Customer Reviews

Dead Cities

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Along with ISDN this is FSOL grandest album. Dead Cities has everything going for it. Trippy beats and crisp percussion. Lots of atmospheric synths and floaty drones. A good sprinkling of chants too which I enjoy. Not only that but there are faster moments too. Personal pics : Dead Cities - very intimidating electronic. Overly agressive. Love it. We Have Explosive - Again it's a faster track that builds upon a hard hitting electronic buzz hit. Pretty good although not as brilliant as some of the others on offer. Everyone in the world - beautiful female voice which is joined by a larger choir. Pure atmosphere on this one. Sad too. My Kingdom - More trip hop on this one. Really works. Especially when the female sample from Vangelis joins the mix. Max - Nice change of pace. Very uplifting. Piano and sax. Creates great imagery of the sun rising in our

When I first bought this, I had a mix of reactions, ranging from disgust to unjustified adoration.. Now that I've had plenty of time to expose myself to it, I can come up with a reasonable review. As this is my only FSOL purchase, I cannot compare it to their additional works (under this or any of their other ten thousand musical monikers). Nevertheless, if this opus is in any way representative of their other work, these guys are operating on genius level! They don't quite match up to Aphex Twin and Autechre level, yet they have a brand so unique that they are comparable. This album, along with about 99% of RDJ's SAW II and Ae's Tri Repetae, is quite possibly the closest you can safely get to a musical embodiment of a nightmare.. no joke. This music is so eerily beautiful it straddles the line between fear and seduction for the listener. Some songs are a bit of a turnoff, but others, such as #2:Dead Cities, #7:Max? Antique Toy? (stupid tracklisting),#10: Glass? Yage?, and #12: Through Your Gills..?? are absolutely blissful.. while others are in-your-face, almost to a maddening point, such as the ever-too-popular We Have Explosive (#4). Despite it's over use (everything from MTV to Wipeout XL to a homemade action flick :-), it's quite well constructed, and very energetic. As a whole, the tracks seem a tad flimsy.. not as solid as your stereotypical IDM or as deep, but upon further examination it becomes apparent that it's simply the sound of it.. it's actually more complex than you'd think. It has a very menacing, apocalyptic cityscape theme.. and is very death oriented (read the track titles). It creates a pretty strong vibe. The end is especially effective, as #12's calm and melancholic piano ballad with guitar and a girl's innocent laughter is sickeningly cut off by a harsher, morbid melodic permutation of the previous track, called First Death In The Family: an unpleasant reminder of how quickly happiness can change to dread. It's a fairly eclectic collection: Track #9 leaves you gasping for air as you die drowning all alone in a dense quagmire (hence the name, if I've got the tracks right..), you meander through the dreamlike afterlife of #10, until you are resurrected in the airy, breathing #11. My favorite track is #3: Her Face Forms In Summertime.. good night! If no other song proves their genius then this one will! Beautiful guitar strums swimming in reverb go in and out as more washes and FX pop up and rush in suddenly as melodic accompaniment with drums added later in the mix. This song, along with #10, is one of those tracks that actually makes you feel something as opposed to just analyzing it. These songs hit some core part of you when you don't expect it, and give you the sensation that you're no longer listening to music but are rather drawn into a separate world that is both created by the artist, but also present in the deepest recesses of your subconscious. (Sorry about that incomprehensible babble). It's almost as if these types of songs are what remain flowing through your head while lying in bed after waking up from a weird dream. Man, I can't say enough good about this album. It's not immediately appealing, but if you give it time, you will be rewarded!

Future Sound Of London's last tribute to the 20th century is an apocalyptic peace of mastery. With dark, almost industrial heavy beat on some of the tracks (Herd Killing, We Have Explosive), and ice-beautiful melodies on others (Glass, Through Your Gills I Breath), this album weaves a tapestry of opposites. There is compassion (Everyone In The World Is Doing Something Without Me), and majestic (My Kingdom). You progress through the album, closer to the climax of his apocalyptic end, and just when you think it's over, and the cities are ruined, there is a last gasp of air. A distant heavy rock band is playing the continues mantra, repeatedly crying "dead cities, dead cities" before melting away.

Perhaps one of the best albums in the "electronic" genre, Dead Cities is more musical novel than mere collection of tracks. Where other albums of the like are more or less compilations of neat and nifty selections and samples, Dead Cities stands out as an album best listened to in its entirety-- as the shifts in tempo, the breakbeats, and the overall "construction" of it weave a story of sound. Of course, like all of FSOL, the albumis completely hit or miss. Take it from me-- you will either love it, and listen to it ceaslessly, or hate it, and complain about it endlessly. As for me, it gets better every time.

