Dead Cities (album)

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Dead Cities

Studio album by The Future Sound of London

Released

October 18, 1996

Recorded

Earthbeat Studios, London – 1996

Genre

Ambient, techno, experimental, IDM

Length

70:11

Label

Astralwerks ASW 6181 (US)
Virgin CDV 2814 (UK)

Producer

The Future Sound of London

Professional reviews

All Music Guide link
Almostcool.org link

The Future Sound of London chronology

ISDN
(1994)

Dead Cities
(1996)

ISDN Show
(1997)

Dead Cities is a seminal 1996 album by experimental electronic music group The Future Sound of London.

1 Overview
2 Track listing
3 Samples
4 Charts
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Overview

Though almost without lyrics to speak of, most of the first half of the album (with the exception of "Her Face Forms In Summertime") is dark and full of well structured malevolence in that its songs combine synthetic sounds with samples to create an apocalyptic, dystopian atmosphere, the second half of the disc is rather more relaxed however and FSOL combine the darkness with more of their now familiar complex, ambient techniques to create an odd, peaceful yet intriguing atmosphere.^[1]^[2]

The album art consisted of 3D graphics, photography, and writing complementing the album's themes, combined via digital image editing. This was created primarily by the band and then-frequent artistic collaborator Buggy G. Riphead. A limited edition release of the album included a 196-page book, containing additional artwork and writing in the same style.^[3]

"My Kingdom" and "We Have Explosive" were released as singles, with music videos directed by the same artistic collaboration.

[edit] Track listing

Though the album contains 13 tracks, the track listing on the back insert of the CD is ambiguous, as 15 song titles are listed, with most of the second half of songs not numbered. The common interpretation, confirmed by the promo edition of the CD, is listed here:

"Herd Killing" – 2:37
"Dead Cities" – 6:37
"Her Face Forms in Summertime" – 5:38
"We Have Explosive" – 6:19
"Everyone in the World Is Doing Something Without Me" – 4:10
"My Kingdom" – 5:47
"Max" – 2:48
"Antique Toy" – 5:43
– 6:57
- "Quagmire" – 5:13
- "In a State of Permanent Abyss" – 1:44
"Glass" – 5:38
"Yage" – 7:32
– 5:32
- "Vit Drowning" – 4:48
- "Through Your Gills I Breathe" – 0:44
– 4:46
- "First Death in the Family" – 2:18
- silence – 1:00
- "Dead Cities Reprise" (hidden track by Headstone Lane) – 1:28

[edit] Samples

Track 1, "Herd Killing", is a remix of track 4; it is also titled "We Have Explosive (Herd Killing mix)" on a single. Both feature several samples from the Run DMC album Tougher Than Leather.
Track 2, "Dead Cities", contains a vocal sample at the beginning of Laurence Fishburne from the movie Deep Cover.
Track 4, "We Have Explosive" was used in the second game in the "WipEout" series, WipEout 2097, for the original Playstation.
Track 6 "My Kingdom" prominently features:
- A vocal sample of "Rachael's Song" (aka "Rachel's Song") by Vangelis, from the Blade Runner soundtrack (1982).
- A sample of the intro to "Cockeye's Song", and rearranged samples of Gheorghe Zamfir's pan flute riff in "Cockeye's Song" and "Childhood Memories", taken from Ennio Morricone's soundtrack for Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
- A guitar sample taken from Ozric Tentacles's album Pungent Effulgent (1989).
The title of track 11 "Yage" was one the previous aliases of FSOL, and still their alias for their own sound engineering credits.
The title of track 12 "Vit Drowning" refers to Vit, a Chinese restaurant owner friend with the artists. His face appears on the "Far-out Son Of Lung" cover, and he appears in the "Teachings From The Electronic Brain II" and "My Kingdom" videos" [1].