There were many who cried foul in regards to The Field's last album, Yesterday And Today, for the distance it seemingly put between Axel Willner and the music he'd perfected on earlier album From Here We Go Sublime. Not that it was a change stylistically but it felt like a bit of a step back from what he had accomplished on his previous album. Where on Sublime he had managed to successfully use the simplicity of layers of loops against the barest of beats, on Yesterday and Today he unneccessarily piled more complexly structured arrangements which felt overstuffed and pointless, which is not to say that it was an unmitigated failure but that it was merely a dissappointing follow-up to a classic of the genre. But fans needn't worry that his latest release follows in that albums particular footsteps. On the contrary, Looping State of Mind succeeds on the back of Willner's creative use of repetitive loops and basic beats to construct an album of absolute grace out of the barest of sonic components, much like he did on From Here We Go Sublime.
Looping State Of Mind will be viewed by some as a return to form for Willner and rightfully so. It does seem to be the spiritual successor to Sublime in all the ways that Yesterday wasn't. Opener "Is This Power" sustains a surging kinetic motion, as seems appropriate to usher us into the album. The beat marches over a repeating synth as the song progresses until the mid-point at which time the synths fade away to make room for what sounds like skeletal guitar notes being played over an ever increasingly forceful beat. After a time, the synths reemerge and we move alongside the music, happy just to be this close. "Then It's White" with its slow churning piano and shuffled beat feels like a distant cousin to Radiohead's "Pyramid Song", both in mood and texture. It carefully builds and repeats until that repetition takes on a kind of autumnal beauty. Then the beat slowly comes into focus and carries us deftly to end of the track, with some ghostly vocals at the end bidding the listener farewell. With this album, Willner acknowledges the limitations, as such, of the genre within which he operates while also allowing it to expand beyond the intial concepts that he created with his first recordings. And by his supposing that Looping State Of Mind can bridge the gap between his and other types of music, he makes that case that music, even that of different genres, is not so disparate and not so difficult to reconcile to one another. For him, music should never be divisive. And with his latest record, he successfully makes the case that music is indeed all inclusive no matter your personal preferences.
Tracklisting:
01. Is This Power
02. It’s Up There
03. Burned Out
04. Arpeggiated Love
05. Looping State of Mind
06. Then It’s White (listen to the mp3 below)
07. Sweet Slow Baby
No comments:
Post a Comment