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Accelerator

by

The Future Sound Of London

 
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Accelerator
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Avg: 4.0 (80 ratings)

Tomorrow's music, yesterday.

  • We Say...

    Before they were FSOL, Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans traded as Stakker Humanoid, whose fast-cut, skullcrushing cyberbeats don't show a spot of rust almost 20 years on. After FSOL, they went largely under the moniker of Amorphous Androgynous, purveying gaseous, colourised ambient. Accelerator (released in 1992) catches them at a fascinating, schizoid pivotal point.

    On the opener “Expander,” the rapid-fire attack of a body-popping acid riff is juxtaposed with celestial vocals and morphing effects which realise in sound some of the ideas the duo also explored as graphic designers. At times on Accelerator, it's as if a giant retractable roof is slowly opening on an indoor rave to reveal a vivid, explorable night sky. “Papua New Guinea” is probably the standout track, its majestic piano motif flanked by screeching, jungle, avian noise, its “Funky Drummer” backbeat kicking in beneath the vast, ethereal awning of a Lisa Gerrard sample. The album affords gentler, jazzier climes — on “Pulse State” for example — but generally, as on “It's Not My Problem,” bolt upright rhythms are coupled with a spatial and tonal awareness lacking in their contemporaries. On the mock-Utopian “Central Industrial,” there's even a nod back to the pre-future sounds of Throbbing Gristle and Kraftwerk. This was, indeed, tomorrow's music yesterday.

  • They Say...

    Upon its belated U.S. release (a full five years after its initial U.K. issue on a tiny indie, and after three other Future Sound of London albums had been issued in the interim), Accelerator sounded almost retro. It's clearly by far the most conventional of the duo's albums, the closest to a straight-up hard techno set they ever did. Tracks like the opening "Expander" are almost anonymous; "Pulse State" honestly sounds like it could be by any one of a dozen contemporaneous techno acts. Two tracks, however, lift Accelerator above anonymity: the whirring, chattering pulse of "It's Not My Problem" sounds like Can on E, and the sublime "Papua New Guinea," based on a guest vocal by Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard, was (for 1991) something entirely new: ethno-ambient. This idea was subsequently run into the ground by far too many less-talented hacks, but even after being subjected to those knockoffs, "Papua New Guinea" still sounds majestic and fascinating. Accelerator is a formative album, but with enough to recommend it.

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