THE FIELD

CUPID’S HEAD (KOMPAKT)

16/20

The Kompakt stable has many shining stars, but the pulsating, shape-shifting deep electronic shamanism of The Field has got to be one of the brightest. If you wanted to be critical, you could argue that on his fourth album ‘Cupid’s Head’, Alex Wilner is operating a strict ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ policy. And just occasionally – as on Black Sea – it sounds like The Field-by-numbers. But this is the exception to the rule: the title track is a chiming, shimmering piece of looping, Technicolor techno; the hypnotic A Guided Tour is a masterclass in melodic restraint; and yet album closer 20 seconds of affection is claustrophobic/euphoric enough to be a Fuck Buttons secret weapon.  It’s the penultimate track No No which steals the show, though. An unsettling ambient web unfurls, before Wilner drops a spine-tingling pitter-patter of a beat halfway through, and a trap door into a hidden world is opened. As a cohesive whole, the album doesn’t necessarily surpass his previous effort Looping State of Mind. But moments like No No suggest that Wilner is still pretty much at the top of his game. Powerful, unnerving and sublime in the way that only a handful of artists (like, for example, Boards of Canada) are, this is music to wrap yourself up in and drift away.

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Words: Adam Corner