Willner turns the pleading "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" (by the Korgis, but best remembered as a Beck cover on the soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) into a crackling, melodramatic sex jam, and lead single "The More That I Do" follows up a giddily indulgent lull with a throbbing vocal sample and a glittering array of synth notes — a swooping, undulating mass of baby birds, all looking to get down. (The Field are at the Middle East in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 21.) CG
Tim Hecker, An Imaginary Country (Kranky)
The Montreal-based experimental musician's (Hecker's music resists labels beyond that; he's too discordant for ambient and too amorphous for most anything else) latest album is loosely based around the idea of a utopian society, and his technique — processing live and manufactured sounds in such a way that a keyboard note may well be a guitar chord, and vice versa — is similarly blind to distinctions of origin or value. While there's a murky, claustrophobic sensibility in the center of most of Hecker's compositions, the outer strata on An Imaginary Country hopscotch through ever-changing landscapes. "Paragon Point"'s twisting vines of high-register noise reach over a foundation of choral chants and pulses of sonar, while "The Inner Shore" seems filtered through layers of tidal foam. Hecker throws in ephemeral pop touches here and there — brief fits of backbeat or (maybe) guitar chords — but they're equal partners in his continuing, singular vision. CG
Burial & Four Tet, Moth/Wolf Cub Split 12" (Text)
This two-track jewel fresh from the production masterminds of Four Tet (electro-acoustic sound collagist Kieran Hebden) and Burial (the elusive dubstep proprietor William Bevan, who for all we know may be Kieran Hebden) might have already become one of the choicest electronic releases of 2009. "Moth" begins with a surging loop, the decomposed sonic artifact of an organ or lovingly EQed synth patch. Earthy and moist, this track never rests, gliding forward with one of the most eminently danceable phrases yet heard in 2009. That said, this split isn't some mindless club-rot. Both artists' attention to depth and detail are just as obsessive as in their past works, though it's exhilaratingly hard to tell who is bringing exactly what to the table here: Four Tet's restless instrumentation is more hushed than usual, but still subtly apparent; Burial inserts notes of his signature warmth, like the softly panning undercurrent of clicking vinyl at the end of "Moth." The two collude brilliantly, though: these are the kind of tracks a DJ craves at 3 am. You could scarcely walk across a dance floor with slipping on pheromones. AF
Christopher Gray can be reached at cgray@thephoenix.com. Andrew Frederick can be reached at andrew.william.frederick@gmail.com.
