techno goes sublime

The album I'm currently enamored with is The Field's From Here We Go Sublime. It's been touted by pitchfork as some of the best music of 2007, and it's been at the top of metacritic's best of 2007 list just about since its release on Kompakt in early April. When I try to describe it to friends, all I can come up with is some version of the following: "ambient-techno-minimal-glitch-drone-house," which I'm sure doesn't make anyone want to listen to it. I haven't always been so impressed with recent neo-techno offerings, perhaps because I remember going to raves when techno was really new and seemingly groundbreaking music; back when we broke into abandonded buildings and took lots of acid and x; back when a few Lite Brite sets served for light shows. Anyway, techno has always signified a bygone era for me, and while I remember that era fondly, I'm happy to leave my all-night-rave days in the past.

But The Field (aka Axel Willner) revives techno in interesting ways. Willner tempers cold techno precision with warm, resonant bass, and humanizes the thumps and beeps with swelling, sway-inducing crescendos and strangely moving vocal samples of just single syllables: "ee," "ü," "ah," "ai." As the title of the track "Sun & Ice" suggests, Willner is interested in creating sounds that are at once sunny and chilly.

Check out "Over the Ice" the first track on Sublime" on The Field's myspace page. You can also stream it here.

You can download "Sun & Ice" from The Field's website, by right-clicking here.