Field - From Here We Go Sublime
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CD Details
Artist: FieldEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-04-05
Music Label: Kompakt Germany
Soundtracks:
- Over The Ice
- A Paw In My Face
- Good Things End
- The Little Heart Beats So Fast
- Everday
- Silent
- The Deal
- Sun & Ice
- Mobilia
- From Here We Go Sublime
Music reviews of From Here We Go Sublime
Music Review: Overpraised; enjoyable, not earth-shattering.
Rating: 3 Stars
More than any other album in the past few years, From Here We Go Sublime reaches back to the "artistic" style of techno that was associated with Warp Records in the early nineties. Like the work of Autechre and Aphex Twin, it's very minimal. The music doesn't really have much forward development, and instead alternates between two or three different phrases for five to seven minutes at a time. Also like the work of Warp artists, the album as a whole seems designed for quiet contemplation, even though many of the individual songs are upbeat. The title gives away Axel Willner's ambition -- the album wants to be more than merely danceable, energetic or fun, it wants to be "sublime."
On the first side, it succeeds to a large degree. The first six tracks are very listenable and make for excellent driving music. Willner's secret weapon is the hazy production, which puts a slight hissing echo on the rhythms while keeping the volume low, so that they sound distant and mysterious. This technique appears on the first track "Over The Ice" and then is repeated exactly on "Good Things End." The piano in "A Paw In My Face" and the keyboards in "Everday," which might have sounded fit for some loud rave track in another context, are similarly treated. The effect is very hypnotic, drawing one into the rhythms.
But there's a big difference between Aphex Twin and The Field. Willner doesn't have the ability of Richard D. James to write simple but inventive and easily memorable instrumental melodies. In fact, he can't really write an original drum track either. Instead, he relies on the most recognizable, generic dance beats, which he then gives the foggy echo treatment. You've probably heard all of them before in popular dance songs. The unvarying pulse of the backbeat makes many tracks seem very similar to one another. For its entire duration, "Over The Ice" repeats the exact same rhythm in different ways. A cut-up vocal sample is brought in, but again, it just follows the beat. There are no melodic lines, nor does the track build up to anything.
And that's actually one of the best parts. The very insistence of the rhythm can be bracing, and after each occurrence of the vocal sample, there's a well-timed break with a chugging counter-rhythm that raises the danceability factor. Under the right circumstances, it's an enjoyable track. But it is limited. Even at its best, the album doesn't have the evocative power of the best techno albums, since it avoids so many of the techniques that make electronic music appealing in the first place, without really substituting anything in their place. Even Willner's use of samples results in less variety than one might think. "A Paw In My Face" uses a sample of a guitar from some disposable pop song, but then the sample is manipulated into a very simple two-note guitar line. As an earlier reviewer observed, the second it sounds like the guitar is about to really do something, the song ends.
The one exception to the ultra-minimalist rule is "Silent," which starts out very similar to the other tracks, but introduces a cooing flute-like melody (possibly a manipulated vocal sample) halfway through. All of a sudden, the track really does come to resemble Aphex Twin's best work. Instead of repeating the rhythm, the melody gently snakes around it. The end of the melody flows seamlessly into the beginning, and the unhurried repetition induces a blissful trance. It's also placed quite well in the album, as the culmination of the strong first side and as an airy contrast to the shimmering, processed keyboards of "Everday."
But as the album goes on, the music becomes even simpler and more repetitive, and comes to rely entirely on the echoing production for its effect. "Sun And Ice" goes back and forth between two different keyboard notes in the background, both set to a straightforward house thump. Pleasant as background music, but wearyingly long as a main focus. "The Deal" is a ten-minute succession of repetitions of one sample of airy female vocals, singing one note. Again, unintrusive and airy if kept in the background, but tedious if unaccompanied by some other activity. The title track is a confident demonstration of Willner's method of composition -- after playing a simple loop made out of a sample from some sixties song, he abruptly changes from the loop to the original sample, almost unchanged -- but the fact is, its sole value is as a demonstration. Once you get past the surprise of the old song's sudden appearance, the fact remains that there's nothing of particular musical interest going on. Shortly thereafter, the song ends with a bunch of spastic and not very graceful bleeps.
So, overall I tend to agree with the reviewer who suggested that the album could best serve as a repository of techno "templates." The album can be fun to listen to if you're in the right mood, and it's good as a complement to a setting. If you have something else to concentrate on while you're listening, and you tune into focus only periodically, you might then feel like the album lives up to its name. But if you concentrate exclusively on the music, it may be difficult to sit through the whole thing.
Description of From Here We Go Sublime
Electronic music usually profits from simplicity, a point the Field?s Axel Willner understood well when he made From Here We Go Sublime. Hailing from Sweden, Willner?s record has a weightless allure built out of droning spaces and populated with puffy cloud melodies that float and hover. It?s not exactly minimalist, because the layers are too complex and full of forward motion. But the assured way they repeat and loop into a dance-friendly texture would make both Brian Eno and Underworld proud.FHWGS has no interest in the usual peaks and valleys of trance, and yet its consistent anthemic oomph makes it a distant relative of that oft-derided genre. Willner?s patience and his emphasis on muted beats enable him to get maximum impact with only slight tweaks. "Over the Ice" sets the table with soft tones and scattered, wordless voices before dropping a hyper cross-rhythm, while glitch-y sidebars frame the exceedingly kind melody that drives "A Paw in My Voice." Even when the BPM notch gets kicked up on a relative burner like "Everyday," it fits right in with the record?s benevolent disposition. It?s brilliant stuff, a less-is-more epic that wafts onto the dance floor like a gust of summer wind. --Matthew Cooke
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