Send "Field " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Tinymixtapes |
 In the race towards the eclectic, everyone heads for the same emblems of otherness. It’s one of those paradoxes. The natural tendency for opinion to become centralized, even amongst left-of-the-dial types, is perhaps particularly problematic when consensus falls on a techno record. What does the face of a famously anonymous genre look like? How does a product of our roots and rock culture understand, much less enjoy, an envoy from this historically insular scene?TMT writer Gabriel Keehn, in his review of I Love Dubstep, likened listening to Burial’s self-titled debut — without close familiarity with UK garage and grime — to embracing Finnegan’s Wake before reading Portrait of the Artist. This was my stance on The Field’s debut, From Here We Go Sublime, as writers from all quadrants of the alt-world were stumbling over each other to sing the record’s praises, effectually announcing their well-rounded listening habits without ever having to sweat through an actual rave. Upon listening to it, I realized that, unlike Finnegan’s Wake, it was as accessible to newcomers as it was rewarding to connoisseurs. Whatever mechanisms were at work catalyzing the success of From Here We Go Sublime, it seems fair to say that it was a case of the cream rising to the top. True, The Field’s record label, Kompakt (ANTI- in the US), had been crossing the dance/ambient/art-rock divide for years, its many Loveless-influenced releases beckoning to curious dance noobs. Foregoing any dubious and exhausting meta-history — tracing the path from 1980s Detroit to Wolfgang Voigt — Yesterday and Today, the sophomore effort from The Field (née Axel Willner), can be easily understood as part of the tradition of moody follow-ups à la In Utero: a pairing of a signature sound with willful experimentalism. Yesterday and Today alludes to the identically-titled Beatles record with the famous "butcher" cover, one of the Fab Four’s first attempts to break free of their golden boy image. The opening track’s repulsive title "I Have the Moon, You Have the Internet" is another barometer of Willner’s mood: a little petty and defensive, but steadfastly gazing towards the sublime....full text |
| Clashmusic |
| A critical success a couple of years ago, The Field’s debut album ‘From Here We Go Sublime’ switched entirely new audiences onto the potential of ambient techno, to the music’s ability to transport a listener to some fresh state of escapist revelry. Its mix of beat minimalism and expressive textures enraptured people who’d never previously been smitten by the genre, and blogs across the web exploded with superlative-laden critical accounts of the record’s significant impression. It was, in short, A Hit....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| As with any artist whose singular sound wins an admirable cross-section of hearts-- especially in a time when fewer niche artists are rewarded with attention from outside their scene-- it's hard to envy Axel Willner as he follows his debut, the 2007 breakout From Here We Go Sublime. Offer a complete revamp of his paradoxically mist-light-but-brick-dense mix of ambient and trance? He'd be accused of selling out his smitten fanbase. Pack Yesterday and Today with six slabs of self-parodic more-of-the-same? He could await the entitled mewling about wheel-spinning and diminishing returns. So it's unsurprising that Willner's taken the easiest route. Yesterday and Today calculatingly comprises three songs that extend the known rush of Sublime-- the barely there hissing drums; the short, soft vocal samples swept into grandly corny pastel clouds; the poignant you-call-those-melodies? abstracted from the emotionally-manipulative fakebook of post-rave cheese-- and three very different potential future directions for the Field discography. It sounds like a hesitant record, made by a man stuck between the rock of new non-DJ expectations and the hard place of an artist's desire to grow without being compromised by an audience whose needs he can only guess at. It's also quite good, despite the possible failure of nerve on its creator's part. Good or no, though, it's doubtful the new-old stuff will convince those un-seduced by Sublime. Willner's tracks are so formally simple that's it not necessarily wrong to claim that if you've heard one then you better dig a lot of edge-of-perception variations in woosh and chug to get through a whole record. But then the rickety claim that "there may not seem to be much going on but..." has tripped up decades' worth of critics trying to sell verse-and-chorus kids on bleeps and loops. Let's say this to the suspicious: If the sound-qua-sound of a Field track's first minute doesn't trigger near-synaesthetic glee, it's guff to promise any mind-rearranging revelations five minutes later, or even many of traditional minimalism's "holy shit!" moments....full text |
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