Arpeggiated Love: The Line of Best Fit speaks to The Field

There are a fair few things in life that get better with age. Wine, for example or a ripe, potent cheese would fall into this category. Given time, such items will mature from a fairly boring beginning state into something great. In a fair few instances, the same can be said for record labels too. For a long while, they can lay dormantly under the radar, producing a steady stream of enjoyable output, whilst nurturing and supporting their roster of artists. And then all of a sudden, all of their eggs come to hatch and the label’s name and status become cemented as ‘great’. Kompakt has certainly been experiencing a ride similar to this over the past year. One of their signings Matias Aguayo collaborated with the likes of Battles and Discodeine in 2011, WALLS have just released their brilliant sophmore effort, Coracle, and there have been stunning new releases from Rainbow Arabia, GusGus and also the supremely talented The Field. Following the release of Looping State of Mind through Kompakt, we caught up with the mind behind The Field’s music, Sweden’s Axel Willner to discuss the new album and how it came to be.

“I made sketches in my studio in Berlin and then me, Dan Enqvist and Jesper Skarin got together in Köln to record all the live instrumentation,” says Willner of the creation of his latest release. “So it was a mix of both natural jams and ideas and ideas being fitted together. This time around it was a more equipped studio so that’s why, for example, there’s double bass and piano on.”

The Field – Then It’s White

Looping State of Mind marks the third release from The Field – the follow-up to 2007′s From Here We Go Sublime and 2009′s Yesterday & Today. With two highly accomplished releases already tucked underneath his Scandinavian belt, what is different about this latest effort, and where did the inspiration come from?

“There’s always a lot of things that are inspiring. This time around it felt really good to be home and making music and that’s inspiring. Musically, it has as always been a lot of the old German experimental stuff from the 70s and so on… The difference was probably the time we spent in the studio and how we spent it,” responds Willner. “Fully equipped with a technician always ready was very good for us to have. Otherwise it is similar to both From Here We Go Sublime and Yesterday & Today in the writing process. I didn’t have any specific agenda with it but one thing that I wanted was to make a mix from both earlier albums.”

Axel Willner was recently reported as saying that he’s all but stopped attending techno nights, and rarely listens to the genre at home. Although describing his current listening trends as “everything from Manuel Göttsching and Roedelius to Steve Reich and Eurythmics”, the musician realises that he “I really miss out on a lot of new good stuff I guess but I’m still stuck in the past. I’ve been going back to things that I found very important to me which has been very inspiring. As a fan, I spend a lot of time on Ebay, discogs and the second-hand vinyl shops digging for pearls.”

Following the release of Yesterday & Today back in 2009, Willner embarked upon a series of live shows that sealed his reputation for creating engaging, hypnotic electronically produced tracks. So how much influence from these live shows can be found on the latest album? “For Looping State of Mind was already made out of a band aspect and more live friendly tracks. As it has been working very well with the live band, I wanted to bring that more in to the studio as well.”

Looping State of Mind has managed to harness all of the energy and the catchy, inclusive and involving atmosphere of The Field’s live shows and turn it into one brilliantly engaging and cohesive record. Through adding a host of live instrumentation that had not been used in previous projects, on this latest record The Field’s music is transported to a whole new dimension of richness and fluidity. Each track comes in at well over the seven minute mark, using loops, repetition and trails to create a truly absorbing body of work. As such, the title of the record strikes the listener as extremely fitting for this album.

“[Looping State of Mind] is when you’re stuck in thoughts and you can’t really get out of them,” says Willner of the record’s name. “It can be both good or bad thoughts. I was in that state of mind a lot during the creative process and as I also make heavy repetitive music, I thought it was fitting.”

Currently making his way around Europe in support of the record, Axel Willner and his live show are currently entrancing audiences all over the continent with his unique and enticing blends of sounds, textures and narratives. As a third album, this is a record that has succeeded in highlighting the creative strengths of this artist and assuring not only the musical reputation of The Field, but also of Kompakt records. Willner described his ambition for Looping State of Mind as “to blend acoustic and electronics in a way that you can’t really tell what’s what anymore” and this is exactly what he’s managed to accomplish with this record. Synthetic noises weld seamlessly to the organically produced sounds, creating a sea of sound which ebbs and flows throughout the duration of the record. If it’s true then, that things get better with age, we can’t wait to find out what The Field’s going to do next, but in the meantime, we’ll content ourselves with his extraordinary live shows.

Looping State of Mind is available now through Kompakt.