Damned!
The Future Sound Of London have gone all prog-rock on us. After
well over five years of complete silence on the FSOL front,
The Isness announces a radical departure from the beautiful
soundscapes of Lifeforms or Tales Of Ephidrina
or the dark industrial beats of Dead
Cities. If early nineties ambient was defined by KLF’s
seminal Chill Out, announcing the dawn of bands such
as The Orb, by the mid nineties, Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans
had taken the genre to new level with two albums, Tales
Of Ephidrina released in 1993 under their Amorphous Androgynous
guise, and, a year later, Lifeforms as Future Sound
Of London.
On The Isness, the duo swap electronic experimentations
for 1970s guitar-based psychedelica complete with sitars, strings
and, as unusual as it may sound on a FSOL album, vocals, and
we mean here proper songs. The album doesn’t bear any
signs of the luscious dreamy soundcapes and textured beats the
duo had made their trademark over the years. Instead, the opening
track, The Lovers, which more or less sets the tone
for things to come, evokes more the funk rock of Hendrix than
the sonic explorations of recent years, with electric guitars
forging their way to the forefront of the piece, leaving behind
the more electronic-based patterns. The only proper connection
with the FSOL of old is the ethereal vocalisations of Linda
Lewis. The title track that follows witnesses the first of the
recurring insertions of sitars. Once again, elements of the
pair’s past work can be found, but the strangely titled
Mello Hippo Disco Show turns the whole thing on its
head, suggesting some weird collaboration between The Verve,
The Doors and Pink Floyd. Later on, Cobain and Dougans seem
determined to make us believe that they were once in Genesis
on Go Tell It To The Trees Egghead and Divinity.
This is not however as disastrous an idea as it might seem.
The rampant psychedelism of these two tracks, highlighted in
slightly too obvious fashion by the ever-present sitars, offers
a radical twist to the current electronic scene. The rest of
the album lingers on similar territories, failing to really
bring this prog-tronica to a more imaginative level, despite
some interesting attempts on Osho, the evocative Meadows
and High Tide On The Sea Of Flesh. Gaz Cobain and Brian
Dougans have become at times self indulgent, and this album
suffers from temporary lack of inspiration, partly hidden behind
an impressive production..
The Isness, released in the UK under the Amorphous
Androgynous tag, and in the rest of the world as a new Future
Sound Of London album, with a slightly different track listing
and a different running order, is by all means a disconcerting
offering from Cobain and Dougans. Far from their past sonic
breakthroughs, The Isness is a unique album in today’s
music landscape, and, could well become, despite its faults,
or perhaps because of them, a future classic.
3.5/5 |
