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By: Mark Gomes
Article published: 18th May 09
Release: Album
To Cure: A predictable playlist
What:
Yesterday and Today
Who:
The Field
On:
Kompakt / Stomp
Related links:
Filter magazine interview, MySpace
The Field's last album, From Here We Go Sublime, was an aptly named stunner of crossover micro-house, rapturously received in 2007 by a general audience newly hip to the possibilities of repetitive electronics. Italo Disco, Panda Bear's extended sampling pop and seemingly everyone's referencing of Krautrock (however vague or inaccurate) had prepared sub-pop listeners for the next logical step - a revision of 1990s trance and ambient styles and the long-form bump and click of Euro techno labels Kompakt and Mille Plateaux. And so Swedish producer Alex Willner, aka The Field, arrived with his misty scissor-edit shuffles and memories of The Orb, to great acclaim.
Yesterday and Today adds elements of live instrumentation to The Field's successful mix of endlessly looped and reversed micro-samples, slow-inching crescendos and monotonous, cloudy core sub pulse. Bells, vibraphone and drums courtesy of John Stainer from Battles go a way to humanising Willner's aerodynamic sound mists, but thankfully not too far; for the most part it's still pure vapour and glide, and more snow falling in the headlights. The Field's translation of austere club electronics for the masses reminds of Underworld's strategy at the height of their success, and this record to their muted, classic club / not-club album, Beaucoup Fish.