In early 1997, Virgin’s European arms went about a second run of promotion of Dead Cities, using the album’s tour as a way of reframing the material. As a result, CDs of February’s Fun Radio transmission were pressed and released, as ISDN Show for the Dutch market, and ISDN Live in France itself. The show was also made available as a Real Audio stream on the band’s Astralwerks website. One of the two most common setlists of the tour, this particular batch of tracks is very light on album material, with ‘Yage’, ‘My Kingdom’, ‘Her Face Forms in Summertime’, ‘Herd Killing’ and ‘Max’ all existing in radically different versions, ‘Glass’ in its album arrangement, and the remaining material all being exclusive; oddly, Leon Mar’s Oil track ‘Psycho Crab’ lacks any credit on the Dutch edition, it seemingly being considered a FSOL track for this release. It’s a wise choice of set to release, as the strong differences between the show and the album highlight how varied the era is, and how the ISDN transmissions go beyond simply playing the album. The atmosphere is distinctly different to the album, with environments being more obviously based around sample-mangling, giving them the gooey, organic vibe more similar to the band’s 1994 works, and many of the tracks being darker and more percussive than the material on the album itself. If Dead Cities is an exploration of a city, with its light and dark sides evenly balanced, ISDN Show is very much the urban decay version often talked about in reviews and interviews, wildlife gradually taking over as the city’s decimated remains begin to fester.
The really weird thing about this release is that the CDs seem to have been mastered by a moron. ISDN Show is very weirdly cut, starting with ‘Yage’ split over two tracks, meaning the indexing and tracklist don’t match up until ‘Herd Killing’; ISDN Live is an absolute nightmare, some indexes being around 50 seconds long and not even remotely lining up with what’s listed on the tracklist. Who did this? And why? There’s absolutely no logic to it; even with the long environments in the first half of the show, it’s not hard to work out where the actual tracks start and end, and it should be patently clear to anyone that ‘Her Face Forms in Summertime’ is not the guitar environment at the end of ‘Womb’. So let’s try and clear it up.
Firstly, what is the tracklist here? For simplicity’s sake, I’ll be using the live titles of the tracks given in 1997, rather than their studio titles used later (more on that further down). I also won’t be including ‘Is This Real’ or any of the other environments, as a typical FSOL release of this era wouldn’t really include them. I also won’t be including ‘Womb 2’, because it doesn’t seem to actually exist (if it does, it’s a 20 second abstract environment). So, the actual setlist of the show is:
1. Yage
2. My Kingdom
3. Womb
4. Oil – Psycho Crab
5. Her Face Forms in Summertime
6. G Electro
7. Tingler 96
8. Glass
9. Herd Killing
10. Max (Original)
11. Carlos
12. Everyone in the World
13. Sitting Around
As previously stated, ISDN Show gets this mostly right: some of the index points are slightly questionable, but other than ‘Yage’ bafflingly taking up the first two tracks (and thus ‘My Kingdom’ through to ‘Glass’ being out by one), everything roughly makes sense, and the lack of an obvious ‘Womb 2’ means the final few tracks line up fine. What we have is basically:
1. Yage
2. Yage
3. My Kingdom
4. Womb
5. Oil – Psycho Crab
6. Her Face Forms in Summertime
7. G Electro
8. Tingler 96
9. Glass
10. Herd Killing
11. Max (Original)
12. Carlos
13. Everyone in the World
14. Sitting Around
‘G Electro’ is named ‘G Eletro’ on the disc, which is actually a cooler name, but incorrect.
ISDN Live actually starts reasonably well for the first two tracks, and then goes off the rails massively, with no tracks after ‘My Kingdom’ matching up at all. Even worse, track 3 contains none of the tracks titled on the sleeve at all, being two minutes of environments – ‘Kaaawa’, ‘Is This Real’ and the environment from ‘Womb’ and ‘We Have Explosive (Part 1)’. After ‘Womb’, everything returns to comparatively normal, only this time two tracks out; the removal of the non-existent ‘Womb 2’ still means the closing tracks are one out, meaning both ‘Everyone in the World’ and ‘Sitting Around’ have to exist in the final index to make it work. This makes the tracklist a maddening:
1. Yage
2. My Kingdom
3. (Kaaawa / Is This Real / Womb environments)
4. Womb
5. Womb
6. Oil – Psycho Crab
7. Her Face Forms in Summertime
8. G Electro
9. Tingler 96
10. Glass
11. Herd Killing
12. Max (Original)
13. Carlos
14. Everyone in the World / Sitting Around
Many years later, studio versions of several of these live tracks reappeared on the From the Archives series, without their working titles, meaning we can now do a secondary run of tracklists.
Actual setlist:
1. Hallucination
2. My Kingdom
3. Accompaniment for Melodious Expression
4. Oil – Psycho Crab
5. Her Face Forms in Summertime
6. Yaschica
7. War Machines
8. Glass
9. We Have Explosive (Herd Killing)
10. Insides
11. Santana
12. Everyone in the World
13. Arrived
ISDN Show:
1. Hallucination
2. Hallucination
3. My Kingdom
4. Accompaniment for Melodious Expression
5. Oil – Psycho Crab
6. Her Face Forms in Summertime
7. Yashica
8. War Machines
9. Glass
10. We Have Explosive (Herd Killing)
11. Insides
12. Santana
13. Everyone in the World
14. Arrived
ISDN Live:
1. Hallucination
2. My Kingdom
3. (Kaaawa / Is This Real / Accompaniment for Melodious Expression environments)
4. Accompaniment for Melodious Expression
5. Accompaniment for Melodious Expression
6. Oil – Psycho Crab
7. Her Face Forms in Summertime
8. Yashica
9. War Machines
10. Glass
11. We Have Explosive (Herd Killing)
12. Insides
13. Santana
14. Everyone in the World / Arrived
Think that was tedious? Wait until we get to the entry for The Isness.
I have mixed feelings about ISDN Show, and the whole Dead Cities tour. There are some fantastic bits, I enjoy hearing the tracks re-arranged (although none top the album versions for me), and of course any new FSOL is great, especially given the range of new environments created for the shows. That said, the atmosphere is so different to the album, and lacks of a lot of the record’s beauty. Certainly ‘Yashica’ and ‘War Machines’ are fantastic tracks, but they don’t come close to material like ‘Max’, ‘Dead Cities’ or ‘Through Your Gills I Breathe’ when it comes to actually moving me. A worthy release in its own right, but for me, a slightly inferior take on Dead Cities.
Fractional Difference 