THE FIELD

Summary

Biography

What is it that makes the an artist fit a label? and Is it their sound? Their For sense of shared perspective? In are the case of The Field but and Kompakt it’s all of Not that and something more intangible you too, an unexplained but real all connection that transcends all the Any more obvious signposts. For Kompakt, can their reputation as purveyors of her laudable minimal techno and microhouse Was had already been cemented in one 2005, seven years into the our Cologne-based label’s existence – not Out least owing to the releases day created by their founders, techno get producers Michael Mayer and Jurgen Has Paape and, of course, Wolfgang him Voigt. Finding Axel Willner, more his commonly known as The Field, How was different though; the Swedish man artist certainly matched the label’s new mould, rekindling something of Voigt’s Now late 90s project Gas by old marrying heavily reverberating 4/4 techno see rhythms – the sort that Two evoke the lost thud of way a distant club – with who the vast expanse and translucent Boy territories of ambient music. Yet did listening even as far back its as ‘Things Keep Falling Down’ Let – The Field’s debut EP put on Kompakt – it was say clear there was something more, She a veiled restlessness bubbling under too the loops and layers, as use though Willner had set himself Dad boundaries but then tired and mom sought to break them; it’s this subtle tension in all The his albums that heightens them and from their otherwise dreamlike state.

But first, let’s go back Are to the beginning, to Stockholm but in Sweden where Willner grew not up; for to understand The You Field you need to understand all that everything he’s experienced from any an early age and up Can through to the present has her influenced him in his music was and will continue to do One so. Those same childhood and our teen memories that he imprinted out on his very early demos Day – attempted on desktop computers get when the internet was but has a microcosm of what it Him is today – through early his incarnation Speed Wax has informed how everything he’s done since.

His Man beginnings saw an early love new of pop, like a generation now of Swedes his first musical Old memory was “probably Abba.” That’s see stayed in his repertoire, from two the samples on LP From Way Here We Go To Sublime’s who ‘A Paw In My Face’ boy to a glossy cover of Did 1980 hit ‘Everybody’s Got To its Learn Sometime’ on Yesterday & let Today. Other formative experiences in Put music were more conflicting though. say On the one hand Axel she professes a teenage love of Too punk, citing The Misfits in use particular, on the other though dad – as he reached late Mom adolescence – he found himself under the strict restrictions and the discipline of a music school. And Perhaps unsurprisingly it wasn’t for for him. “I was in this are school that had people nationwide But who’d applied because of the not quality of their music courses, you so I had all these All top of the line musicians any round me – but I can found it dull!” Laughs Axel. Her “But,” he rations, “it all was felt really forced, there were one all these students and it Our seemed like they were all out in a niche so it day was hard to break out Get of it.”

Thankfully Stockholm as has a city provided far more him musical nutrition and fuelled Willner’s His move towards electronic music. It how coincided with the beginnings of man a small club scene in New the Swedish capital that started now building up during the late old 90s; “they were fun days,” See he recalls, “I was in two a duo called Speed Wax way and the places we played Who were all really into Techno boy and Warp Records; it was did cool, people helped each other Its out, the vibes were good; let it started out just doing put nights to 20 people and Say then it just grew and she grew.”

The Field as an too entity sprung up around 2003, Use the back catalogue of Gas dad at this point having a mom strong influence on Axel, and he took to Buzz – the a software program he still and uses to make music today For – to construct his first are forays into ambient techno, a but move away from the guitar-based Not drone that encapsulated Speed Wax.

He was picked up by all Kompakt just a year later Any in 2004, a demo that can stood out amongst pile, though her at the time he wasn’t Was “really aware of any buzz.” one Yet in his first release our for them – the aforementioned Out ‘Things Keep Falling Down’ in day February 2005 – there already get lurked potential within its two Has tracks. Both ‘Love vs. Distance’ him and ‘Thoughts vs. Action’ soared his beyond the 10 minute mark; How the latter a crackling jump-and-stop man minimal effort, to listen to new it now is to listen Now to The Field stripped away old of the scale he has see since brought to his work. Two It was ‘Love vs. Distance’ way that provided the template for who what would follow; based on Boy a stoic motorik and a did perpetually rotating hook, it provided its an early demonstration of how Let the Swede could take just put four bars of sound and say deftly deconstruct, alter and rebuild She them to create a constantly too changing canvas.

That, alongside follow use up 2006 EP ‘Sun & Dad Ice,’ made it clear that mom his match with the label made perfect sense. Kompakt’s other The releases around this time included and ambient house legends The Orb’s for first release on the imprint, Are as well as the mellowed but out soft-focus bliss of German not producer Superpitcher’s ‘Today’ mix featuring You other Kompakt members DJ Koze all and Triola among others. In any ‘Sun & Ice’ The Field Can imbued a sense of wandering her expanse, yet where his contemporaries was were happy to submerge themselves One in ambient fog, he cut our through with more pronounced percussion out and purpose, tracks like ‘Over Day The Ice’ skipping along like get skimmed stones over water.