This is obviously an amazing record to start off my Random Vinyl of the Week adventure, as I dig through my dusty archives. Released in 1996, Dead Cities was Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans' fourth full length album as The Future Sound of London. Dead Cities was that very last record and then there was a torturing silence for six years. Even when the duo returned in 2002 with The Isness, it was ... not the same... How can one describe the layered dark samples with memorable vocal lines that are implanted in my brain? "I have killed a man. A man who looked like me." The album is an absolute classic, and its complex ambient and cinematic fragments continue to offer new insight into the minds of FSOL. Dead Cities was not received with as much success as my absolute favorite, earlier 1994 release Lifeforms [the latter climbed to 6 position on the UK Album Charts, while Dead Cities got up to 22]. The music of Dead Cities features more sampled beats carefully blending in big-beat and bringing trip-hop into the mix. We Have Explosive (which also came out as a single) features several samples from Run DMC's album Tougher Than Leather. The rest of the sounds [all very dear and familiar to my mind at this point] all convey the atmosphere of urban decay. An album from the future that rusted in the past. Like a empty feeling after watching a rerun of Blade Runner [and the sample off Mary Hopkin's vocals from the movie's soundtrack], the eerie nostalgia of revisiting a dirty old friend crackles in the hindsight. Oh, and how's this for a shocker for you. On one of the tracks guess who's playing piano? I'll give you a hint. The title of the track is Max and the pianist's last name is Richter. In addition to restructured MIDI files, Max Richter has also contributed other recordings and "environments". The album cover (and the two inserts that house the double vinyl) feature 3D graphics and digitally processed photography by Buggy G. Riphead. This is one of the albums to hold in your hands and marvel at its grandiose and epic stand in time. Since 2007, FSOL has opened up their vault and released a collection of forgotten tracks from their library, titled From The Archives (it is now up to its 5th volume). I hope I have excited you enough to revisit Dead Cities through my first adventure of Random Vinyl of the Week. I know that I have worked myself up enough to seek out the limited box set release [complete with a booklet!!!], and am now waiting for it to arrive in the mail!

FSOL doesn't do songs. They do "albums," that being a continous flow of music that all follows a theme or continuum, rather than merely being being a coalescence of unrelated singles. FSOL didn't invent this idea, but they do more with the idea than just about anybody.
And Dead Cities is the quintessential ALBUM. These songs flow seamlessly from one to another, creating a 70-something-minute soundscape with the elements occasionally coalescing together into a cohesive "song".
And said songs, it should be noted, are excellent. Yage is an otherworldly journey (fitting, given that in addition to being FSOL's pretend engineer "Yage" is a hallucinogenic South American vine). We Have Explosive is a serious industrial dance track sandwiched between several minutes of moody, ambient backwash on either side. While previous FSOL albums searched out a specific timbre or feel to them (see Lifeforms, Accelerator, and ISDN), this one is all over the map, ranging from chlostrophobic and depressing beats and samples to playful ambient ditties like Her Face Forms in Summertime and track 7, whatever it is. (As you'll discover, the number of tracks and the number of songs aren't the same.)

And for those of you who just skip to the end of long reviews to see what the punchline is, GET THIS DISC! It's an anonymous classic.

To lump this album under just "techno" or "electronica" would be doing this absolutely wonderful album a disservice. While it isn't quite EVERYBODY's cup of tea, "Dead Cities" does a fabulous job of telling a story throughout the 70 some minutes of this epic CD. "Herd Killing" and the 4th track, "We Have Explosive" are very crunchy, loud, filled with all sorts of F-off beats and yells. "Dead Cities" and "Quagmire/In A Permanent State Of AbysS" are darker sounding techno-like tracks, with the latter track being a twisted d'n'b collage. From "Glass" on, the tracks take more of a subdued feeling, more depressive and pensive feeling. This album has too many styles to be lumped into any category. It's just Future Sound of London, folks. You'll either love this album or hate it. I love it because of the multitude of styles within it, and the whole dark apocalyptic feeling it carries with it.

FSOL's best. Not by much, because all their albums are wonderful. First "techno" album I ever bought, and it turned out to be the best one I own. More agressive and depressing then Lifeforms, their 2nd best album. If you had to buy one FSOL album, this would be the one to choose.

Simply said, this is a musical masterpiece. This album tricks your imagination into believing your in a futuristic, abandoned city. This cd reminds me so much of the movie Blade Runner. Not as psychedelic as their other works but still briliantlly artistic, by that I mean, this album has a perfect balance of every valuable element to create any masterpiece. It's really an emotionally agitated piece and is as wild as the imagination yet stands on solid ground to give you a futuristic/city feel. Smart, aggresive, beautiful, so emotional mezmorizing (did I spell that right?). Plain and simple, This is a magnificent album.

This is probably one of my favorite cds of all time. I was just getting into techno, acid jazz, trip hop etc. when this was first released. I bought it right away and was instantly a convert to the "new music" of techno.

This is intelligent music the like of which you'll never hear in the rock or pop world, but it's also got massive beats, creative instrumentation, and a punk-like attitude in places. It's so atmospheric that you can close your eyes and imagine walking through a Dead City as the music progresses.

Despite the fact that it's not the happiest music, I didn't depress me at all. There are moments of anger and rage, but also of beauty, peace, and calm. The tone of the music definitely shifts throughout, and you never know what to expect from the next track.

A real sonic adventure!!!