It took them a while to get there, but in mid 1991, Brian Dougans and Garry Cobain completed their debut full-length long-playing album, Accelerator, designated the alias The Future Sound of London. By this point, FSOL was one of only two projects – the other being Intelligent Communicaiton, with the subdued techno EP Principles of Motion – to fly in the face of UK dance music conventions of the time. By the time of its release, half of Accelerator had already been released, on Pulse EPs One, Two and Three and the ‘Papua New Guinea‘ single, and all five of those tracks featured the kind of melodicism, dense production and sampling dexterity that was mostly absent from the far more straight-forward hoover-led ‘ardcore and vocal house material the pair had been pumping out for Passion Music sublabels Debut and Jumpin’ & Pumpin’ since mid 1990. And while Accelerator might sound straight-forward and even dated (Brian admitted in 2008 that he considers parts of it “cheesy”) to those who came to FSOL through their Virgin material, a simple side-by-side comparison with contemporary releases like Earthbeat shows just how complex and mature these ten tracks are. The band’s use of sampling might still have been primitive in comparison with the kind of sound collages they were putting together by 1994, but the album is peppered with all kinds of unusual, unidentifiable sounds, the kinds that give an otherworldly textural feel to the tracks and makes them feel a world away from straight-forward dancefloor fodder. Similarly, the tempos are largely 5-10BPM slower than one would expect from dance music of the time, the energy more subdued, and the tracks all linked by spooky sounding abstract sections that the band would go on to name “environments” in the coming years. It may still be rooted in techno, but Accelerator‘s overall feel ties it far closer to The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld – and the new wave of ambient that it spearheaded – than contemporary dance albums by the likes of Orbital. And, like The Orb’s debut, it was very much designed to be listened to a single entity. “Our motive was to put together an album that’s a listening entity,” Garry told Echoes in May 1992, “rather than a seven-bad-tracks-three-hits job, which is blighting the dance industry.”
The album may sound like a smooth ride, but the album’s release was anything but. Already wanting to move away from 12″ singles – the move to EPs in 1991 a conscious first step – Brian and Garry compiled what they felt were the deepest and most interesting tracks from their already seemingly bottomless well of material, albeit keeping within the language of dance music (“We weren’t tweaking it as much as we’d really liked to have done, because we were trying to make a living,” as Cobain told Sound on Sound in 2006). While the album’s quality is clear to anyone listening, it proved nearly impossible to convince Jumpin’ & Pumpin’. Dance music was still considered largely a singles market – only those artists who’d had a hit single were afforded enough label confidence to produce a full-length – and, in Garry’s words, “FSOL weren’t doing well enough to justify an album”. Indeed, the name was a signifier of where the band saw their future, with almost every 1991 release crediting FSOL as producer. Nevertheless, with only a handful of lesser-known Pulse EP tracks to its name, The Future Sound of London was less likely to sell an album than, say, Mental Cube. “We are going to do great albums, we know we are going to do great albums, and therefore we are going to sacrifice Accelerator for not very much money, just so it goes out there and people realise that Future Sound of London is a great name, and we’re going to do a great album at some point,” Garry told Sveriges Radio in 2014, and while at least some of this confidence may have come from hindsight, it’s clear that the band’s faith in the album outshone its commercial potential. The album was sold to Jumpin’ & Pumpin’ for a meagre £1,500 – only twice what they’d get for a three track single – and the label’s lack of confidence resulted in it sitting unreleased for months.
Despite being distinctly more experimental than their previous work, ‘Papua New Guinea’ turned out to be a surprise hit. By the end of 1991, the original pressing had sold out, and the group soon began to work on an expanded package for a more commercially-oriented reissue. At this point, copies of Accelerator had been manufactured, and with much demand for ‘Papua’, eventually found their way out into the world in early 1992, going on for nine months after the album had been delivered to J&P. With the ‘Papua New Guinea’ reissue entering the UK top 40 in May, demand for the album grew, and a new, much larger pressing was released in June. By this point, Brian and Garry were in talks with major labels and had already begun work on material that would be released on Tales of Ephidrina and Lifeforms, and thus Accelerator was distant history for them.
The very first mix of the album was far more straight-forward than the version fans have come to recognise over the years. Ten tracks were laid out in running order, with gaps between each one. It was, of course, the way most albums were structured. It was Brian who suggested that maybe the album should be reworked to be gapless, with short bursts of music and effects linking the tracks. Armed with a number of short segueing sections, they joined the tracks manually, cutting and splicing tape. This leads to most of the links being fairly blunt, without the dense layering of later “environment” sections, but it proved to be a major part of the pair’s signature sound for most of their career. These sections would become a source of confusion on later issues of the album, with environments moving from the start of one CD index point to the end of another, but track timings on the rear sleeve being retained from the 1991 art. By the 2016 reissue, the index points had returned to their original locations.
