The Field in Melbourne

  • Share
  • The decision to host Swedish shoegaze-techno wunderkind The Field at Melbourne's pub-rock fleapit The East Brunswick Club emphasised Axel Willner's lack of interest in club venues and dance orthodoxies. It was an inspired choice. Willner's music fares far better on the small stage, regardless of the intergalactic reach of his juddering synth loops and rhythms. It made even more sense with them as a four-piece band—Willner and his controllers accompanied by a guitar, bass and drums trio—embellishing and expanding upon the music's hypnotic, motorik surge. Support came from local duo Qua, superficially similar to The Field—buffeted grey noise over steady 4/4—but lacking the emotional weight and tonal richness. One member banged rhythms and triggered samples on electric drums while the other played with a laptop, twiddling knobs and tweaking tones resulting in a muddy and opaque sound. The main textures were closer to the feedback squalls of Yellow Swans than techno, with drums providing structure and momentum, but the overall lack of clarity and dynamics proved frustrating. Curtains were drawn while the The Field set up, but they were instantly recognisable from the first chord—a throbbing synth riff looped into transcendence. This came from Willner's controller contraptions, responsible throughout the performance for all of those stunning, archetypal Field moments. Then came the kick, and it really took flight. The live players functioned as limber decoration—the drummer doubling up the beat but also adding minor diversions, rim shots, tom rolls, all being subtle but crucial. The bass was less clear, and the guitarist mostly had it strapped to his neck while toying with the laptop. The second track, also a newie, was more earthbound than the first, but no less exciting. The real thrills, though, came from the hits. The sustained gasps of "Over the Ice" were sublime, particularly when extended and beefed up like they were on the stage. "Everday" strobed into a lengthy ecstatic drive, the group teasing with unpredictable shifts between verse and break. Willner switched to bass for the encore that centred around sinuous threads from the laptop, and may have been a version of "Mobilia" that was given sharper contours and a greater sense of space. While essentially built from the shells of Kompakt trance and Wolfgang Voigt's lurching sample-shifts, the linearity of Willner's tracks and rejection of dance music's build-release payoff sits more comfortably alongside current noise artists Carlos Giffoni and Black Meteoric Star. It was a short set, only five tracks by my count, but densely concentrated, intensely heady stuff.
RA