Axel Willner has so far released three fantastic albums as The Field taking his love of loops to rather incredible heights. I've always had a thing about loops from the German synth masters of the 70's, William Basinski's breathtaking classical Disintegrations, Spacemen 3's lock-groove guitar explorations to… well everything really.
But I wasn't expecting this. You'd expect an album by a band with the word loops in their name to feature, well… loops. I mentioned the German synth masters above and this most definitely has more in tune with them than anything else Willner has recorded. I'm talking of Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, Kluster and so on. These are beautifully textured pieces showing a man happy to find a good sequence and let it run whilst he manipulates and improvises with the filters.
For example, 'Broken Bow' kicks off with a great guitar clang, lots of decay and space, repeating over the course of three and half minutes before the sequencer begins and everything starts sounding like Edgar Froese circa 1974. Fabulous stuff.
This is an album that makes no shit about it's influences but who cares? No one makes music like this anymore and it's great to be able throw on something other than my trusty old Kosmiche albums that I know inside out.
If you've heard of any of the German electronic pioneers I've mentioned then approach this one with an open mind. If not, you should play this album whilst doing some serious research.
Incredible.
No comments:
Post a Comment