The Field | From Here We Go Sublime

I was kicking around Axel Willner’s (aka The Field) MySpace page looking for an image to accompany this post and came across the picture above (titled “somewhere between Stockholm and Västerås 2003”) and thought it was the perfect imagery to go along with Willner’s music. It’s something about the washed out/hazy sky and glaring sun through sparse trees, along with the dark contrast of the foreground and elevated highway that reminds me of the Swedish ambient techno producer’s music. There’s something very surreal about both the picture and Willner’s music.

From Here We Go Sublime may very well be the best album I’ve heard all year, and yes, that’s even counting Gui Boratto’s Chromophobia. The album opens with “Over The Ice” which abounds with chopped up female vocal samples and repeated loops; Willner mixes in a minimal techno beat and tops it all off with a hint of shoegaze atmospherics, layering his music like a sundae. The results are hypnotizing. The first track gives the listener a really good taste on what to expect from the rest of the record. Willner has this unique talent of taking loops, letting them dangle, extracting them to infinity, and then layering other endless repeats over what he already has, crafting a complex sound.

“The Little Heart Beats So Fast”, the most dancefloor ready track on the album is centered around chopped up female grunted “uh’s” and a driving beat to boot. It feels like you’re listening to the song from the outside, like you’re standing in line waiting to get into a club and you can just barely make out the dance beats as the acidic bassline permeates out through the brick walls and punches you in the heart.

“Silent” starts with what sounds like muffled church organs over a soft minimal beat and around the 2:18 mark picks up pace as Willner, true to his trademark adds more repeated loops and layers, blissing out the listener to no end while keeping their feet firmly planted on the dancefloor. I didn’t think it could get any better until I came to the end of Sublime and Willner dropped a mashed up sample of The Flamingos 1959 doo wop chart-topper “I Only Have Eyes For You” on the flutey title track which closes out the record.

Sublime is a stunning and enduring debut, leaving me to wonder “what else does the Kompakt imprint have up their sleeves for us this year?”

Head over to Insound to pick up a copy of From Here We Go Sublime and check out “Over The Ice” below.

The Field  ”Over The Ice” (via The Yellow Stereo)