The ‘Papua New Guinea’ single was the first FSOL CD I bought. I’d picked up ‘My Kingdom’ on cassette, and liked it enough to want to explore their other releases. At a third of the cost of their main albums, the single was an obvious choice for a child of 12. The idea that record shops used to keep a range of back catalogue CD singles is hard to comprehend in the 2020s, but it was common practice. Even so, the single was going on for five years old when I bought it, which gives an idea of how much interest there still was in the track. None of the band’s other singles were in stock, but the shop considered ‘Papua New Guinea’ to have sales potential at even this point. After I’d purchased it, another copy appeared in store.
I had no idea then just how important the track was, both in the history of British dance music and in FSOL’s career. To me it was just a single and a bunch of remixes. But in early 1992, the demand for the track was high: Jumpin’ & Pumpin’ had put out the stalled Accelerator album to cash in on people after the track, but it was clear that a reissue would be in order. Brian and Garry rose to the occasion: instead of doing a straight re-press of the original 12″, they and the label prepared a full commercial single: seven new mixes, including two from name producers and released on chart-friendly formats like CD, cassette and 7″, as well as 12″. And the chatter around the track was enough to get it radio play – even from unlikely daytime radio DJs like Jackie Brambles and Steve Wright – and, eventually, chart success, entering the UK Top 40 at 27 on 23rd May 1992, peaking for two weeks at 22, and eventually dropping out of the Top 100 in July. Unsurprisingly, it also topped the UK dance charts.
The chart position led to an inevitable Top of the Pops performance – Brian’s second, Garry’s first – which was an exciting moment, and also one fraught with frustration, due to PRS performance restrictions at the time. As Garry later told Music Technology Magazine, “we couldn’t use the vocal samples in the track, because all the vocals on the show have to be live. So, we had to get in a male singer and a female singer to sing the sample parts, but then the engineer saw two front people, took it as a band and mixed the vocals way too loud – even though we asked him not to. Also, the cameras were on the front people all the time – we didn’t even get our faces on TV!” The female vocalist was Riz Maslen, a musician who had started working in the same studio block as Earthbeat, and who would go on to be one of many varied players in the FSOL expanded family, as well as an electronic musician in her own right under the name Neotropic. Still, Garry was absolutely right about the performance: “in this context, as well as Riz did, the track would simply fall apart with that vocal repeating ad nauseam throughout without the character, mix and magic.” The performance became another repetitive dance track without the ethereal nature of the reverb-drenched Lisa Gerrard vocal, and captured little of the original’s glory. Maslen, unsurprisingly, remembers the day more fondly. “It was quite a fun thing to do,” she told Juno in 2016. “We spent most of the day going round the Eastenders set, getting our picture taken in front of Frank Butcher’s motors and the Queen Vic. We thought that was more fun than doing Top Of The Pops. We certainly made great use of our five minutes of fame.”
Despite the performance’s limitations – which, it turns out, could easily have been overridden with some persuasion from management, as The Orb’s famous ‘Blue Room’ performance later in the year would prove – the Top of the Pops broadcast was a sign that FSOL were now a band to watch. After two years releasing limited run 12″ singles mostly destined for club play, they were now in the public eye, performing on TV alongside household names like The Cure and Lisa Stansfield. The track had been picking up plaudits from all corners, with uniformly glowing reviews from critics and DJs alike. Groups like The Orb were leading the way with album-oriented, home listening electronica, and the general public was beginning to follow. Record labels were keen to cash in on this new movement, and approached Brian and Garry. ‘Papua New Guinea’ would be the last release they would deliver to Jumpin’ & Pumpin’ as a necessity.
The band created three new mixes for the single, plus the inevitable radio edit. Only one, ‘Journey to Pyramid’, was a radical reworking, with ‘Dub Mix’ and ‘Monsoon Mix’ being more of a sketch and an alternate take respectively. A lot of attention was given to Andy Weatherall’s mix, which appeared in three forms: a full 11:30 minute, a ten minute cut for CD, and a three minute edit for the 7″ and cassette versions. 808 State’s Graham Massey also provided a remix, and friend of the band Hamish McDonald was responsible for a third reworking. In what would become common practice in the 1990s, the various mixes were spread out over different formats – ‘Monsoon Mix’ being a 12″ exclusive, Hamish McDonald’s version only found on the CD, the Weatherall edit only on the 7″ and tape – meaning three purchases would be required to collect all nine mixes and edits. Over the years, the CD fan has been best served, with every version eventually released on the format. Although not as satisfying as the band’s later multi-part singles, the CD and 12″ releases do offer an enjoyable 40 minute listening experience that hints at the longform approach they were keen to follow. The release could easily have come out with the original three tracks and a radio edit and would have no doubt achieved similar success.
