De:Tuned is a label based in Antwerp, Belgium, who excel in releasing and re-releasing music from the first wave of acid house (and beyond) electronica musicians.

To date they have released music by the likes of Humanoid, Luke Vibert, Stasis, John Beltran, B12, Nuron, Atypic amongst others. Musically think floaty pads, spacey electronics, hissing drums and the sound of UK and US house and rave records filtered through a slightly more esoteric lens.

The next release comes from absolute dons The Future Sound Of London. The Future Sound of London (FSOL) are a super influential duo consisting of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans who originally formed in 1988. Their use of different aliases basically allowed them to explore diverse styles within the electronic music spectrum often released on their own Jumpin’ and Pumpin’ label.

We are here to dis cuss ‘Pulse Five’, a follow up to FSOL’s Pulse EP series which contains eight tracks that the pair recorded in the early 90s pulled from DATs. DATs or Digital Audio Tapes were one nice musical studio format which all of a sudden made digital recording affordable. Pre this you'd have to work with tape which were either expensive or required big studios. Anyway, we digress...

I won’t go into describing the music here (he says about to describe the music) but if you know FSOL its that messed up mix of freeform sampling but in an organised fashion. Anything gets thrown in the mix from opera, movie dialogue, stabs and riffs all often riding over “rave” drums but sitting in an esoteric world that is always very FSOL. It’s slightly psychedelic, a little off the expected norm and often pulls you into areas and sounds that as you listen you didn't expect coming round the corner. This release is them under a few of their various guises – Yage, FSOL, Mental Cube, Indo Tribe and Smart Systems.

Future Sound Of London kick off proceedings with ‘Honestly’ which is definitely one of the stone cold killers on the release. It’s classic FSOL. Spacey with super nice drums and quality production all rolling through into one perfect whole. FSOL follow with another lowdown track ‘Dialectics’ before Yage arrive with ‘Sun Risen’. It’s a riff on the classic Beloved track with a rolling deep baseline and a delayed snare popping away. It’s (excuse my language) fucking ace.

Mental Cube turn up with some breakbeat stabby rave business called ‘Big Lie’ before Smart Systems hit the jugular with ‘The Nu Generation’, which sounds like they had some (justice) fun with a certain old rave recording.

Indo Tribe turn in a fast breakbeat number called ‘Obstinta’ and FSOL return to the tracklist with ‘Reasonable Aquiries’, a super deep whoosh of an excursion and like something you may have heard on a Kiss Show in 1990 (which actually could have happened). The release closes with Yage's ‘Man Shall Be Conditioned’, a classic piece of downtempo FSOL, made up of a breakbeat riding through as weird sounds bounce from the walls of the house.

To call this an E.P does it a disservice as really this is an album of some of the finest electronic sounds being made (though un-released) in the early 90s. I don’t know who A&R’d or listened to the tracks to decide what made the cut but they’ve done a killer job so to cover all bases props to both FSOL and De:Tuned.

FSOL have this gift of mixing the ambient and the drums with the samples to create these very driving but still esoteric pieces of music. For the perfect example see their classic ‘Papua New Guinea’.

If you’ve got any interest in the early wave of electronic artists that were taking cues from acid house but spinning the coin in a different direction this may be a fine place to start. This is good. Go check.

‘Pulse Five’ is released January 26 2024 on De:Tuned. Click HERE to visit their Bandcamp.