This interview with The Field

Would love to hear it. His last remixes were fun, and were reminiscent of some of his early sample based work. Would be a soothing tonic to go looping again with some fresh songs.

absolutely love the Field. one record I didn’t see mentioned above is the Sound Of Light EP. awesome premise and an excellent listen.

here’s an interview with him from 2016. lots of gear pics, gear talk, and technique talk.

https://www.pressreader.com/australia/future-music-9629/20160505/281745563577916

I do think of him from time to time and wish that a new record would spring up. in the above article, he said he had a friend mix The Follower as his hearing loss is great enough that he didn’t trust it for mixing recordings any more. which is scary as hell, and I hope that it’s not worsened and that he’s still making music.

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Anybody know what drum machine he used for ā€˜here we go sublime’?

Not sure where the samples come from but the whole thing was done on Jeskola Buzz I think? http://jeskola.net/buzz/

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I want to say I recall him saying 808 samples in an olllllld interview. maybe in Pitchfork? he also has been a long time MD user, but it doesn’t sound like he used it on that album.

Does anybody know the source of the vocal sample in the track ā€˜No. No…’?

There’s been a bit of a thing with the samples being tucked away for a while from what I understand (some comments on that earlier in the thread.) Looks like as of recent it’s been a bit of a mystery tour trying to work out what he’s been using. Someone made a list of all the ones they knew about before they were removed from whosampled, but that one’s not in there.

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/faith_in_strangers/samples-used-by-the-field/

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Poor dude’s gonna get bankrupted by his own fans

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How to create the vocal sample programming in this track:
Anything special going on?

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Axel Willner — Complete Works Archive

Doing a bit more of a dive on how Axel progressed with gear in his career. Seems interesting that he loves the Elektron workflow, but it turns out a lot of his sound is Roland stuff. Onstage we know he uses the Elektron dark trinity, though around 2019 he also incorporated Digitone into his setup, (this was after his last full record.)

I wonder why he didn’t use any Roland gear live and on the flip of that, I wonder if it’s ever obvious if he made a switch from classic Roland sounds to more FM type tones. There’s maybe a hint of it on the last record (perhaps he used DT as a dum machine, but there’s not as much chatter/interviews so it doesn’t come up from what I can tell.)

Any thoughts on that? Before that I know he was doing a whole heap with the SH-101, the JC-3P, the 808, so it was quite a Rolandified sound around the samples.

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It could be the edibles talking, but I was hoping this was going to be a hypothetical interview with the OP-1 Field.

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Jeskola Buzz eh? That takes me back. It was a pretty groundbreaking thing at the time

Went through the archives of the Tracker before.

I had and sold the Mini and Plus and I genuinely do like its vibe. For one thing, I tried Renoise and whatnot and never quite got going with it. The PT is a bit special because it’s so easy. And in Ableton for some reason I just never land anywhere near this style. I think both the Elektron and Tracker workflows lend themselves to rhythmic sounds quite naturally, which might be a key part of The Field sound. I keep yo-yoing on whether to bring Tracker back into the setup. Maybe the 3rd time up would be the charm? Or maybe it’s time for a Digitakt… :grimacing:

In fact, I wondered if The Field would like the Tracker, and funnily enough the PT makes an appearance on his socials around the time of release…

Aaanyway… Here are a couple of demos that owe more than a nod of gratitude to Axel. These are the master stems from the Tracker+ so not expertly mixed by any stretch. I then ran though a couple of mix & master plugins, just so I don’t completely embarrass myself here. The second one especially with the vocal sample reminded me of the Field, but blended with other stuff too.


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No use waiting over a year for an answer, but for completeness it should be the 808. A huge amount of his drums seem to be kick and hat, plus a snare or two for most of the songs. Other than that he does seem to play with hats and delays here and there.

Later in his career he went on to say ā€œThe 808 I haven’t used in a while, as I use 808 sounds from the Analog Rytm.ā€ Plus later we saw much more play with live drums.

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You make good music.

I’m often fascinated by musicians who exercise restraint in ways I’m unable. GAS and The Field both excel at this in different ways, but also some mainstream pop producers like Pharrell have always amazed me in that restraint is such a major part of their sound and it’s not something I’m able to do to myself…everything always ends up loud af and just completely maximalist.

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Certain genres lend well to this, but minimalism brings different challenges.

It’s like Italian food: few ingredients but every one needs to punch above it’s weight.

It’s one of the reasons I enjoy producing dub techno, it’s a handful of conventions but every one needs to be executed perfectly for it to work. Any weakness is apparent.

Every track feels like a puzzle.

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Thanks so much! Hoping to experiment more with this style soon…

Yep exactly. For me making this kind of music is a bit of an escape. I too can end up pushing things in the DAW and I don’t mind that. But when I get on hardware I tend to do stuff that is still layered, but more minimal in general.

I received a notification yesterday, saying that The Field has released a pre-order for a new EP:

Now You Exist | The Field

Now to my surpise, it has been released without access to any audio extract to hear yet.
I’ve been missing The Field a lot since ā€œInfinite Momentā€, but I’m not sure I would pre-order anything without a proper listen. Cant’ wait to hear it!

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