The Field: From Here We Go Sublime

The Field: From Here We Go Sublime
Kompakt: 4/5/2007

I dread getting out of bed on weekday mornings. My first alarm goes off at 4:15 and tells me I should get up soon but I can hit the snooze button a few times. My second alarm, which sounds at 5AM sharp, is the "get your ass out of bed and jump in the shower NOW" alarm. Shortly after the first alarm, one of my cats starts trying to rouse me by lying on my chest or back and nudging my face gently with her paw. As she grows impatient, she starts poking me lightly with her claws. I periodically acknowledge her efforts with head scratches as I hit the snooze button and roll over. The dance continues until the latter alarm sounds and I get up.

When I heard From Here We Go Sublime for the first time, I was startled at how much the second track reminded me of this experience. It wasn't until the second listen that I noticed the title was "A Paw in My Face". Amazingly, The Field is able to arouse the feelings associated with common human experiences without words or images, just sounds. The rest is album is this way, too, though the connections between titles and songs became clear only in retrospect in most cases. In this sense, From Here We Go Sublime doesn't sound like techno as I typically think of it, except for the use of dense rhythms and lots of bleeps and bloops. While the viscerality of "traditional" techno aims to get the body moving, The Field's music evokes the senses to different ends. He uses sound as an analog to other physical sensations to connect with the emotional content of the listener's memories. From Here We Go Sublime is, I think, the result of tremendous insight into the nature of memory, so I wouldn't call it dance music exactly. On the other hand, if it makes you want to shake whatever junk you have on a dancefloor, I wouldn't think you're crazy.