Early solo career While his former bandmates discontinued their musical careers, Borland moved to the
Netherlands in 1988 to found yet another band, after initially going there on holiday and to meet his manager (Rob Acda).
Adrian Borland and the Citizens was formed there, taking advantage of the popularity of the Sound on the continent, and the relative inexpense of venues in the
Low Countries. In 1989, Adrian Borland and the Citizens released
Alexandria, a huge departure musically from
Thunder Up and featuring four backing vocalists, bass, cello,
clarinet, drums and
kettle drums, piano, saxophone,
harmonica,
tambourine,
viola, violin and guitar. Some continuity was provided by former Sound bandmate Colvin 'Max' Mayers collaborating by reprising his role of keyboardist, while Nick Robbins again engineered and co-produced the album with Borland. The album featured much calmer, lighter tracks than those on
Thunder Up, such as
"Light the Sky" and
"Rogue Beauty". As always, some tracks deal with Borland's own precarious emotional state, such as
"No Ethereal" and
"Deep Deep Blue". In an interview with
Melody Maker the same year, Borland said of the title: The album, however, suffered from poor sales, selling an estimated 10,000 copies on the continent and a mere 1,000 in England. Borland attributed this to poor distribution. while David Cavanagh gave it four, praising the atmosphere of 'a strange, dizzy optimism' pervading the album. As one critic argued: '[Borland's] reflective writing remains as good as ever', and the Big Takeover went further, proclaiming it 'inspired'. With some critical endorsement Borland continued to work on new material throughout the year. At some point in 1992 he travelled to Amsterdam to record a session with Victor Heeremans, re-recorded and released many years later as the posthumous
The Amsterdam Tapes album. Recorded in a crossover point in his career, it represents a shift in both musical and mental directions: while tracks like
"Ordinary Angel" show some continuity with the tone of
Brittle Heaven, the forcefulness of tracks such as
"Fast Blue World",
"Darkest Heart" and
"Via Satellite" clearly preclude Borland's later, harder style as seen on
5:00AM and
Harmony and Destruction. On the other hand, the acoustic-based fragility of tracks such as
"Happen" and
"White Room" represents a more immediate turn to lighter, less ambitious music -the latter would be re-recorded to feature on the 1994 album
Beautiful Ammunition. This period also saw Adrian's 1993 collaboration with French-Swiss musician Mark Hunziker at the latter's home studio in London, initially on the basis that Adrian would simply help Hunziker out with some solo recordings. The project became such that the duo largely ended up working on songs and lyrics brought by Adrian. These rock-sounding sessions, which included masterpieces like "Love=Fire" and "Under Your Black Sun" were widely bootlegged and shared among fans until compiled from a variety of sources by Jean-Paul Van Mierlo and properly mastered (by Reinier Rietveld at 2x2 Studios in Rotterdam) for release by Sounds Haarlem Likes Vinyl's "Stichting Opposite Direction" label in 2019 under the title "Lovefield", with a second batch released under the title "Neon and Stone" in 2021. The duo also recruited Mark Wilkin (drums) and Neil Rickarby (bass) for three or four live performances in the London area and came to a sad end after a suicide attempt by Adrian during one of his slumps. Around this time had also Borland begun working on music production; he produced albums by
Felt,
Into Paradise and Waiting Sound. One notable change from
Brittle Heaven is presence of dark, introspective songs, particularly
"Lonely Late Nighter" and
"White Room", emphasised somewhat by the empty, lonely musical framework. This is not to say, however, that more confident tracks are banished from the album:
"Reunited States of Love" and
"Someone Will Love You Today" are perfect examples of this, and yet still exemplify in their tentativeness a decisive split from
Brittle Heaven-era songs. Critical reception was as muted as always, and mixed where evident; Big Takeover complained that it was 'too light and airy', but vaguely appraised the work as 'finely honed and pleasant'. The following year, 1995, was to be an important year for Borland; not only was the album
Cinematic written and released, but his work with Carlo van Putten, Claudia Uman, Florian Bratmann and David Maria Gramse in
The White Rose Transmission came to fruition, with the side-project's self-titled debut appearing that year. They would continue to perform intermittently throughout the 1990s, Borland being a major contributor.
Cinematic was a stablemate of
Beautiful Ammunition in that it was also created in the Survival Studios and under the Resolve label, yet demonstrated a further evolution in Borland's musical career. Despite being in a similar situation as regards funding,
Cinematic benefited from much better, integrated production as well as punchy tracks such as
"Bright White Light". With the psychological opener
"Dreamfuel" a dream-like atmosphere pervaded the album, establishing itself in indolent, moody tracks like
"Cinematic" and
"When Can I Be Me?". It was, overall, a more coherent attempt than its predecessor, but – predictably – did not win over the public. Critical reception, however, was even more welcoming. With an AllMusic.com ranking of 4 stars the album was lauded: Simon Heavisides stated: 'Isn't it great when your old favourites don't let you down?...[it] leaves you with the feeling at the end that you want to hear the whole damn thing over again." Mitch Myers wrote in 1997: 'Everybody is a star, but Borland's cinematic life is well worth watching.' Glenn McDonald, however, offered up a less enthusiastic summation: 'The music had an impressive sweep to it, but the production seemed to me to emphasise the mechanical repetitiveness of the arrangements'. The album also lent its name to
Cinematic Overview the following year, a compilation album of Borland's work stretching all the way back to the mid seventies. Also in 1996, the newly formed Renascent Records label reissued Sound records
Heads and Hearts (with
Shock of Daylight) and
In The Hothouse, complete with new packaging, and liner notes by Borland himself.
Later years Borland's last release during his lifetime was the album
5:00AM. A switch to
Earth Records and a slight change of crew – Tim Smith of Cardiacs now co-produced with Borland Before attending to what would become his last solo recordings, Borland wrote twelve of the fourteen tracks on The White Rose Transmission's second release,
700 Miles of Desert, recording them with the band between November 1998 and January 1999 and producing the album himself. Borland was proud of the work, and said so in his last public writing, dated 18 March 1999: ==Death==