Buggy’s front cover is striking and was, at the time, one of his very first full-colour images. Although somewhat crude in comparison with the photo collages of later releases, the explosive graphic has a suitably sci-fi feel and matches the mood of the album pretty well. The more familiar Passion-era block lettering returns, after an absence on the ‘Papua’ single. The lack of budget for dance albums meant that no inner sleeve art was created at the time (even the CD edition only features a single sided insert). The back cover features Japanese text that roughly translates to “The Future Sound of London. New era of becoming. Wise men and wise Sith. Divine intelligence created by Tem. Buggy G Riphead is his name. Manipulate the system.” Utter nonsense, but you get the idea. The slightly more coherent English phrase “They entered the vortex and the dream became reality” also features, and is replicated on pretty much every reissue of the album. It ties in with the overtly sci-fi themes of the era. CD versions were released by license on the Australian Addiction label and Belgium’s acclaimed R&S Records in summer 1992: Addiction kept Buggy’s design, R&S were rather less keen and chose their own cover. Garry later described the band’s less than fond reaction, in the first Ramblings book’s Papa’s Got a Brand New Guinea Bag story: “Our beloved Buggy G cover had been unceremoniously dumped in favour of some tastefully shot studio ethnic mask […] Fuckin’ ethno bollox.”
The credits section is… interesting. Some of the Pulse credits are retained, while others are ignored. The most obvious example is the fact that ‘Calcium’ was originally released as a Yage track, but presented here as FSOL (it is, however, “written by Yage”). ‘Stolen Documents’ and ‘Calcium’ are still produced by Luco; ‘1 in 8’ and ‘Pulse State’ are no longer produced by Mental Cube and Yage. Such is the way with FSOL credits. ‘Expander’, interestingly, is produced by Mental Cube. Beneath the credits are four logos: Freaky Deek, in one of its final appearances, Earth Beat, the Jumpin’ & Pumpin’ logo, and a pyramid logo for The Future Sound of London. This pyramid design would be used throughout 1992, but disappeared once the band signed to Virgin. All three formats of the album misspell ‘Central Industrial’ as ‘Central Industrail’ in the tracklist. A 1994 vinyl repressing corrects the spelling mistake, as well as subtly altering the cover to match that year’s CD reissue. Some copies of the 1992 repress were accidentally manufactured with the label for side 4 of The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld on side A; the music still plays correctly.
After years of comparative obscurity, Accelerator sold well. The first Dougans / Cobain work to be released on CD and cassette as well as LP, it was also their second to chart, peaking at 75 in the UK album charts and 3 in the UK independent album charts in July 1992 in its second pressing, following the ‘Papua New Guinea’ reissue. Reviews were largely positive, mostly focusing on how apt the group’s name seemed to be, with the NME describing it as “boundary bashing slabs of jazz techno, space dub electro and pre-programmed memory bliss”. The album was placed at number 21 in Melody Maker’s 1992 Albums of the Year list.
Accelerator has been reissued numerous times over the years. In 1994, following the success of Lifeforms, it was expanded to include two remixes and an eight page booklet. A further bonus track and entirely new art appeared for the album’s first American release, licensed to Hypnotic in 1996. For the album’s tenth anniversary, a deluxe 2CD edition was issued; for its 25th anniversary, two new bonus tracks were added on CD; for its thirtieth anniversary, it was released as a 2LP audiophile edition. In 2009, before the “vinyl revival” gained mainstream awareness, the 1991 edition of the album was licensed to reissue label Music on Vinyl for a 180g repress. Typically for a licensed FSOL release, a glaring spelling mistake appeared: the spine declares the album to be by The Furure Sound of London. Despite the band and label actively working together since 2007, it seems Garry’s 1995 assertion that “they’ve been mourning our departure ever since and are still regularly trying to re-release everything and anything by us” still holds true.
Release date: 1992
Other issues:
Accelerator (1994)
Accelerator (1996)
Accelerator / Papua New Guinea Mix Anthology
Accelerator (25th Anniversary Edition)
Accelerator (30th Anniversary Edition)
Tracklists:
LP (LP TOT 2 / MOVLP004 / LP RSD TOT 2) / Cassette (MC TOT 2)
A1. Expander
A2. Stolen Documents
A3. While Others Cry
A4. Calcium
A5. It’s Not My Problem
B1. Papua New Guinea
B2. Moscow
B3. 1 in 8
B4. Pulse State
B5. Central Industrial
CD (CD TOT 2 / ADD CD 002 / RS 2192CD)
1. Expander
2. Stolen Documents
3. While Others Cry
4. Calcium
5. It’s Not My Problem
6. Papua New Guinea
7. Moscow
8. 1 in 8
9. Pulse State
10. Central Industrial
Credits
Written by Garry Cobain & Brian Dougans (sleeve).
Written by Brian Dougans / Garry Cockbain (labels).
All tracks recorded and engineered at Earthbeat Studios – London 1991.
Written and produced by The Future Sound of London except:
‘Expander’ produced by Mental Cube.
‘Stolen Documents’ produced by Luco.
‘Calcium’ written by Yage, produced by Luco.
Produced and mixed by The Future Sound of London (labels).
Executive producer Tim Jones.
Artwork and profile control Buggy G Riphead.
They entered the vortex and the dreams became reality.
Fractional Difference 
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