The Isness
Six years after their future shock treatise,Dead Cities, Future Sound of London's Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans return with a psychedelic songfest. Exchanging electronic ambient loops, trip-hop beats, and alien textures for backwards guitars, sitar symphonies, andDonovan-style folk songs,The Isnesscaptures '60s psychedelia in all its nonsense and nirvana. You can still hear the FSOL intellect and collagist aesthetic, but the duo have abandoned the sequencer-created hallucinations of their 1994 masterpiece,Lifeforms. Recording live drums, brass, strings, percussion, and vocals in their London studio, FSOL used an Apple Mac to arrange and treat the sounds into a cosmic song cycle. With Mellotrons surrounding Cobain's ethereal vocals,The Isnessmatches the "I Am the Walrus" dirge of "The Mello Hippie Disco Show" against the bucolic Donovan serenity of "Goodbye Sky." "The Lovers" recreates a boilingHendrixfunk meltdown. "Galaxial Pharmaceutical" recalls the epic bluster ofPink Floyd, and "Guru Song" the droning loops of theBeatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows." It all works as magically as a tab of LSD.The Isnessis a psychedelic classic, 30 years late.--Ken Micallef