|
The album undeniably employs 4/4 rhythm, which, I suppose, classifies it as techno; its minuscule musical progression begs for the minimal adjective; and its repetitive and hypnotic structure, no doubt puts people into trance. The German label has released numerous minimal gems in the past years, from Thomas Fehlmann, Gui Boratto, Klimek and Richard Voigt. Slapping the terms like "trance", "minimal", and "techno", may quickly dismiss this album's true essence. Yet, From Here We Go Sublime is not a banging stomp of grinding beats that you may imagine it to be. But it is that minimal progression, the buildup without the dynamics, the riding trip into narcotic fractal, that works well for Willner, time and time again. But that's just on the surface. Landing the album on Kompakt Records couldn't be more appropriate for Willner.
The reviews you may find on The Field are mixed. But these labels shine some truth on what the music has to offer. And who could deny Kaito's skillfully approach to simplicity in his Hundred Million Light Years. Beyond the deeper layers, Axel Willner, who goes by the name The Field, employs tiny sampled, hiccuped, locked loops, that create the music all on their own, as if the needle was stuck in skipping groove. In fact, it is relaxing and surreal; it is a child of ambient and techno; it is sublime. It may seem that skill is underplayed, when loops go on forever with barely any manipulation, as if an amateur discovered the fun in Ableton's sample locking, layering and filters. My favorite track is A Paw In My Face, because at the end it becomes "unstuck" and my brain unplugs as if the switch flips off in my electric chair.
The album undeniably employs 4/4 rhythm, which, I suppose, classifies it as techno; its minuscule musical progression begs for the minimal adjective; and its repetitive and hypnotic structure, no doubt puts people into trance. The German label has released numerous minimal gems in the past years, from Thomas Fehlmann, Gui Boratto, Klimek and Richard Voigt. Slapping the terms like "trance", "minimal", and "techno", may quickly dismiss this album's true essence. Yet, From Here We Go Sublime is not a banging stomp of grinding beats that you may imagine it to be. But it is that minimal progression, the buildup without the dynamics, the riding trip into narcotic fractal, that works well for Willner, time and time again. But that's just on the surface. Landing the album on Kompakt Records couldn't be more appropriate for Willner.
The reviews you may find on The Field are mixed. But these labels shine some truth on what the music has to offer. And who could deny Kaito's skillfully approach to simplicity in his Hundred Million Light Years. Beyond the deeper layers, Axel Willner, who goes by the name The Field, employs tiny sampled, hiccuped, locked loops, that create the music all on their own, as if the needle was stuck in skipping groove. In fact, it is relaxing and surreal; it is a child of ambient and techno; it is sublime. It may seem that skill is underplayed, when loops go on forever with barely any manipulation, as if an amateur discovered the fun in Ableton's sample locking, layering and filters. My favorite track is A Paw In My Face, because at the end it becomes "unstuck" and my brain unplugs as if the switch flips off in my electric chair.
There is a dearth of knob-twiddling and production wizardry in evidence, leaving the tracks sounding decidedly one-dimensional and two decades out of date.It's difficult to discern what accounts for this album's esteem amongst self-proclaimed indie scenesters, though my suspicion is that the album/group names have more than a little to do with it. surgically removed.
Turns out my misapprehension was well-founded. I was leery when I saw that Pitchfork Media, that bastion of scenester fashionability staffed by stiff-jointed, tone-deaf English majors, gave this album a 9.0.
The songs on this album sound like the middles of other songs, with intros, outros, bridges, breaks etc. "From Here We Go Sublime" is a surprisingly lukewarm, redundant release from the frequently above-par Kompakt label.The main disappointment is that there is no sense of build-up or progression to be found on this disc: tracks start in media res, already plateauing, and remain more or less at the same keel for 6+ minutes.
Even the most cliché-ridden, club-tailored music has a basic sense of progression, of build and release. Without any relief from this midtempo monotony, the tracks come off as suffocatingly repetitive rather than entrancing.For a minimal house/techno effort, I was hoping at least for some clever sound design, but in that regard the album disappoints as well.
(My initial assumption based on these names was that this was some twee, lo-fi indie rock disc by a New England duo).There's so much better, smarter, more fun and more soulful electronic music out there that it baffles me why anyone would waste time on this, as opposed to picking up, say, Sasha's Airdrawndagger, a melodic minimal techno-ish set that runs rings around "From Here We Go Sublime" and predates it by half a decade.
This is essential music. Just when I thought that electronica had run its course; just when I thought that electronic musicians around the world had exhaused all the "bleeps", "bloops", bass lines, and cold beats that computers could muster, Axel from Sweeden comes out with this.The music seems simple - insanely so. But that's the beauty of it; it's not bloated.
The question here is simple - if you are looking at reviews it is because you want to know whether you should buy it or not. The answer is easy as well: Get it. It's worth it
|
