Limits Of Language

Description

Field Music releases Limits of Language, their first album of new music in nearly four years. In 2022, the tour cycle for the album Flat White Moon ended with a sense of finality. For the first time since Plumb, nominated for the Mercury Prize ten years earlier, Peter and David had no plans for what would come next. However, after six years of continuation, they were clear that if Field Music was to continue, it would need to be different, both in sound and scope. Solo projects followed, with 2023 seeing the arrival of David's quietly jazzy Soft Struggles, Peter's playful electronica in Blowdry Colossus, alongside a limited-edition brass collaboration LP Binding Time and John Monroe's EP, made with Field Music's original keyboardist, Andrew Moore. It was these albums that provided new momentum for what would become Field Music's new album. As Peter gathered the instrumental compositions that became Blowdry Colossus, he was also tinkering with a batch of songs that would form the basis of Limits of Language, songs that blended synthesized textures with shimmering improvised guitar and layers of disorienting percussion from found sounds. Among these fleshed-out demos is "The Waitress of St Louis," an ode to the now-closed Sunderland café "Louis," which featured on the cover of their 2007 album Tones of Town, and to the Maggiore family who ran that beloved institution. David's songs came from a different angle but leaned into the same sonic palette and shared the same feeling of a past that was becoming grainy. The album's opening track, "Six Weeks, Nine Wells," contrasts the hazy ecstasies of summer school holidays with the fear and apprehension of a child peeking into an adult world.