The Field – Looping State Of Mind

Not quite as good as the first two albums and certainly not as definitive as the very first album, From Here We Go Sublime, but still very good.

Magnificent album, love the use of live instruments with loopy synths.

The Field returns to the sublime. After the middling YESTERDAY & TODAY, LOOPING STATE OF MIND sees Axel Willner merging the tight loops and structure of his first album, FROM HERE WE GO SUBLIME, with the varied instrumentation and slower tempos of his second. Already, the pitch shifts and throbbing bass guitar on "Is This Power" let you know you're in new territory. "It's Up There" steps back onto the familiar ground trod by his first album, but with noticeable differences: the beats aren't as insistent, and the development now takes place in the instrumentation, rather than just with variations in the loops themselves. He seems to be drawing upon a larger pool of loops, as well: "Burned Out" almost sounds like a country-western song with its loping beat and lingering melancholy, a melancholy that returns in spades on the slow, classically elegant "Then It's White." The title track hangs itself on a wall of buzz, and "Sweet Slow Baby" uses the long rhythmic intro to set off the warm fuzzy bits that gradually drift in. But its "Arpeggiated Love" that will blow you away. Start off simple, the track builds almost imperceptibly, and after it reaches its first break halfway through, it suddenly achieves a majesty, like the first realization of romance. Sublimity at its best.