The Field - Looping state of mind

To fully understand the singular artistic arc of a producer of Axel Willner's caliber, you first need to look at his self-declared main influences: shoegaze, punk, IDM. A crazy blend that the Swedish sound-manipulator has drawn on in his own way throughout his entire career, transfiguring that thing called techno music into an extremely evocative blend, recognizable with every single beat. Good old Willner's beginnings – born in southern Sweden, based in Stockholm, and always a lover of warm, shadowy Lisbon, so much so that he moved there for several years before eventually settling back in his beloved Swedish capital – date back to 2005, when, after trying to break through with immature projects in the vein of ambient-drone – which, incidentally, were quickly forgotten, like the duo Speedwax, formed way back in 1996 with Ola Keijer, or the thoroughly negligible first pseudo-kraut experiment under the name Cardouan in 2003, via the sole LP titled “Love” – he made his mark with a few demos sent to the headquarters of the venerable German label Kompakt, so much so that he immediately landed a small deal, followed by the release of his remix of “Heartbeat” by Norwegian songwriter Annie. In its brisk three minutes, you can already hear the warm, dreamlike pulse that would go on to define The Field's trademark sound. An unrelenting reiteration whose tempo stays rock-steady, never sliding into excessive BPMs, staying afloat in a kind of ascesis that seems never to end.

Alongside this intriguing approach comes a particular knack for finely calibrated shades, conjuring the attainment of some kind of celestial vault. It's a fabric that's at times almost “angelic”, standing in stark contrast to the more aggressive, sinful stylistic traits put forward by his own peers. Willner's is, in his own way, a dreamy kind of techno, one that looks up to the sky and the clouds rather than down at the dancefloor and the hormones. Still, it would be the concept of the loop – the intrinsic repetition of a certain strand of entertainment-oriented electronic music – that would intrigue young Axel more than anything else, to the point that he would later devote an entire project to it, Loops Of Your Heart, which in 2012 produced the sole record under that moniker: “And Never Ending Nights”. A night with no end, then. Just as his countless parallel excursions, both before and after the birth of The Field, seem to have no end either. Besides the aforementioned Loops Of Your Heart, there are no fewer than five of them: Lars Blek, Cordouan, HANDS, James Larsson and Porte. Five little masks that Willner toys around with, between EPs, remixes and fairly unremarkable home productions, mostly released on his own in-house label, the very personal Garmonbozia. And yet, what keeps dazzling the audience – and Willner himself – is the light that flickers on and off at steady intervals beneath the ancestral guise bearing The Field's name.

After putting out a further string of top-shelf remixes, including standout work for James Figurines, 120 Days and Battles, the indefatigable Axel launched his first proper LP: From Here We Go Sublime.

It's a clear nod to the sublime, dominated by an intent to craft a constant state of sensory suspension. Willner is a musician who applies an additional, highly technological technique – the so-called loop, or repetition – to recombinant pop, a kind of transfiguration of brief pop snippets through unrecognizable samples. Repetition is a defining feature of dance music, since it's what the dancer needs in order to keep time, but, on closer inspection, it's much more than mere divertissement for pilled-up clubgoers. Repetition has a hypnotic effect on the listener, forcing them to focus on details, to notice even the smallest changes (“breaks”), to zero in on the essence of the track through an overexposure of these very details: “Music becomes a sculpture, rather than a journey”, as the great Robert Henke, better known as Monolake, put it in an interview given to Andrew Cooke in November 2005.

From Here We Go Sublime is simply an incredible record: the great Axel takes an insignificant second from an insignificant Lionel Richie song (!) and creates something entirely new, expansive, astral, yet so urban, both full and minimal at once, both dance and ambient, both pop and experimental. That's what recombinant pop is like, it can be any other genre at all, and that's not even the best part: the most surprising thing is that there's not even any need to know exactly what's being sampled and repeated in millions of loops.

Mr. Willner is well aware of this: he plays at concealing his original plasmids only to suddenly reveal them, with a surprise effect worthy of an illusionist (you'll never guess what's behind the title track before the 2'15" mark), and it's impossible to notice that "Over The Ice" is nothing but the heavily transfigured space-techno vision (something not heard since the dream-house wave of the Nineties, since that unforgettable, landmark "Beachball" by Nalin & Kane) of "Under Ice" by Kate Bush.

From Here We Go Sublime immediately puts Willner in the spotlight, to the point that in the following months he'll release fairly successful remixes for equally acclaimed names such as Sasha, Thom Yorke and The Cinematic Orchestra. The Field brand has thus taken its own personal flight through the underground circuits of the Old Continent, and beyond. Axel tours far and wide, proudly showing off his peculiar creature through performances as enchanting as they are captivating, leaving a lasting mark and instantly catapulting him among the most in-demand and intriguing producers of the second half of the 2000s. Kompakt rightly takes him under its wing, and in 2009 his second album is produced: Yesterday And Today.

