ISDN

"They're so antisocial," said Mixmaster Morris of the reclusive Future Sound of London. "They won't even go to parties anymore--they do all their gigs over the telephone." After the success of their majestic "Papua New Guinea" single and the Accelerator album from which it was taken, FSOL retreated to the studio and never left. Their only communication with the outside world was through their music, an increasingly abstract Dadaist collage of overdubbed beats and noises that defied genres and stymied trend-happy journalists. While some of the material on ISDN was previously released under the pseudonym Far Out Son of Lung (the worst-kept secret in dance music), the bulk of the album was taped from performances delivered via digital telephone links to radio stations throughout Europe. Naturally, the ubiquitous and intrusive medium of radio encourages challenging and elaborate environmental music. So unlike their previous album, Lifeforms, whose closest earthly relation was techno, ISDN is the distant cousin of jazz, both in its blatant sampling of sax and drums and its freeform, exploratory nature. --Matthew Corwine