When it comes to titling instrumental music, there seems to be two main trains of thought. The first, and most common, is to go with something poetic, evocative, which gives the sounds a context for the listener. The second, not so common but still around, is the completely functional – a title descriptive of how the music is made. It is telling that The Field head for a combination of the two, titles that include words like ‘arpeggiated’, ‘slow’ and ‘looping’ alongside ‘power’, ‘sweet’, ‘burned’ and ‘mind’. The German-based three-piece, led by Swede, Alex Willner, use this as a way of acknowledging both the form and content of their music, giving both equal status, something not often done for purely instrumental music.
Looping State Of Mind, The Field’s third album, is a ‘priority release’ for its label, Kompakt. And the album clearly has the Kompakt pedigree you might expect – smooth, flowing electronics, sharp dynamics absent, replaced with building sound fields and meandering structure. But, where the Kompakt sound can sometimes be accused of melting into aural wallpaper, The Field have no such problem. The presence of live drummer Jesper Skarin and bassist Dan Enqvist add obvious human texture to proceedings. For example, ‘It’s Up There’ spends its last couple of minutes as a drums, bass and subdued synth workout that wouldn’t sound out of place on an LCD Soundsystem track. And, while the straight four-four kick pulse is ever present, many of the smaller rhythmic elements are slightly off-kilter loops such as in the album opening ‘Is This Power’ and ‘Arpeggiated Love’. The title track brings to mind some of the electronic textures used by Underworld circa dubnobasswithmyheadman. And the closing two tracks, ‘Then It’s White’ and ‘Sweet Slow Baby’ bring in a far grainier set of sound colours to match their more abstract structures and rhythms.
Looping State Of Mind‘s tracks are all lengthy – the briefest clocks in at seven and a half minutes and the album’s hour utilises only seven tracks. This makes it clear that The Field are going to be exploring their devices, in both a physical and structural sense. The ‘Looping’ is ever present, with layers and layers of sounds gently aggregating continually. It is the small additions and subtractions of these loops which give the music its forward momentum, rather than traditional electronic techniques such as filtering. The delicate balance between hypnotic repetition and interest through textural movement is maintained expertly across the album. This means the album is perfectly enjoyable as a home or headphone listening experience, as well as the loud, bassy club environment for which Kompakt releases are often known. The track structures function equally with the actual content, making sense of those aforementioned track titles. The closest contemporary analogy I can think of would be that of Fuck Buttons, though The Field build their similarly structured epics without the same use of distortion as their British counterparts.
All in all, Looping State Of Mind is an album I’ve been enjoying greatly. It works as a single structure, though I can also imagine individual tracks sounding epic in a DJ context. For fans of the Kompakt sound, the album won’t be a disappointment. The Field have added enough of their own personality, however, to set them apart from their colleagues and give them their own small slice of the sound spectrum to call their own.
Adrian Elmer