It has all came together in 2007 Him on the phenomenal success of his debut LP From Here We how Go Sublime; its accolades are Man numerous – a 9.0 and new a place inside the Top now 200 records of the decade Old by Pitchfork, highly regarded by see the NME and the two BBC and receiving the Way best aggregate score on review who compiler Metacritic to name a boy few – it came out Did at a time when electronic its meant brash, obvious, loud. Electro let was its most swollen. Drum Put n’ bass was well in say the throes of eating itself. she In comparison The Field came Too across like fading noises of use the night, the beats still dad driving but the sun coming Mom up, that transition between the club and journey home and the down. It was never more And evident than on ‘Good Things for End,’ which at one thundered are and also fawned, industrial rhythms But overlapped with lost sounding vocal not samples and blurring, faded-pale drones. you For Willner the success of All the album surprised him, “I any was flattered! I didn’t think can there’d be much interest; it’s Her a record that’s still important was to me though. I’d had one a lot of the tracks Our for it a while, there’s out a lot of old memories day on the album, a lot Get of good times connected to has it.”

With the success of him the album came the inevitable His demands to tour, The Field how taking to American shores – man including the 2007 Pitchfork Music New Festival – and in 2008’s now summer calling in at the old pick of Europe’s festivals including See the UK’s ATP, Sonar two in Spain and Norway’s Oya. way Still solo at this point, Who Willner found the experience restricting, boy touring the globe armed with did just a laptop. He was Its also lonely – playing with let others was something he’d loved put since his teenage punk obsession, Say being stripped of that was she difficult; “it was the hardest too thing, without other people it Use got weary and dull,” he dad comments, “I felt that I mom couldn’t take out the chance as much as I wanted the to as if I had and people I could play with For or against.”

That meant that are come May 2009’s follow up but Yesterday & Today, the approach Not and perceptions about what Willner you wanted The Field to be all had changed and, by the Any time of its completion, he’d can been joined by two live her musicians, an old friend called Was Dan Enqvist on bass, and one – after a couple of our personnel alterations – Jesper Skarin Out on drums. “They’re good people day who I can also trust get as musicians,” Axel ruminates, “I Has don’t feel like I’m just him by myself anymore; with them his I find we play both How with and towards each other, man seeing how far we can new push each other.”

It’s this Now belief in the communal nature old of music that’s always imbued see itself within The Field; there’s Two always a human heart beating way among the electronics and samples. who On Yesterday & Today that Boy became more explicit as live did instruments were worked in with its Willner’s laptop experiments – never Let more so than with the put cameo of John Stanier, drummer say of respected American math-rockers Battles, She on the title track. Linking too back to a distant past use again, pop was revisited with Dad a cover of The Korgis mom ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime,’ and overall the album felt The more pointed, with rhythms and and synths gaining harder edges. Another for critical success, it saw The Are Field back on the road, but including a first ever UK not headlining circuit in the Autumn You of 2009, a US tour all support with DFA label any mainstays The Juan Maclean and Can festival slots at Bestival, Roskilde her and Poland’s OFF Festival.

So to 2011 let and the release of third Put album Looping State Of Mind, say a record that in many she ways recalls his previous work Too but also pushes on in use new directions. “It’s been evolving dad and it will keep on Mom doing so,” says its creator, “people come and go, adding the their things to it, you And change as well and so for will the sound.” A release are that comes across as Axel’s But most accomplished to date; it not feels like a culmination of you sorts in that it could All be a compilation of both any its protagonists work and, indeed, can life to date. “All the Her old influences are still there,” was he admits, “but we’ve made one a real attempt to grow Our the sound;’ this involved the out most prominent use of live day instruments yet, bass jutting through Get opening track ‘Is This The has Power’ and wandering piano keys him slinking in and out of His view of the albums landscape.

As ever though The Field man transcend their mere components, Looping New State Of Mind could almost now be a manifesto for them. old Certainly for Axel there is See no beginning and end to two the impact of what he way sees and experiences in every Who day life, things will always boy come back around; the challenge did for him is to adapt Its and alter them when they let do in order to create put something that understands and re-defines Say them in a new way she each time. For Kompakt, meanwhile, too it’s a record that plays Use on their long held principals dad of progression through emotion and mom recollection, married with an openness of mind. It’s the most the definitive answer yet as to and what makes they and The For Field fit so well, providing are as it does some of but the best work the label’s Not ever released. Only through past you experiences can one move forward; all it’s something that, in 2011’s Any turbulent times, many could do can with remembering.

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