Earth Beat Visions - A History of The Future Sound of London 5: Tingler, Papua New Guinea & more.

A history of the electronic music group and broadcast system The Future Sound of London, consisting of Brian Dougans and Garry Cobain.
Chapter 5 explores the second half of 1991, and covers the following releases:
Smart Systems - Tingler
Smart Systems - PA, Cornwall, 1991
Mental Cube - So This is Love
Candese - You Took My Love
The Future Sound of London - Papua New Guinea
plus
Mental Cube - Q (French Reissue)
Loleatta Holloway - Do That To Me (Set Me Free) (Future Sound of London Remix)
100Hz - Progress (People Living on Mars Mix)
100Hz - Progress (Jx3p Mix)
So This is Love on FSOLDigital: fsol.bandcamp....
Sound on Sound Classic Tracks PNG article: www.soundonsou...

[@h808]

I was fortunate to be asked to contribute to PNG as well with FSOL placing my remix on the 12" alongside those of Graham Massey and Andy Weatherall; esteemed company indeed

[@absentwithconcept]

Be getting to your remix in the next video - always been one of my favourites actually!

[@pawnotdaw4559]

When Papa came out it was everywhere. Amazing track at that time

[@nezz42]

Original issue dates for these early 90s releases have been hard for me to find online. I'm using these videos to fix up my digital FSOL collection to display in a proper chronological order.

[@absentwithconcept]

I have absolutely no idea why I've not been including the dates in these videos! I have some, to the month at least. Stakker - August 88 Slam - April 89 Tonight - August 89 The Deep - April 90 AST - July 90 Mental Cube - 31st October 90 Pulse 1 - January 91 Intelligent Communication - February 91 Tingler - May 91 So This is Love - June 91 Papua - October 91 Must try and include them in future videos!

[@bootstraphookers8690]

This series is brilliant. Papua New Guinea introduced me to FSOL. I had heard nothing like it when it appeared on Radio 1 back in '92. Same when John Peel played Little Fluffy Clouds and Blue Room by The Orb. Thank you for the work and time you've put into each video. FSOL were one of the inspirations to make music of my own, showing what you can do with sound itself. I hope you finish your rework of PNG one day. I had a go myself but needed more than one track to explore the ideas I had. Thank you again. PS I prefer Turnaround to Among Myselves and wish they had been incorporated as one on Lifeforms.

[@absentwithconcept]

Totally with you on Turn Around - one of my favourite FSOL tracks, still can't get my head around the fact it wasn't put out at the time!

[@bootstraphookers8690]

To me, the repeated percussion echoes in Turnaround could have been lifted directly from Sparkling Oasis by Ozric Tentacles, and the free airy guitar reminds me of Ozric stuff a bit. I started trying to combine Turnaround with Among Myselves, but they seemed too different in how they were mixed. The cuts and layering between them would have been obvious as a hack job. But I could be wrong as I never actually tried. On the other hand, perhaps I just shouldn't. 🙂 I remember back in the mid 2000s, there was a fan web site that had downloads of FSOL's early material under their aliases, live transmissions, music videos and fan remixes. The disclaimer on the main page said it was only material that wasn't commercially available. When I tried my hand at reworking PNG, I explored FSOL's site for inspiration and saw their early stuff and music videos were now available there. I went back to the fan library, and true to their word, they only had fan remixes to play or download. I know that's for legal reasons, but it gave me a warm glow. I wish I had a better copy of We Have Explosive (Smirkoff mix). But I haven't looked in about 15 years.

[@neiladams3042]

Great retrospective, So This Is Love has always been one of my favourite tracks. As an avid FSOL collector it's interesting to see a few releases in here I was not aware of. Nice work!

[@absentwithconcept]

Cheers! I'm always amazed that to this day there are still things from their past turning up that I've had absolutely zero knowledge about. They're so ludicrously prolific.

[@williamkerr1059]

Man these are brilliant

[@supamarx5782]

Loving this future of the History of the Sound of London!

[@garglebard]

Another great episode 👏

[@hoppy303]

What a hero! These are sensational.

[@Floorquake]

I’m really enjoying these and am looking forward to the next installment. Thank you!

[@german3907]

The Candese album says Gary Cockbain? Thanks for the post! Love FSOL. Cheers from Santa Fe in Argentina.

[@absentwithconcept]

Yup, Cockbain (same pronunciation) was his birth name. He changed it to Cobain in late 91/early 92 when they were getting more famous and he didn't want the word 'cock' in there!

[@adamespira674]

Excellent, thanks for this

[@supamarx5782]

I think The Black Dog would be perfect for the history treatment. More of a collective than a band and groups within groups and tons of aliases. Another history for you in the future?

[@absentwithconcept]

Y'know, I've never been a massive fan of them - I like a few albums, but never enough to get obsessively into them. You're right, though, there's probably a fascinating story there, especially with the split between Ken and Plaid, who don't seem on especially good terms. I'd certainly enjoy watching a series on them if anyone else made it! I will be touching on them in my ambient house & ambient techno series at some point, I'll be looking at Bytes as part of the Artificial Intelligence range.

[@nezz42]

Fellow Black Dog fan here. Would also love a video series on them

[@supamarx5782]

@@nezz42 I love them too. Crazy to think the classic albums where compilations of tracks by a duo and a solo artist and not 3 people working together. I know Ken Downie made my 2 favourite tracks of theirs. I believe that Carceres Ex Novum was made by a Downie alias. I sent a fanboy email in the 90s to The Black Dog praising Spanners and saying Chase The Manhattan was my favourite track on the album. Downie was the person who replied saying "Whoo-Hoo, that's one of mine!". I would to know the breakdown of all the early Black Dog tracks in terms of creators.

[@nezz42]

@@supamarx5782 I came late to the game with The Black Dog. I've heard most of the early stuff, but I mostly go for their more recent output. Post-Truth / Black Daisy Wheel from 2018 is a sweet spot for me.

[@supamarx5782]

​@@nezz42 I am still a huge fan, tracks like The Truth is in the Post (Post-Truth) and Cup Noodle (Fragments) are as good as the classic era.

[@davidgover565]

I feel like it's been covered already but it totally escapes me, what is tune in the video intro?

[@absentwithconcept]

A remix of Papua New Guinea that I never got around to finishing.

[@davidgover565]

@@absentwithconcept So I've wasted the last 24+ hours trying to figure out what it is? 😂

[@absentwithconcept]

@@davidgover565 I'm afraid so! Hopefully you had some fun in the process? Haha.

[@davidgover565]

​@@absentwithconcept It was hard not to! I really like the remix because there's a kind of subtleness to it, at least for the part used in the video intro. It hadn't clicked for me that it was a PNG remix, I thought it was an earlier FSOL tune from which elements were later used for PNG. How unfinished is it? Is there anywhere to listen to what you've done so far?

[@absentwithconcept]

@@davidgover565 it's a very weird track that goes through about six very different sections, but after many listens, I realised the bit from the video is the only bit I like! I need to try and rework this section into a full track now... but there's always something else getting in the way! One day... one day... Glad you're enjoying the snippet, anyway! I'll definitely share it on here when it's done.