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a r t i s t :: These New Puritans
t i t l e :: Field Of Reeds
d a t e :: 2013-00-00
l a b e l :: Infectious Music
g e n r e :: Indie
s o u r c e :: CD
b i t r a t e :: 715 kbps avg
e n c o d e r :: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -V
t r a c k s :: 9
p l a y t i m e :: 53:00
s i z e :: 277.2MB
tracklist
1 This Guy's In Love With You 3:02
2 Fragment Two 4:34
3 The Light In Your Name 6:03
4 V (Island Song) 9:16
5 Spiral 6:03
6 Organ Eternal 5:31
7 Nothing Else 7:49
8 Dream 4:14
9 Field Of Reeds 6:28
releasenotes
On Field of ReedsÆ title and final track, Jack Barnett idly sings, ôYou asked
if the islands would float awayà I said, yes.ö The answer comes back with a
dead-eyed conviction that makes it feel as if Barnett has lost sight of the
solid shoreline, something he'll definitely be accused of with These New
PuritansÆ third album. It sees the Southend group all but shed any assocations
they once had with the wider rock world, reinventing themselves as a
neo-classical ensemble. The result is an uncompromisingly self-possessed
record whose intimate qualities shouldn't be mistaken for an easy listen-- in
many respects, its clearest analog is Talk TalkÆs Spirit of Eden. It opens
with a Portuguese jazz vocalist, Elisa Rodrigues, singing a sparkling, barely
half-remembered version of Herb AlpertÆs ôThis GuyÆs in Love With Youö. As it
ends, Adrian Peacock, who has the lowest known singing voice in Britain,
unleashes an apparently bottomless vocal drone, sounding as if heÆs humming
along to a Sunn O))) song, while Barnett chants in phonetics like a tricksy
goblin.
Despite releasing three markedly different albums over the past five years,
the Puritans have earned the trust of their audience, allowing them to go
wherever their iconoclastic spirit takes them. Their debut album, 2008Æs Beat
Pyramid, took the moony British post-punk phenomenon of the preceding few
years and made it nasty, agitated, and wholly uninterested in emotive
melancholy or accessible lyrical subjects. Numerology and olde magick were
central, though good luck trying to prise much else from it. ôYou know IÆll be
thinking this musicÆs symbolic/ This music is weightless, and when I sing, so
am I/ YouÆll be slashing at the air, describing nothing,ö Barnett sang with
deterrent glee on ôSwords of Truthö. He's been equally oblique describing
Field of Reeds. ôIÆm just putting one sound in front of the other and thinking
about what comes next,ö he told the Guardian.
Its follow-up, 2010Æs Hidden, sounded like a strikingly, elegantly
choreographed war, at once global and gothic with its destructive beats,
mournful laments, and taunting vocals. And now, Field of Reeds is a stilled,
abstract pastoral of sorts, where the music seems to grow and swarm as
naturally as moss across rocks. Its closest modern peer might be Julia
Holter's equally pristine Ekstasis. Where Hidden traded in damning impact,
Field of Reeds uses BarnettÆs self-taught compositional prowess-- and the
borrowed skills of composers AndrΘ de Ridder, Michel van der Aa, and Hans Ek--
to explore the effects of memory, requiring investment on the listener's part,
too; ôSpiralö seems to repeat a clarinet motif from Hidden; ôOrgan Eternalö
rekindles the glassy pulse of ôV (Island Song)ö with the resonator piano, a
riff that in turn strongly recalls ôTubular Bellsö.
Field of Reeds was recorded over 12 months in three different studios. The
drums were added around structures determined by the strings, horns, and
magnetic resonator piano-- a haunted, silvery-sounding creation-- and barely
appear at all in the albumÆs final third (Barnett has suggested there are
three movements here). Somehow, the effect is more intimidating than the parts
on Hidden where they smashed melons to simulate crushing a skull. The
spareness and sense of space on Field of Reeds is remarkable, the kind that'll
make you glance over your shoulder as beguiling mercury-slicked glows slip
into an overwhelming, sometimes vicious sense of anxiety; "There is something
there," as Barnett sings on "Fragment Two".
These shifts are made even more unsettling by the lack of aggression in the
playing; where HiddenÆs M.O. could be found in ôAttack Musicö, on Field of
Reeds thereÆs the sense that these glowing clarinets and strings are occurring
naturally, almost as if emanating from a landscape. Gone too is the obtuse
vocal phrasing that ran through Beat Pyramid and Hidden; Barnett has talked
about spending ôhours going through each sentence of the lyrics getting rid of
all the consonants,ö a defamiliarizing effect that makes his lines as slippery
and memory-foxing as the dream-speak in ôTwin Peaksö. It's as upsetting too;
Field of Reeds' quiet lyrical narrative seems to follow a period of loss;
first a person, and subsequently, trust in any kind of concrete meaning,
underpinned by the way lines disintegrate into phonetic babble. As his
fastidious techniques show, Barnett is a total perfectionist-- he proudly made
George play 76 drum takes on one song-- yet his control freakiness hasnÆt
killed the record; the effect is naturalistic, and often deeply moving, rather
than in any way inert.
While Field of Reeds is a mysterious album in many ways, what it makes clear
is BarnettÆs faith in the purity of sound, rather than words, to communicate;
remember, "This music is weightless, and when I sing, so am I." By removing
any imposition of context, his words of consonants, his music of
attention-grabbing impact, his ensemble of rock band-status, heÆs created a
truly strange and beautiful record. Whether Barnett makes it explicit or not,
These New PuritansÆ songs have always been concerned with their South-Easterly
corner of the coast, the smoggy bowel of London where rusting World War II
fortifications stand demilitarized among the islands, just like the sounds on
this album. ôSecret recordings were made in the marsh,ö Barnett chanted on
HiddenÆs ôWe Want Warö. It feels as though he finally trusts us to hear them
on Field of Reeds.
www.thesenewpuritans.com
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These_New_Puritans-Field_Of_Reeds-(INFECT156CD)-CD-FLAC-2013-k4