The Field, "From Here We Go To Sublime"

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well, it's a rather large step down from something like Wearemonster to here....

OTM. None of these records, gui boratto, the field, sound to me like they were made to be albums, in the way that wearemonster did. None of them make me want to not listen to the best 12s of that week and listen to one artist for an hour. I don't know if that's because of techno being quite good lately, or just because I have a short attention span or am too indoctrinated into buying singles.

To me, someone like Boratto releases so much music, like a 12 every week, that I can't even take his album seriously, I just think, well that 12 could have been on it, or so could that 12 from 3 weeks ago, or one from 7 weeks ago...it's just a snapshot for someone like him.

In the case of The Field it's a bit different...to speak more about the music itself, it's just kind of boring for me. I don't despise it or think it's awful, I don't hate it because it's so trancey, though I do wonder about indie kids going gaga for the trendy trance a little, it just doesn't really hold my attention. Truth be told even by the time the second single came out I listened and thought "this is great but it's just aural candy". It just seems kinda facile, plus there's no bass!

I also just generally I feel the whole anthemic melancholy cool trance thing is the most overdone style in techno at the moment.The Field may not be as bad as some Border Community ripoffs, but it still gets my goat a little in this way. Conceptually there's nothing really that interesting about trance meets My Bloody Valentine to me...

But I should say despite my post maybe not concentrating too much on the sound of the record, that's probably my biggest obstacle to liking this album...it doesn't even really sound like trance does it? Just like, noises!

― Ronan, Monday, 26 March 2007 19:51 (seventeen years ago) link

Very good album but I do wish there was more stuff like "Over The Ice" - stuff that works as a dance track while still allowing the Field schtick to do its magical stuff.

I wanted to hear this new record, but that's disappointing to read. "Over the Ice" was definitely my favorite track to walk around campus to.
I wanted more so I purchased the mp3s of the EP and some other tracks without preview hoping for more of the same
but I could never really get into the other tracks the same way and they've been sitting in a folder ever since.
Yeah, so the attention on this record is still kind of exciting
but I definitely want to pre-listen to this thing somehow before I shell out the bux.

― mox twelve, Monday, 26 March 2007 19:56 (seventeen years ago) link

I listened and thought "this is great but it's just aural candy".

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 19:57 (seventeen years ago) link

you are mike taylor and i claim my $5

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 19:59 (seventeen years ago) link

"then they changed what 'it' was. now what i'm with isn't 'it.' and what's 'it' seems weird and scary. it'll happen to yoooooou."

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 19:59 (seventeen years ago) link

"this is great but it's just aural candy". It just seems kinda facile, plus there's no bass! "

This makes me think of when I heard an indie DJ try to pump "Over the Ice" at a club.
I'm like, what are you doing. You can't dance to this at all.

― mox twelve, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:00 (seventeen years ago) link

"you are mike taylor and i claim my $5"

Actually he is wearing the Joe Claussell hat today. "Eat your greens."

― Andy K, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:04 (seventeen years ago) link

"Over the Ice" was definitely my favorite track to walk around campus to.

everybody [walk around campus] now!

― deej, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:07 (seventeen years ago) link

Agreed this has nothing on "Wearemonster" or "Dislocated Genius" as an album. I also agree with Ronan, regarding Gui Boratto, that having so, so many releases really diminishes the potential impact of the album. It's like the album better be really great (which I didn't find the Boratto album to be) in the midst of all the other releases or what's the point? Just chop it up into a few more 12"s.

As for the Field, after "Things Keep Falling Down" I was super excited for what would come next (and that Four Tops sample is still my favorite of his slowly revealed samples). After "Sun & Ice" my excitement for the album was at fever pitch for a while, but then at some point in the fall I played "Over the Ice" and was totally disappointed. It just didn't seem to be very dynamic (which I know was never really the case) even within its slightly tweaked repetitiveness. It just seemed to be there doing something pretty (and in the case of "Over the Ice" with some pretty great bass) but to no real effect. And that's, sadly, how the album hits me.

― matt2, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:07 (seventeen years ago) link

haha the funniest part is that i jizz all over the field today and tomorrow they publish a review where i shit on minimal for 800 words

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:07 (seventeen years ago) link

walkingcontradiction.mp3

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:07 (seventeen years ago) link

What review/column is that gonna be?

― matt2, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:09 (seventeen years ago) link

i do understand ronan's dislike/distaste, but i also can't ever see him enjoying pop or 94diskont or uh...that curd duca album? i guess what i'm wondering is that if this had been put out on some k-pakt side label, if he would care as much.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:09 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't think that's contradictory at all.

― Andy K, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:10 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost black dog review. it's my version of ronan's completely indefensible "things were so much better back then" type stylee

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:10 (seventeen years ago) link

a bigger question is if this album came out on too pure or darla or morr if anyone would care as much, but that's one i can't answer.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Because the equivalent in 1993 would've been to praise Seefeel and trash, er, a bunch of Global Communication rip-offs (maybe).

― Andy K, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:12 (seventeen years ago) link

Make that B12. Again, maybe.

― Andy K, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:13 (seventeen years ago) link

And to come back to the tiny sidetrack of other "big" techno-crossover albums in the recent past, could anyone really, really sit through the whole Trentemoller album?

― matt2, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:15 (seventeen years ago) link

probably more like praising seefeel and trashing a bunch of junior vasquez rip-offs

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:15 (seventeen years ago) link

post-hawtin ableton lego mixes = tribal 2k7

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:16 (seventeen years ago) link

i kind of wonder about the lasting power of it... i haven't heard the album at all (only the ep), but what i have heard is really good for a bit, then sort of samey. good nonetheless, but a sound that i tire of.

