There are more systems than ever dedicated to figuring out exactly what you want. Every click, scroll, pause, and impulse is harvested, refined, and fed back to you in an endless cycle of hyper-targeted desire fulfillment. On their third album, “3,” Ann Arbor’s Fling II asks a simple question: what if you made something for absolutely nobody?
In a digital timespace stalked by the shifting, pixelating apex predator of Desire Optimization, Fling II concluded that a humble American neo-Krautrock n-gon of part-time participants lacked both the resources and domain expertise required to meaningfully compete with the Leviathan of Hypertargeted Urge Satisfaction.” Rather than pursue what listeners supposedly want, they identified a marketable capability gap: creating things nobody asked for.
The result is “3,” an album entirely diegetic to the experience of making itself — a self-contained reflection on process, intuition, and creative drift. A meta-expression of its own creation, the record functions as a purely inward-facing auto-response. An album for nobody in particular, or perhaps particularly for nobody.
Drawing inspiration from the vastness of parking lots, the prismatic strangeness of online advertisements for walking tai chi, and the passive performance of a basket of fruit sitting in a gas station, “3” offers a bespoke cut of unoptimized, non-perfected Kosmische Musik. Across the album’s expansive runtime, motorik rhythms, Cosmic Country textures, new age atmospheres, and classic synthesizer explorations intertwine into something both familiar and quietly strange.
Growing on the vine over two days in the studio before undergoing an extensive period of roasting, grinding, and percolating in the lab, 3 arrives as the most spacious and fully realized entry in fling ii’s triptych of releases to date. If earlier records suggested affinities with the hypnotic momentum of Neu!, the Cosmic drift of Ashra, and the rhythmic elasticity of Can, “3” pushes those influences further outward, finding unexpected common ground between Krautrock repetition, pedal steel reverie, and late-night ambient reflection.
The first single, “lau,” signals fling ii’s return with characteristic subtlety. Like a stretch before a late-night run or the aroma of good coffee before the first sip, the track unfolds gradually across six minutes of mild, responsible bliss. Dual arpeggiated triangle-wave synthesizers stretch, morph, and gently orbit one another, creating a meditative drift that feels suspended somewhere between memory and observation.
Stream “lau” via the Spotify player below:
“‘lau’ is a loose ode to the time I’m pretty sure I saw Laurie Spiegel in Tribeca feeding a pigeon while I ordered a cortadito,” the band explains.
Made especially for us and not for you, with all the gear we could get our paws on, 3 finds fling ii embracing the freedom that comes from abandoning optimization entirely. In a world increasingly designed to anticipate every desire, the album stands as a quiet argument for surprise, accident, and the possibility of making something simply because it felt worth making.
The new album “3” will be released via We Are Busy Bodies on August 21. Pre-Order here.
Tracklist:
01. Lau
02. inke
03. Bant
04. Beem
05. Ilia
06. Mago