Track Listing

1. Herd Killing
2. Dead Cities
3. Her Face Forms In Summertime
4. We Have Explosive
5. Everyone In The World Is Doing Something Without Me
6. My Kingdom
7. Max
8. Antique Toy
9. Quagmire
10. In A State Of Permanent Abyss
11. Glass
12. Yage
13. Vit Drowning
14. Through Your Gills I Breathe
15. First Death In The Family

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32440 in Music
• Released on: 1996-10-28
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
This U.K. duo's landmark ambient techno album Lifeforms (1994) explored lush jungle vistas. Its follow-up opts for a much darker urban nightmare motif that makes it an ideal soundtrack while reading William Gibson. Progressive rockers by any other name, FSOL are highly respected innovators who rate with Orbital as the genre's leading exponent. --Jeff Bateman

CD Description
This seventy-minute odyssey overloads your senses and sendsyou off on a cerebral dance unlike any other. Be prepared to embark on an adventure in mood and texture, to groove likenever before as DEAD CITIES transports you to a hazy dreamland of ambient stylings. Future Sound Of London has a methodto their madness, a way with their beats, grooves, layers and dubs that is uniquely their own. While this album may notbe the appropriate response to all your moods, when it fits, it fits like a glove.
DEAD CITIES is more than just a great trance-inducer, it's an out-of-this-world experience, bringing you to a place where there's a lot to see. Some parts of this world are very beautiful and some are ugly, some soft and gentle, some cruder, but the contrasts are the most beautiful of all. DEAD CITIES IS A rich, textured album withmore layers than one could count.

Customer Reviews

A journey you will never forget
Really, how in the world do you describe a piece of music like this?
it is tricky, as the Future sound of London manage to create a musical adventure quite unlike anything else, and though made in 1996 it is timeless stuff, that production wise if you told me it had been created 50 years in the future, I'd believe you.
genre wise, it's kind of difficult to place anywhere- with the sound being more of a continuous journey through various soundscapes,both subtle and gentle and then angry, beat riddled and aggressive.
I'm really not too sure about how the tracklist works out, I am thinking that maybe the whole album is set out more like a symphony, and each well 'part of a track' is like a new movement (There are sometimes upto three tracks inside a track...)- confusing? well yes, I was tearing my hair out trying to figure it all out!
Dead cities, as it seems to be, is a journey through a cold desolate world perhaps set in the future or maybe now, it expresses the attitudes and feelings of people and situations that may be very well be apart of everyday life in a 'dead city' it melodically conjures up anything and everything and creates a fairly dark and depressing mood, But it is friendly and uplifting in places, perhaps showing the ray of hope in a world that doesn't seem to have any left...
musically you will hear quite a variety of stuff here, from the sounds of children playing in a park right over to sad, wailing gothic choirs, from lush saxophone sounds to exotic Greek instruments, as I said before, there are gentle and friendly moments in this album, but mostly it's often chilling and sinister, with a lot of the sounds being quite horrifying, (the sound of a child whispering "Make me believe I'm not going to die..." in a hushed demonic tone is frightful!) couple all these innumerable samples with synths, live instruments and beats, a powerful feel is created.
The emotions portrayed throughout the album range from relentless evil in tracks like "Herd killing" "We have explosive" and "Dead cities" to deep, depressing sad moments "Everybody in the world is doing something without me" and "Vit drowning" right over to the uplifting and beautifully moving "Her face forms in summertime" "Max" and "My kingdom"
The future sound of London have truly created an aural world in this album, you feel like you are there, sometimes because of the smashed up city sounds that surround you or just the melodies that float around and let you imagine the dark places...

I hope this review hasn't been too, well "from the imagination" in it's description, But it is a release that truly deserves a review for it's visualisation...

A remarkable and unforgettable journey that will leave you breathless.

This is Dark...
I would give this 4.5 stars. This album is probably the darkest and most introspective album I have, and the textures - and atmospheres - it creates are mind-blowing. I prefer the upbeat tracks like "Dead Cities" and the big beats of trip-hop "Yage" and "My Kingdom", I guess because the more ambient ones are to me slightly counter-active in that they are too dark to be relaxing like most ambient dance music. This album is really scary to fall asleep to (esp. track 5) and at times is pretty melancholic but sans depressing which is good. Dead Cities is definately an album as opposed to a collection of tracks, since (not meaning to sound pretentious!) the continuous and complementary moods it creates as an LP are as important as the music in any given track.

utterly uttery superb, 6 years old, still the future sound
i am listening to this cd right now as i write this review. and i will be when you read this. its a testiment to human achievement pure and simple. that after 6 years this album has still not aged in the slightest and is so rich and varied is incredible.

this album is an ambitious ride into dark ambient music. purposful and sometimes up-beat, it has been the inspiration in works for orbital as well as global communications '76. 14'. also featuring a sample of lawrence fishburn in the ace 'dead cities' track!

funky, moving, evil, morose, compeling, uplifting, sad.....an absolute masterpiece