For his part, Buggy put in a lot of work. While the front may just be a slightly warped version of the original, albeit with the more typical block lettering, the four different release formats have different back covers: a version of the mask image with motion blur for the 12″, a forced perspective version backed with map imagery for the 7″, a striped pyramid for the cassette, and a cobweb-like design for the CD. Several different fonts are also utilised over the various designs, and all four feature the Earth Beat and FSOL pyramid logos. Freaky Deek is nowhere to be found. As with all three Jumpin’ & Pumpin’ FSOL CD singles, there is no text on the spine. A misprinted version was made with plain black labels on side A; a clear pressing was tested, but never widely manufactured.
The popularity of the single led to it being licensed to ZYX in Germany and R&S in Belgium, the ZYX release featuring fewer tracks but retaining Buggy’s artwork (including the Andrew Weatherall advert on the front, despite the mix being absent from the 12″); the R&S 7″ utilising the “fuckin ethno bollox” cover and a couple of glaring spelling mistakes: “Papa New Guinea” and “Graham Massex”. Garry’s rant about “Papa New Guinea” is well documented in the ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Guinea Bag’ story found in Ramblings of a Madman Vol. 1, in which the spelling mistake is lampooned, not only on this release, but the award for Best Techno Track at the 1992 DMC / Mixmag Awards. To this day, bootleg remixes and people talking about the track online still regularly spell it as “Papa”, much, one imagines, to Garry’s chagrin.
‘Papua New Guinea’ would go on to define the band to wider audiences, and would be reissued numerous times over the following years. Hypnotic licensed the 1992 CD single in 1996; new remixes were brought together for a 10th anniversary reissue and anthology; a fan bootleg was authorised as an official remix in 2007. FSOL themselves gave the track a long overdue longform single reworking as Translations. Those fans who followed the group in their Virgin years and later are unlikely to consider it the band’s best track; neither do the band. But its importance in their history is impossible to overstate: ‘Papua New Guinea’, and especially its 1992 reissue, rocketed the group from an underground techno production line to a major label broadcast system.
Released: 11th May 1992
Other releases:
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (1996)
Papua New Guinea 2001
Papua New Guinea Translations
Papua New Guinea (Marco V Mix)
Papua New Guinea (Herd & White Remixes)
Papua New Guinea (Original) / Murmurations
Papua New Guinea / Stolen Documents
Tracklists:
12″ (12TOT 17R)
A1. Papua New Guinea (12″ Original)
A2. Papua New Guinea (Andrew Weatherall Mix)
A3. Papua New Guinea (Dub Mix)
B1. Papua New Guinea (Journey to Pyramid)
B2. Papua New Guinea (Monsoon Mix)
B3. Papua New Guinea (Graham Massey Mix)
B4. Papua New Guinea (Dumb Child of Q Mix)
CD (CDS TOT 17)
1. Papua New Guinea (7″ Original)
2. Papua New Guinea (Andrew Weatherall Mix) [CD edit]
3. Papua New Guinea (Dub Mix)
4. Papua New Guinea (Journey to Pyramid)
5. Papua New Guinea (Graham Massey Mix)
6. Papua New Guinea (Dumb Child of Q Mix)
7. Papua New Guinea (12″ Original)
8. Papua New Guinea (Hamish McDonald Mix)
7″ (TOT 17) / Cass (MCS TOT 17)
A. Papua New Guinea [7″ Original]
B. Papua New Guinea (Andrew Weatherall Mix) [Edit]
12″ (ZYX 6786-12)
A1. Papua New Guinea (12″ Original)
A2. Papua New Guinea (Dub Mix)
B1. Papua New Guinea (Journey to Pyramid)
B2. Papua New Guinea (Graham Massey Mix)
CD (ZYX 6786-8)
1. Papua New Guinea (7″ Original)
2. Papua New Guinea (Andrew Weatherall Mix) [CD edit]
3. Papua New Guinea (Graham Massey Mix)
4. Papua New Guinea (Hamish McDonald Mix)
7″ (RS 92709)
A. Papua New Guinea (Original Mix)
B. Papua New Guinea (Graham Massey Mix)
Credits
Composed by Brian Dougans & Garry Cobain (sleeve).
Composed by Brian Dougans / Garry Cockbain (labels).
Produced by The Future Sound of London.
Recorded at Earthbeat Studios 1992.
Engineered by Yage.
Andrew Weatherall Mix additional production & remix by Andrew Weatherall at The Workhouse. Additional keyboard and programming by Jagz & Gary Burns.
Graham Massey Mix additional production & remix by Graham Massey at FON Studios.
Hamish McDonald Mix additional production & remix by Hamish McDonald.
Executive producer Tim Jones.
Design & artwork Buggy G. Riphead.
Publisher Skratch Music Publishing.
Fractional Difference 
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