From its very first stirrings, it's an album utterly different from its predecessor and, for several reasons, decidedly more effective too. Besides being the eagerly awaited second work from a producer riding high, it's a genuine godsend for the techno world: constantly shifting sounds that evolve with intelligence and warmth, over a simple rhythm, a 4/4 of the kind heard everywhere. And yet, listening to Yesterday And Today, you find yourself wondering why no one had ever thought of this before, why no one had managed to give birth to such a cosmic journey within the world of the well-groomed beat.

The answers lie in a handful of songs: six, to be precise. "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" is a synth-pop track updated for the new millennium, with melodies weaving a colourful, enchanting sonic carpet, giving the listener the feeling of floating in vast spaces, in a dreamlike, splendid world. Bringing us back down to earth, the sweaty earth of the dancefloor, is "The More That I Do", the first single and a monumental track; here the dynamics of the sound and the solidity of the beat become one and the same, dispelling any doubt about Willner's ability to properly bring the house down.

The record is dominated by a policy of calibrated mutation. The sonic mass is constantly shaped by a circular dance of robotic pulses, wrapped in its orgiastic flow by sinuous magnetic rotations and by a kick drum straight out of techno appeal. In this sense, "I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet" starts quietly, gradually accelerates, until it levels off, landing in its closing stretch on a soft bed of crystals swaying in celebration. Willner undoubtedly has the innate ability to "photograph" the groove, immortalising it in a snapshot of vividly coloured mental projections. And it's right at the heart of this "shot", precisely at the three-minute mark of "Leave It", that the real miracle happens: an oceanic wave of the purest house music, intent on carrying body and soul toward unexplored exotic paradises, holds its crest in the distance, caressed by synthetic xylophones and analogue oddities.

Along the same lines, an ecstasy of stellar beats and angelic sequences, branching out in an alternation of sudden funk explosions and flashes reminiscent of Cassius-like boombass, destabilises the electronic framework of the title track, before "Sequenced" leaves planet Earth behind for good, amid total wonder.

The months following the release of Yesterday And Today pass between one electronic festival and another, but above all Willner keeps churning out damnably singular remixes for musicians as different from one another as Bear in Heaven, Delorean, Errors, Harmonia & Eno '76, Tocotronic, Walls, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Junior Boys.

Another two years go by, and the Swedish producer serves up his third concoction with an emblematic title: Looping State Of Mind. Willner returns to the spotlight with the classic turning point. Indeed, if with his first two outings it was above all the relentlessness of the beat and a thunderous kick drum that delivered emotions in abundance, on Looping State Of Mind things appear decidedly changed right from the opening, subdued voltaic contortions of "Is This Power". This time, the Swedish manipulator sets aside any dancefloor ambitions, upping the ante with a new emotional path, in which an undefined electronic poise bristling with glitch embroidery takes over, somewhat unexpectedly revealing one of the most hidden, regressive and perhaps least anticipated sides of his creative soul.

Looping State Of Mind thus throws much of the audience off balance. Willner strips any techno-ish restart down to the bone. Now his aim is to satisfy the senses by anaesthetising them through continuous, understated loops, relying on several occasions on ponderous electronic pirouettes. The repetition of his constructs rests in a pool of harmonic backwash, while the bpm drop and are measured out drop by drop, controlled from above by a new inner harmony. Underlining the traits of this sudden mutation are the Hebden-esque hypnosis of "Burned Out", the ecstatic trot of "Arpeggiated Love" and the aching melancholy of "Then It's White".

In stark contrast to the record's extremely subdued mood, one can sense in the closing stretch the whirling electric innards of "Sweet Slow Baby", made to vibrate over a soft rhythmic carpet that refuses to change direction, or the thoroughly successful "It's Up There", the one true moment where Willner goes back to biting at the senses with an almost discotheque-like warmth.

With Looping State Of Mind, Mr. The Field has thus simply trimmed the sail in order to steady his course. After all, when you've got the wind at your back, it's not at all easy to manage the situation. It takes self-control, a certain compositional fullness and a good dose of courage. And for this third, delicate release, good old Willner lacked none of these three elements.

It's a reassuring outing, once again showing the Swedish producer's state of grace, and it's followed, between a remix for Battles and another for S.C.U.M, by the first album under the name Loops Of Your Heart: And Never Ending Nights. It's an album that departs considerably from those made under The Field name. A work in which the harmonic calm set in the background somehow stirs the imagination, while the almost forced absence of the rhythms typical of the original brand lends it an unexpected aura, like that of a silent film.

Here, the love for the intelligent innards of the beloved Boards Of Canada and for the whole IDM movement of the Nineties takes flight, as does the obvious nod to the evergreen cosmic couriers of the Seventies. An excursus, an escape from the main project that leaves no trace behind, other than that of a Willner grappling with an anaesthetic pause for reflection.

Fortunately for us, Axel goes back to wearing his usual clothes, giving life to the fourth album under The Field name in 2013, once again with a self-explanatory title: Cupid's Head. The Swedish producer thus picks back up the thread he had set aside in 2011 with the excellent Looping State Of Mind, putting away the good ambient intentions he'd displayed in his countless satellite guises over the previous decade. So it's once again the concept of the loop that fuels Willner's mind. A steady beat and off it goes, rising slowly off the ground, never giving up on atmospheres that hint at a certain spirituality while at the same time signalling the need to escape from the everyday and the tangible, confirming in many ways the purely dance-oriented set-up of some of his rhythmic tendencies.

