The Field’s debut, From Here We Go Sublime was a magical work, a truly euphoric minimal techno/ambient house/whateverdub album that sampled Lionel Richie and sounded like glaciers falling in love. But now, what once seemed so effortless, so natural and beautiful, for Axel Willner sounds so laboured. From the blissful, sparkling dreamscape of the debut we now have a record that’s about as evocative as doing the washing up, and about as spellbinding as a walk to the shops. The album is, yes, “more organic than its predecessor”- thanks Kompakt- but only if you count instrumentation more than the way it actually sounds. More live instruments, sure, but it’s used to create something so much more cold, so much less alive. Well, that might be construed as a good thing for electronic music- but only some electronic music. This isn’t, like, a really cool robot not-being-alive. This is just”¦ I dunno, I guess a lobotomised sort of not-being-alive. Like a qualia zombie. There’s nothing there. It’s evocative of nothing. ‘I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet’ is a great title, but that’s about it. I mean, just compare the album titles. From Here We Go Sublime and Yesterday and Today. One is beautiful, the other is mundane. This is a dull album.The tracks here are too stretched-out. From Here We Go had ten tracks most of which were about six minutes long. Yesterday and Today has six most of which are about ten minutes long (or more, especially towards the end). The difference I think between what was magical on the first record and dull on here is subtle. Firstly there’s the length. You’ll want to turn most of these off some three minutes or so before they’re done and rush on to the next one. But then you wouldn’t if the tracks themselves were stronger- if they were as strong as on the first record, then you wouldn’t want to. But most of what The Field does is based around repetitive loops and builds and so if those loops and builds are inherently not very good, then you’ve got a bad record, and there’s not even that much difference sometimes between what was on the first record and this, but it’s just that little sprinkling of magic not being there and poof! Alakazam, my attention span has disappeared. And it’s a shame because he’s not doing all that much differently, it’s just”¦ the inspiration seems to have bottled out. And I think maybe that’s why the tracks here are longer, to pad the whole thing out. (not that, at over an hour long, it really needs padding out anyway)More directly insulting, though, is Willner’s ‘cover’ of ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime’. Willner has a great track record sampling smooth 80s synth-pop hits, and this particular one I’m a big fan of both as Beck cover and original, but really the version here is just terrible. For starters, when it first came on I was like: “what is this, Caribou or something?”- not a good sign- and then secondly, just as I thought: “oh no actually I love this song, this could be really good,” he misses out the chorus. Yeah, HE MISSES OUT THE FUCKING CHORUS. And the best thing about that song- by far- is the chorus. And you just keep waiting for it to come and then it doesn’t, it’s just a lot of rubbishy noodling with cymbals, and you’re just like: “wtf, why isn’t there a chorus yet?” and it’s basically the musical equivalent of a delayed ejaculation, it’s very frustrating to your ears and it’s just awful. And more than that, more damningly for Willner as a musician, it just inherently fails to understand what was good about the original to begin with. It doesn’t seem to have any love for the original song. Just like there seems to be no love in this record, at all, or at least none communicated. And that’s a real shame because the last one was really ‘lovely’ in that sense (ie: it spilled over with the rush of love).This is turning into a bit of a rant, and that’s kind of unfair, because Willner is by no means incompetent and I’m sure he’s got it in him to recapture past glories at some point in the future, and I’ll still be listening out for if he does. But seriously now. Fan of the first record? Frankly, I wouldn’t bother. 53% (this score is more than generous)The Field on Myspace