Field, The - From Here We Go Sublime

scoundrel, Sep 07, 2008

The Field’s _From Here We Go Sublime_ seems mistitled, because sublime is already here. I had to admit, on the first listen of this album, I wasn’t taken with it. After being so heavily hyped, I had expected something more mind-blowing. But on the second listening, that’s when the mind-blowing occurred. Loop-based music is incredibly easy to make, but is incredibly difficult to do well. But Axel Willner, the man behind The Field, has hit on a stunningly gorgeous method: his stuttering loops create almost a trance-like feel to the track such that the variations, when they come, pound into your consciousness, recreating the track anew. So even as a track like "Silent" seems straightforward when it begins, it has morphed into something unrecognizable by its midway point. Even the opening track, "Over the Ice," has its recurring vocal textures, right before things suddenly go acid. But Willner also has some surprises: when the guitar loop of "A Paw in My Face" finally resolves at the end, we can hear the complete transformation of the source material into the blissful hiccups. The same goes with the ambient title track and its slow deconstruction of Motown. "Good Things End" gallops along with thick percussion, like a pack of wild horses across a boreal tundra, and "The Deal" takes a similar aggressive stance before thundering itself into a spacious territory. "The Little Heart Beats So Fast" takes a little expression of pleasure and acidifies it into a full-fledged groover, while the brightness of "Everyday" swings into something new with the introduction of the vocals before it returns to the opening motif. The standout track, “Sun & Ice,” has such a richness of sound that it seems to glow in the consciousness, even as it suddenly decays and resumes. _From Here We Go Sublime_ offers so many pleasures that one can return to it again and again, each time discovering new things.

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