I had killed a man. A man who looked like me...

It's early 1997 and I am in the first year of my degree at Nottingham University. Free from the shackles of parents and with the artificially enhanced newfound wealth that was student loan/overdraft, I proceeded to spend profusely on music.....and boy did I go to town.

Thanks to my room mates in Cripps Hall, I was introduced to more Indie, Rock, Metal, and especially Electronic music than I cared to know, indulging my thirst for more and - critically - broadening my horizons.

During my tenure at Uni I attended both a Fear Factory and a Spice Girls gig. Yes, I know....but they were part of the zeitgeist and I fancied them. Didn't everyone?

Whilst browsing in HMV (a pretty much daily activity) through the cornucopia of CDs available I'd started to purchase music I had never heard before based solely on the album art. Some of them were total duds and were quickly returned - I got good at getting refunds, even as much as 6 months after the fact - and some turned out to be utter gems.

Step forward the peerless 1996 offering from FSOL that is "Dead Cities", penned by Rob Dougans and Gary Cobain.

From the second I heard opening track "Herd Killing", I truly understood why The Future Sound of London had chosen the name. The track uses a variety of heavy breakbeats, Wawa fuzz guitar and samples to immediately engage you in listening, and it sounds exactly like the snapshot vision of a dystopian future, complete with crumbling buildings, battered landscape on civilization fighting for its survival.

The segues between tracks are as important as the tracks themselves, knitting together a beautiful and multi-textural pattern of sounds, beeps, echoes, noises, voice samples and also a sense of foreboding.

The title track "Dead Cities" opens with "I had killed a man....a man who looked like me" before shuffling into a flute backed typewriter/shutter-like beat structure with beeps and squeals interjecting to create the feel of someone crawling through a subterranean part of this dead city. The middle section of the track builds to include a beautiful layered synth sound which is a perfect plinky, plonky sound. The little girl whispering "make me believe I'm not going to die' on repeat is also suitably creepy.

"Her Face Forms In Summertime" starts with the sounds of waves, chimes and has a more relaxed feel to it. It then bounces in a bass line and some quirky synth before settling into some nice beats, before winding slowly down to some bips and beeps.

"We Have Explosive" is very immediate and disruptive in its aural aesthetic, with a scratchy sample and harsh back beat overlaying the track. That, coupled with sampled shouts and periodical robotic voice saying "we have explosive" repeatedly make it very obviously the noisier of the tracks.

It settles down to transition into "Everyone In The World Is Doing Something Without Me" by taking the noises of pigs squealing, before a voice languidly speaks in elongated sampled fashion, with whale-like horns and string plucks following animal grunts before a vocal chorus of operatic female/male singers provide an absolutely beautiful harmonized pattern for the track. It is truly outstanding, and works well alongside some well placed strings and samples, allowing you to get lost in the despair of this future we're experiencing.

"My Kingdom" starts with some wonderful strings, chimes and vocal noises before settling into an off-beat rhythm complete with sitar-like sampling and you're starting to feel like you're watching Blade Runner or some other futuristic sci-fi movie.

Pianos dominate the beginning of "Max", nicely in tune with synths and a clarinet to create a small snippet of a track.

Over almost as it begins, we then move to "Antique Toy" which sounds immediately oriental in it's aesthetic. Rolling samplers, buzzing bass and a tidy beat structure make it a lovely excursion. With about a minute to go, the pace changes to transition the track, with an off/on rumbling sounds and descending tonal shifts which make you feel a sense of foreboding.

"Quagmire/In A State Of Permanent Abyss" begins with the synth line (almost 80's sounding), throws in a few unsettling buzz-pop noises and the sounds of breaking glass, then pushes a frenetic almost Aphex Twin-like experimental techno beat into the fray, with a syncopated drum backing. The last 90 seconds of the track is like the experience of being underwater with phosphorescent algae floating around you in the total darkness, just bleeps, bips and pops that beautifully overlay each other.

"Glass" has a lovely synth and sample combination with sax and punching beats that moves along nicely until the last minute of the track, where it stops and finds a child's cry together with a flute/ocarina burst and sample pops and rumbles.

Taking us into "Yage", which is the track that most feels like it could have been on "Lifeforms", with a lovely set of swirling samples a statesmanlike beat structure, using oriental string sampling to great effect

"Vit Drowning/Through Your Gills I Breathe" slides along with a wobbly sample, tambourine shuffle and some lovely vocal noises, before finishing with some intricate guitar picks, the rumble of thunder and the sound of a bell ringing.

Finally, we have "First Death In The Family" which closes the album wonderfully with its weather samples, marching band-like rhythm and synths for 2 minutes before descending into silence. Thinking the track was over completely on first listen, I nearly switched off the CD, but the bonus track at the end is a guitar-driven burst not unlike Orbital's "Quality Seconds" with a futuristic punk-sounding vocalist exclaiming "dead cities!" repeatedly. This winds down to the final notes which sample a bell tolling in reverberation before a door slams and it's all over.

WOW.

Taken as the complete work it should be taken as, "Dead Cities" is an absolutely absorbing listen, and it made me delve into the FSOL archives to enjoy "Accelerator", "Lifeforms", "ISDN" and the more recently revived online catalogue of tracks.

My personal standout tracks are:

Lifeforms (1994)

Cascade

Flak

Dead Skin Cells

Lifeforms

Life Form Ends

Omnipresence

ISDN (1995)

Just A Fuckin Idiot

The Far Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman

Appendage

Slider

Dirty Shadows

Amoeba

From The Archives Vol.1 (2007)

Lizzard Crawl

Still Flowers

From The Archives Vol.2 (2007)

We're Not Here

From The Archives Vol.3 (2007)

Empires

From The Archives Vol.6 (2010)

March Of The Money Men

Coastline

Departed

Protractor

Swarm

From The Archives Vol.7 (2012)

Lost In The Mists Of Time

Temples

Outer Heaven

Many Moons Away

Shifting Sands

War Machines

Flygon

Old Train

Heat Distortions

Environment Five (2014)

Point Of Departure

In Solitude We Are At Least Alone

Dougans and Cobain are back creating again which is fantastic as "Dead Cities" prompted a 10-year hiatus for the group - other than working as their alter-ego The Amorphous Androgynous, and a few other side projects -which was painful to take for me, having only just discovered them. Hopefully there will be a chance to experience them live in my lifetime, although I often wonder how they'll recreate some of the relative chaos on stage!

Another Electronic artist who stands out for me from the 1990's crop (and those who have come since) simply because I still haven't listened to anything like it, and maybe never will. The orchestral sprawling soundscapes that are created are evocative, immersive and certainly provoke some deep, meditative states when listened to in the right frame of mind.

Enjoy, and lose yourself in this because it is worth it.

Badger x