THE FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON

By Any Other Name

Genre: ELECTRONIC

Boomkat Product Review:

Rave pioneers FSOL refract and survey their spectrum of early ‘90s rave aliases on a comp of unreleased gems from the heyday of their Jumpin’ & Pumpin’ label for Belgian rave archivists Wémè

Lest we forget, FSOL’s Brian Dougans and Garry Cobain were responsible for a prolific gush of productions between their earliest outings as Humanoid (’Stakker Humanoid’) and circa the success of ‘Papua New Guinea’. The 17-song compilation ‘By Any Other Name’ hails their multiverse of monikers and stylistic variegation during the influential early ‘90s rave era with previously unheard examples made as Yage, Indo Tribe, Smart Systems, Dope Module, and Mental Cube, all exploring distinct angles of the formative dance music sound, before it had congealed into more definitive genres.

While all sharing roots in ‘80s acid house and electro, the tunes each tease those strands into then new mutations, ranging from Indo Tribe’s rollicking electro-rave tumult to Polygon Window-esque hardcore ambient techno as Smart Systems, the swaggy breaks of Dope Module’ and square-bass bleep clonk under the Mental Cube handle, all primed to get attention from fans of Autechre’s earliest work as Lego Feet thru the myriad faces of Richard H. Kirk and Rob Gordon’s cyber-dubbed SoYo Warp-ers.

To play faves, the irresistible momentum of Indo Tribe’s Humanoid-style banger ‘Great danger’ is up there, along with the proto-Goa trance of ‘Corridor’ as Smart Systems, and their hoover-shotting ‘Visual Attack’ under the same name, along with the more sublime pressure of ‘Garden Bridge’ as Yage, the cold war acid hip hop instrumental ‘Kremlin Tapes’, and Yage’s psychoactive breakbeat acid bleep slosh in ‘831 am’.

3LP (17)