The idea that took shape on the debut and was energetically developed on Yesterday And Today regains value through a progressive stretching of the beat. What takes off on the opening "They Won't See Me" is a circular groove, underpinned by a light house-indebted drumming, complete with a soaring synth flourish embellishing its nuances. Next comes the hypnotic drive of the opening moments of "Black Sea" and a sudden stop&go at the seven-minute mark, staging impalpable minimal micro-variations.

The obsession with repetition, understood as the perceptual cradle for far more intricate underlying patterns, persists unflinchingly across the album's six tracks. This productive synapse chases its own cerebral nature on the jagged "No. No…", in a breathless and in its own way psychotic rush, before finally turning its gaze to the sky altogether, as if trying to reach infinite space in a thunderous celestiality that grants no respite (the closing "20 Seconds Of Affection").

Cupid's Head gives us back a revitalized Willner, once again adept at disguising an inwardly alienating electronic music, duly dressed up as pure dance music. A small but significant miracle that repeats itself under low lights and on tiptoe, confirming a talent at the controls who shows no sign of yielding to the passage of time or to the ultra-technological calls of the northern European electronic circuit.

The longest break in Axel Willner's career comes in the three years between 2013 and 2016. Three years of absolute silence, save for the anonymous The Soul Is Quick, his debut work under the moniker HEADS, in which Willner tries to offer his audience, across four long movements, his own take on a certain brand of dark-ambient, unfortunately with very poor results, giving life only to a fleeting and soporific esoteric brew lacking any bite. A fall into darkness before reaching his fifth LP, after once again reshaping his production approach.

Willner thus returns a full three years after the excellent Cupid's Head with a project in some ways distant from his past, and with a title deeply tied to the mass behavioral shifts linked to the recent rise of social networks: The Follower.

Once again, a dreamy, angelic techno dominates the scene, "pushed" while keeping a firm foot on the accelerator. On the opening title track, this blend leans both toward certain murky, skewed moods in the vein of Sandwell District, and toward the usual highly emotional (e)stasis achieved by channeling the beat through deliberately plodding patterns that are nonetheless never oppressive. The obsession, rather, lies in the Swedish manipulator's constant will to reach for some kind of celestial vault onto which to project his own fantasies. A sort of heavenly dancefloor imagined among sky and stars ("Pink Sun"). The record also throws up a few moments unusual for The Field's brand, such as the circular pulse of "Soft Dreams": ten minutes of light and shadow emitted through a kick drum that simply refuses to change direction.

New, soft ambient rarefactions dominate the scene on the "endless" and captivating "Raise The Dead", through which, unfortunately, a vaguely soporific effect begins to show here and there. It's the risk run by anyone chasing their own ecstatic escape from the world through a sound calibrated to valium, whose variations cater a little too much to a certain spirituality rather than to the pure, hard entertainment of the original blueprint.

The closing "Reflectings Lights" is a volley of plastic pulsations tracing circular orbits, in an epic, relentless crescendo of cosmic keyboards dispersing into the void, amid synthetic bongos and other staging devices with the usual dreamy shades.

The Follower thus gives us an Axel Willner once again intent on chasing, in his own particular (and at times "stubborn") way, a techno that is as fairy-tale-like as it is persuasive. This time, Stockholm's delicate and introverted producer risks over-anesthetizing the listener, steering him at certain points toward sleep, while the longed-for dream gradually takes on the features of a mirage. A danger that only partially crept into "old" Axel's controls and intentions, but one worth bearing in mind for future assessments.

Two years on from the aforementioned The Follower, Willner further tidies up his drawers, arranging beats, patterns and harmonies in much the same way as ever, convincing himself (and us) all over again that his dream-techno alchemy can still thrill. A thoroughly tried-and-tested recipe that the Swedish musician simply cannot give up. And yet, notwithstanding a more than predictable rhythmic and synthetic division of labor, good old Alex once again proves himself the Cicero at the console, able to show us, with no frills, just how persuasive certain formulas can be. The cyclical conception of time thus becomes the ideal conceptual garb for Infinite Moment, his sixth album.

A leaning toward hypnotic movements (the opening "Made Of Steel. Made Of Stone") reigns supreme, while the rails of what we might call a sort of slow carriage heading skyward never change direction, pointing as ever straight upward, in a steadily paced ascent ("Divide Now"). So try to imagine a hypothetical electronic party in which that thing called techno has been stripped of all acidity, and you'll have a vague idea of The Field's trademark sound. For the occasion, Willner also ventures onto more oblique terrain; it happens rarely, true, but the spiral into which the closing title track descends shows the Scandinavian producer still fully capable of casting his spell.

It may not be his best record, but Infinite Moment points to the rediscovered equilibrium of one of the softest and most eternally dreamy manipulators of our time.

Essential contributions by Veronica Rosi ("From Here We Go Sublime") and Mattia Braida ("Yestarday And Today")

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