― the table is the table, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:16 (seventeen years ago) link

is it just me or is the remaster of Parallel really fuckin' LOUD?

― fandango, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:17 (seventeen years ago) link

My favourite dance lp this year so far is the Hug one. Which scares me no end.

― jim, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:17 (seventeen years ago) link

it's REALLY loud. the first disc sounds like they found it buried under black dog towers and the second is super hi-fi.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:18 (seventeen years ago) link

a bunch of junior vasquez rip-offs

Don't make my headache any worse than it is.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:22 (seventeen years ago) link

"you are mike taylor and i claim my $5"

Actually he is wearing the Joe Claussell hat today. "Eat your greens."

Come on Jess...you are just Mike crossed with a little Tom Ewing!

Anyway when I said "this is great but it's just aural candy" I meant this is great more in the sense of "this is all well and good" rather than is actually greatness. I mean, what's the point?

Also my style here isn't "things were so much better back then", I don't think dance music is in the doldrums, I think it's doing great, I mean, come on, I manage to do a weekly radio show of new stuff I like. I just don't much like the incarnations of house and techno that seem to characterise the popular album formats, ESPECIALLY not Kompakt's versions, and let's face it Kompakt is the big album techno imprint du jour. It just seems forced and they've been ploughing this fucking indie-trance furrow for years now, it's starting to wear a bit thin not least when there is so much good house music around.

― Ronan, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Come on Jess...you are just Mike crossed with a little Tom Ewing!

touche, sir. touche.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:52 (seventeen years ago) link

i think i'm actually more like vahid. i can never keep what i love and i what i hate straight anymore.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 20:54 (seventeen years ago) link

i was wondering how long it would take for the MBV reference to appear.

― tricky, Monday, 26 March 2007 21:40 (seventeen years ago) link

At this stage I'd like to hear a comp of dance producers who've never heard of MBV...

― Ronan, Monday, 26 March 2007 21:43 (seventeen years ago) link

so wait are some people in this thread saying there's a bit of borrowed nostalgia from the unremembered 90s in this album?

― tricky, Monday, 26 March 2007 21:48 (seventeen years ago) link

ugh. for the unremembered 90s i mean.

i bought that black dog reissue the day it came out and i have to say that while parallel is still great, i'm still feeling 2007 art techno way more.

― tricky, Monday, 26 March 2007 21:55 (seventeen years ago) link

though yes, there is ample reason to bitch about it

― tricky, Monday, 26 March 2007 21:59 (seventeen years ago) link

well i did write the review in cranky old man mode, that's for sure

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 21:59 (seventeen years ago) link

i think whenever i use the word "kids" derisively in a review i should have $5 docked

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:01 (seventeen years ago) link

Haha Ronan one of the reasons I like the Gui Boratto album is precisely because it sounds like he just threw together a load of good tracks he had lying around, rather than trying to craft an album or whatever. I wish more producers would do that - definitely prefer it to the Trentemoller approach anyway.

Part of what's frustrating about the Field album is that it feels like it's meant to be Sat Down And Listened To and yet it fails to hold my attention past the half way line. There's a sort of 'nice in small doses' pretty blandness to it.

― Matt DC, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:02 (seventeen years ago) link

yes!! roffles

― tricky, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:02 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost dammit

― tricky, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:02 (seventeen years ago) link

"There's a sort of 'nice in small doses' pretty blandness to it."

yup. i bet it would fairing better if it was under the 40 minute mark.

― tricky, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:04 (seventeen years ago) link

i am boggled by people who think this album demands being listened to closely! if anything it feels like it's meant to just wash over you or zone out to it. AMBIENT, PEOPLE, AMBIENT.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:05 (seventeen years ago) link

the times this album has sounded best to me have been when i've been walking home late at night zonked out of my mind from tiredness

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:07 (seventeen years ago) link

When I heard it again yesterday while drifting into an afternoon nap I was all "Ah, perfect."

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:10 (seventeen years ago) link

Darla has totally put out scads of music like this, going way back to the mid/late 90s, but so far as I remember none of it was anywhere near this good, what with the lowered indie / weedy / Flowchart / "lookit what I did in my basement over spring break" aesethetic (which I'm not knocking, just saying those were different days, when synth-pad Sundays covers were totes awes and it seemed totally convenient for Hyperreal to bring drum-machine samples and drug-chemistry seminars together at last).

But so people would take this less seriously as a Darla release for sure, but that probably says more about people's low opinion of little Darla and her treats than drinking the Kompakt Kool-Aid.

― nabisco, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:10 (seventeen years ago) link

they've been ploughing this fucking indie-trance furrow for years now, it's starting to wear a bit thin not least when there is so much good house music around.

I would say the Field LP is where "indie-trance" finally starts to get interesting. Of course, I don't know much about trance in general, so that's not really what comes to mind when I listen to this.

― lou, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:10 (seventeen years ago) link

Can someone photoshop a review of this record onto one of those ads for pensioner laxatives?

― Ronan, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:11 (seventeen years ago) link

http://web.media.mit.edu/~mike/moi/i/307-ParisIrelandLondon-2000-06-16.jpg

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:13 (seventeen years ago) link

"i say, we simply must have more of that delicious m_nus and tuning spork when we visit the vineyard this year."

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:14 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.sciences.adelaide.edu.au/programs/images/wine%20tasting1.jpg

"a subtly fruity bouquet with minimal hints of pine and well engineered aromatics"

― strongohulkington, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:17 (seventeen years ago) link

ipreferthelindstromremix.jpg

― Ronan, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:17 (seventeen years ago) link

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