The Future Sound Of London – Music For 3 Books

i have been a huge fan of fsol since the mid 90s, beside BoC and tipper they are my favourite electronic artists and i also love their psychedelic music recorded with their band.
somehow i overlooked their albums from the last years and i was thrilled when i saw, how many stuff they released.
music for three books is a wonderful album, which feels not like a compilation, but more like a real album, they are also masters of the right tracklist.
the music is made mostly with synths and drummachines and sounds similiar as the wonderful "music from calenders", it is listening electronica and perfect for decent headphones.
it is different from their sample based music, but it has the special fsol feeling for sure.
the production is awesome.
i am very happy to discover their output from the last years!

Since 2017, Future Sound of London releases have been... unconventional. Triple albums of new and old work (later truncated to a single CD), digital releases delivered one track a month, mix CDs of unreleased material and no tracklist, re-recordings of old material, digital bonus tracks released with books, etc. Music for 3 Books collects material from the latter of those, namely the three mp3 EPs originally available with purchases of the Ramblings of a Man Vol. 1-3 zines. While it's nice to have this material in high res and physical formats, FSOL is generally a name associated with flowing, thematically linked music. In that context, does a collection like this really work?

Thankfully, yes. There's no official word on whether the material here was all originally intended to be heard together, or if the EPs were more spontaneous, and as - other than a couple of posts on Gaz's Facebook - there's been literally no public discussion about the creative process of 21st century FSOL releases, it's unlikely we'll ever know. Either way, the 17 tracks here complement each other perfectly. Indeed, the only hint that this was ever released in three parts comes in the form of each EP containing a 'Views' piano piece (normally restricted to one an album on previous releases). Playing gaplessly from start to finish, it feels and sounds very much like a standalone 'proper' FSOL album.

Given the five year gap between the Environment Six and 7 trilogies, the album is a handy stopgap that is actually quite a useful halfway point between those eras. Several of the pieces here are in the bleepy IDM style of Environment Six - 'Skylines', 'Replace I With You', 'Outsourced', etc. - only they feel very slightly more developed, complex and more textural. 'Fracti' combines this sound with odd samples that are reminiscent of the band's '90s material. Elsewhere, there's an increased use of acoustic sounding drums and breakbeats, something largely missing from the aforementioned Six trilogy. 'The Whispering Masses' is dark and brooding, with staggered, krautrockish beats, 'Magnify Within the Thought' calls on the band's jazzier side, while 'Take Umbrage', 'Disseminate' and 'External Limits' feel like modern updates on the ISDN era. There's also a heavy amount of pure ambient on the album, including the unusually lengthy sound collage 'Episode', the atmospheric 'Restricted Conversation Between Occupants', and the aforementioned 'Views' tracks. The various styles are spread out fairly evenly over the course of the record, leading to an album that ebbs and flows, constantly taking the listener by surprise with new directions and changes in sound.

While the multi-genre approach is a staple of FSOL albums, it works particularly well here because of the use of texture. Building on the approach of the previous is-it-an-album-or-a-compilation Archived : Environmental : Views, which largely featured very stark, minimal material filled out by crackling textures and rumbling field recordings, those crumbly, visceral timbres are featured throughout much of the album here, giving the album a real sense of life and movement throughout. While the staggered approach of the music's release should really get in the way of any thematic sense, the textural consistency throughout the various tracks here, regardless of genre, unifies the record as a whole. The regular crackles, gurgles and flutters used give the sense of the album existing in a natural wilderness, with rivers, wind in the trees, footsteps on loose stones all suggested, even if not always explicitly heard.

Music for 3 Books feels like an expansion of the ideas explored in the Environment Six trilogy, and while it does sometimes features those albums' tendency towards short, sketch-like tracks in places, it also hints at the richer, chunkier and heavily textural Rituals, the first part of the Environment 7 trilogy that followed this collection. Which brings about the idea of naming. FSOL have seemed reluctant to give any of the recent FSOL albums 'proper' names, simply having them as part of the Environments series, and, in this case, a very literal description of the origins of the material. For many, this seems to downplay the importance of the music, making the records seem like loose collections rather than standalone albums. While Music for 3 Books needs some acknowledgement that some fans would already have this material, it could easily have been given a standalone title with the Books disclaimer in parentheses. Because, had you given this to somebody in 2017 and said it was Environment 7, or just A New FSOL Album, it would have ed without question. It's a fantastic album in its own right, and deserves to be listened to as such.