The Future Sound of London

The Future Sound of London

The Future Sound of London, often abbreviated to FSOL, is an experimental electronic music duo from Manchester, United Kingdom. The group forms in 1988 and remains active, with Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans as its members.

Style and work

Their music spans a wide area of electronic music, including acid house, ambient, ambient house, ambient techno, big beat, breakbeat, techno, drum and bass, house, trip-hop and dub. It also incorporates elements of jazz, classical music and psychedelic rock. Alongside recording, the duo works in 2D and 3D computer graphics, video and animation, and they make much of their own visual material for singles. They also work in radio broadcasting and build their own electronic devices for sound generation.

Key releases

FSOL are best known for the ambient-dub single Papua New Guinea and the album Lifeforms. Their other singles include Stakker Humanoid, Q, Metropolis, Cascade, Expander, Lifeforms EP, The Far-Out Son of Lung and the Ramblings of a Madman, My Kingdom, We Have Explosive, Stakker Humanoid 2001, Papua New Guinea 2001 and Papua New Guinea Translations.

Their main studio albums include Accelerator, ISDN, Lifeforms, Dead Cities and the Environments series: Environments, Environments II, Environments 3 and Environments 4. They also release the compilation Teachings from the Electronic Brain and the From the Archives series.

Aliases and related projects

The duo releases work under many aliases, including Amorphous Androgynous, Yage, Humanoid, Mental Cube, Q, Zeebox, Heads Of Agreement, Semtex, The Far-out Son Of Lung, Part-Sub-Merged and Art Science Technology. Under Amorphous Androgynous, they release the album Tales of Ephidrina and the later psychedelic rock-influenced albums The Isness, Alice in Ultraland, The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness and the A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding in Your Mind trilogy.

Collaborations and remixes

FSOL collaborates with Robert Fripp on Flak, with Talvin Singh on Life Form Ends, with Toni Halliday on Cerebral, and with Elizabeth Fraser on the single version of Lifeforms. The group also becomes known for remixes for Curve, The Shamen, Robert Fripp and David Sylvian, Oasis, Massive Attack, Jon Anderson and Apollo 440.

Formation

Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans meet in the mid-1980s while studying electronics at university in Manchester. Dougans already makes electronic music and works between Glasgow and Manchester before they begin working together in local clubs. In 1988, Dougans starts a project for the Stakker graphics company, which leads to the club hit Stakker Humanoid under the Humanoid alias.