The Field creates lush, colorful album

By Jordan Sargent

Published April 13, 2007

There's been a certain embrace, for lack of better term, within the indie community of microhouse, a genre that's an amalgamation of traditional house, glitch and ambient music. It's music that's about texture, with an emphasis placed on softness, warmth, silkiness and sensuality.

From Here We Go Sublime, the full-length debut album from The Field (government name Axel Willner) is all of those things. The album's 60 minutes (exactly) feel like being wrapped in a blanket or coated by a soft mist.

But it's also distant. Vocals, if there are any at all, are left to female voices cooing, echoing and gasping insomuch that nearly all enjoyment of this album is almost the sole responsibility of the listener. This is an album that takes almost complete self-immersion, especially if you're not inclined to like instrumental or dance music because it's up to you to determine what you think Willner wants you to feel or what he is feeling. There's no "Oh, darling, please forgive me" here to clue you in.

The sounds and compositions on Sublime are almost all abstract and ethereal, producing abstract and ethereal feelings within the listener: warmth, security, despair, sadness, angst and detachment among them. Blurry lines frame all those feelings at best, so filling in the blanks (or reading between the sounds if you will) is upon you. If you're the type of person who likes your music open for personal interpretation and attachment, allow me to introduce you to your new favorite album of 2007. If you prefer your artists' feelings more self-evident, or at least more direct than a song "sounding happy" or "sad," then you might want to seek enrollment in Sunday school with Conor Oberst.

Now that I've got that 245-word disclaimer out of the way, let's move on to the music. Sublime is like watching a time-lapse video of a blooming flower. Each song grows deliberately and outward from within, but never goes too far. Nothing here is too over-done, too glossy, too thick or too suffocating. The compositions — and that's a more apt description than "songs" — move from simplest to simpler to simple. And that's not a bad thing. A rose is a simple piece of vegetation, and those have been known to make at least a few hearts drop.

Willner does his work with synths, instrument and vocal samples, and clattering, itchy drums. The sounds are looped and layered together to become something whole. One element is never given the spotlight, and each song is equal to the sum of its parts.

The centerpiece is the actually breathtaking "Everyday," a song whose first half switches on time between feathery synths and lush, air-sucking keyboards. It's merely nice until Willner loops in a panting female voice and then adds another heavenly vocal sample on top of it. The resulting minute becomes frozen in time.

Once you become familiar with these songs, the foreplay and waiting for payoff, becomes unbearable. "Deal" is dark and mysterious, and its final three minutes are almost unbearably alluring. Ditto for the flourishing "Sun & Ice," and the intoxicating title track.

It's tough to quantify music like this on paper because doing so, at least with me, provides my brain with things that aren't words or numbers. From Here We Go Sublime, and by default Willner himself, speaks to me in colors: soft pinks and oranges; afternoon sunlight; clear, icy blues; and whites. Those colors, and these songs, are beauty personified.