Future Sound Of London - Papua New Guinea (12" Andrew Weatherall Mix)

Future Sound Of London - Papua New Guinea (12" Andrew Weatherall Mix) / 12 Inch Extended (HQ Audio)

Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans met in 1985 in Manchester.

Dougans had moved from Glasgow to study electronics and sound engineering at Salford College of Technology. Cobain had moved from Bedfordshire to study music and electronics at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

"I was well envious of Brian," says Cobain. "He was also a couple of years older, which seemed significant when I was in my late teens. He was very much a guiding force, and he was also extremely charismatic."

In 1988, Dougans was invited to provide music for the collaborative video project Stakker, and the resulting track, Stakker Humanoid, became one of the earliest UK-produced acid house tracks to break into the mainstream, reaching number 17 in the UK chart.

Meanwhile, Cobain and Dougans collaborated and released music under various aliases, including Mental Cube and Indo Tribe, before forming Future Sound of London.

"I wanted it to be a no holds barred massive prog rock celebration," says Cobain. "Studio-based, balancing the best of what we do as sampling collage freakniks colluding with the most liberating musical performances I can inspire - moving forward rather than retreading the past."

FSOL's first releases came in 1991 with the Pulse EP and Pulse 2 EP, followed by an early limited release of this track.

Papua New Guinea was then re-released as a single in April 1992 and reached number 22 in the UK chart.

The bassline is sampled from Meat Beat Manifesto's Radio Babylon ("one of the greatest within the culture," says Cobain), while the vocal is by Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance ("I just sampled it from a cassette").

Cobain then wrote, sequenced, and played the Roland JX-3P top-line synth parts live, before triggering the strings using an Atari 1040 ST. "It’s not the best piece of music I’ve ever written, but it just hit a mindset," he says.

Papua New Guinea was released again in 2001, with new mixes, and made number 28 in the chart. FSOL had five other Top 30 hits, including Cascade, Lifeforms (with Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins), My Kingdom and We Have Explosive.

They remixed Inner City, Stereo MCs, Massive Attack, Oasis and Paul Weller, among others.

Their other project, Amorphous Androgynous, released 12 albums between 1993 and 2020, and recorded an album with Noel Gallagher, who was a fan, which has never seen the light of day.

This 1992 12-inch single features seven versions of the track. Five are remixes by FSOL themselves, and there are also versions by Andy Weatherall (mixed at Workhouse Studios in London) and Graham Massey (mixed at Fon Studios in Sheffield).

Featured here is Andy Weatherall's take on the track, with help from his Sabres of Paradise bandmates Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner (the latter pair also worked together as The Aloof).

A value-for-money 12-inch single if ever there was one, and another magnificent Weatherall mix of a track that was pioneering enough to feature in the US Billboard 100 Best Dance Songs of All Time.

Year: 1992 Label: Jumpin' and Pumpin' Cat no: 12 TOT 17R