whether the music still dominates. "Even at home,"
notes Brian, "you're still feverishly trying to tape the radio and
TV."
19 months ago, when we first really mentioned FSOL in Mixmag, they
were scavengers in the underground. Gary had junked his electronics
career and they were zooming around in the house and techno
undergrowth, throwing up increasingly brilliant singles on the
otherwise unremarkable Jumpin' And Pumpin' label. Rushing onwards and
upwards, they had dumped their more politically ambitious Stakker
project (responsible for the aching brilliance of the `Humanoid' hard
techno anthem) and were recording under a whole slew of titles: FSOL,
Smart Systems, Mental Cube, Indotribe and Yage. Only the first and
last now survive: Yage being the creator of the recent and delicious
Amorphous Androgynous album. Electronic and deep.
It was Brian who turned Gary on to the depth of electronic music.
"Brian changed my whole course," he says. "I was fucking around with
tin pots and guitars and Brian was fucking around with extreme
ambience. Realism. Realism that can reflect life and all its
horrors."
Gary was hooked. He realised how disturbing electronic music could
be. "I think electronic music is the most life-changing music I've
ever heard. It's a completely new form of music. With the new
technology there are possibilities to make music that it's not been
possible to make before. We're able to put emotions into electronics
and that's what we need; depth in music."
As a man who used to wear overcoats in summer and pour over his Joy
Division and Dead Can Dance albums, it's not necessarily positive
emotions he's talking about. "The new electronic music is a realism,
it's not zippy music. It's quite a harsh thing."
THEY may try to fight it but Future Sound Of London are a pretty
obsessive, even nerdy, pair. Their recent guest show on London's Kiss
FM featured not only all the latest sounds and pulses but also another
signal. Computer code. They were simultaneously broadcasting machine
code for tripped out Apple Mac computer graphics to go along with the
music.
Nor were they able to unwind on holiday, collecting samples on DAT to
use on the forthcoming album. They can't help enthusing about the
sonic distortions they managed to pick up while recording an Italian
tour guide in some massive cave. They even take nerd-ish pride in
their PO Box. "It's essential," reckons Gary and it's clear they read
everything that comes through to them at EBV Organisation, PO Box
1871, London W10 5ZL.
They're not complete robots though. Hearing Gary ripping off about
people lying on the floor in space suits would put a smile on anyone's
face. And they clearly loved the bitter sweetness of Steve Wright
playing `Papua New Guinea'. Now, says Gary, they just "want to
release extreme music and go Top 40 with it."
It's not going to be their "pop faces" that get them there though. As
they say, they're no real part of any scene. They've not really been
faces around MIDI Circus and they no longer feel so comfortable within
the confines of the dancefloor's 4/4 beat.
"I tried to go clubbing," says Gary, "but it didn't really interest
me. I ended up one of those poseurs watching everyone else. The
stuff I found had me throwing myself around my front room was weird
beats, not a metronome."
REALLY they're experimentalists. `Papua New Guinea' may have been one
of the best dance tracks, perhaps, ever but in the great vastness of
what they're trying to do, it was only one aspect of electronic music.
And Future Sound Of London have definitely got big plans. And almost
impossible standards. "We're experimentalists," says Gary, "and we
close a field as soon as we open it. It's very dangerous and very
experimental. We take risks."
Risks like a five part single that is over half an hour long. Like
the album they're promising for January. An album that is "extreme
realism." That is "total, confrontational ambient space music - like
an extreme case of percussion after 15 hot knives." Like their
audio-visual plans for mini-documentaries to make them look "weird
fuckers." Like their plans for a television revolution. And, they
sort of jest, "The Great Audio-Visual Swindle."
"Future Sound Of London," smiles Gary, seriously, "is in deep."
Jon Drukman jdrukman%dlsun87@oracle.com
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This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.