Tessellations

Tom Ford aka Peverelist stays close to home for his third studio album. Tessellations appears on the Bristol producer's own Livity Sound label and is an assured, wide-ranging affair. It moves from the white noise of "Burning Sea" and the musical, brittle electro of "Under Clearing Skies", into big room, chord-heavy techno tracks like "Slice of Life". In the face of so many stylistic shifts, Ford still manages to maintain a common narrative, one of hypnotic musicality and intricate, complex rhythms. It is audible on the electro-tinged stepper "Further Inland", which is led by brittle drums and a warm bass, while on "Brinks & Limits", he lays down the kind of evocative synth soundtrack that is tailor made for long, hazy summer days.

This unusual book, richly illustrated with 29 colour illustrations and about 200 line drawings, explores the relationship between classical tessellations and three-manifolds. In his original and entertaining style, the author provides graduate students with a source of geometrical insight into low-dimensional topology. Researchers in this field will find here an account of a theory that is on the one hand known to them but here is "clothed in a different garb" and can be used as a source for seminars on low-dimensional topology, or for preparing independent study projects for students, or again as the basis of a reading course.