Artist.......: School of Language
Album........: Sea From Shore
Label........: Thrill Jockey
Genre........: Indie
Catnr........: thrill 193
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Dec-23-2007
str.date.....: 000-00-0000
quality......: VBR/44.1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a
track title time
01. Rockist Part 1 02:16
02. Rockist Part 2 03:14
03. Disappointment '99 04:03
04. Poor Boy 04:20
05. Keep Your Water 05:22
06. Marine Life 02:43
07. Ships 02:47
08. This Is No Fun 03:47
09. Extended Holiday 03:20
10. Rockist Part 3 (Aposiopesis) 02:12
11. Rockist Part 4 05:32
Runtime 39:36 min
Size 58,8 MB
Release Notes:
In April 2007, Sunderland trio Field Music
announced in a round-a-bout way that they were
clearing their diary of all band activity in the
hope that a change of situation and expectation
might help them to become as productive as theyÆd
always hoped they would be. They tried to make it
known that they had no intention of splitting up in
the acknowledged sense, but would instead use Field
Music (as a group of people, a company, a way of
working) as a tool to help the three core members,
individually and collectively, to get creative and
produce more and better music, expanding on the
ideas hinted at in their two and half
critically-acclaimed albums; 2007Æs Tones of Town,
Write Your Own History, a collection of b-sides and
early feet-finding released in 2006, and 2005Æs
eponymous debut.
Since Field MusicÆs final tour of the US last
March, David Brewis has been busily piecing
together this first School of Language record,
which can perhaps be seen as the first test of the
above proposition. Primarily recorded by David
alone and consciously susceptible to the
cut-and-paste, multi-tasking tangents induced by
laptop recording, these constructions are
resolutely un-band-like, veering between the
intricate and unplayable and the solitary and
unadorned, their cohesion stemming from an embrace
of all that is most obtuse and personal.
The album is bookended by the quartet of ôRockistö
tracks, a series of daydreams on words, their
meanings and the decisions which follow from them,
all underpinned by a collection of incessant looped
voices.
Sea From Shore can, in some ways, be seen as a
companion piece to Field MusicÆs Tones of Town but
where that record was preoccupied with the choices
resulting from questions of time and place, here
time is tied to people - often because of their
absence, but at other times because their closeness
is what rejuvenates us.
Adding a collaborative presence, Sea From Shore
features one or two cameo appearances from DavidÆs
hometown friends. Barry Hyde of The Futureheads
plays guitar and sings on ôDisappointment æ99ö,
while the same bandÆs David Craig, sings on both
ôDisappointment æ99ö and ôExtended Holidayö, along
with former star of Kenickie and Rosita, Marie
Nixon and their friend Sarah McKeown. School of
LanguageÆs live appearances, however, have thus far
been completely solo - a one man and his guitar
performance about as far removed from the current
crop of anodyne singer-songwriters as itÆs possible
to be.