Yesterday & Today

The Field | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 19, 2009)
• Original Release Date: 2009
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Anti
• ASIN: B001WBK99S
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,018 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet

2. Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime

3. Leave It

4. Yesterday & Today (feat. John Stanier)

5. The More That I Do

6. Sequenced

Editorial Reviews

The Field is Axel Willner, and 2007's "Here We Go Sublime" was one of the year's most acclaimed releases, receiving a 9.0 from Pitchfork as well as universal praise. It was a soundtrack to the spit-shined airport of your dreams - faceless, futuristic, and fuzzy. Now, Willner's label, Kompakt, has teamed with Anti to release this record. Willner expands his palette, continuing the oblique sampling strategy while building up the rhythmic architecture. Look for The Field on tour starting this spring.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Big improvement over the first album; "Leave It" is gorgeous., May 19, 2009

By 

Angry Mofo "angrymofo" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yesterday & Today (Audio CD)

At first, I expected this to be a rehash of From Here We Go Sublime, which I thought was over-rated. Indeed, the first track is made strictly according to the Sublime template. The beat in "I Have The Moon..." is straightforward and conventional, and backed by a humming one-note drone. The bright keyboard fragments that open the song are very similar to the ones in "Everday." There is nothing in the composition to distinguish the song from anything on The Field's first album -- although, granted, if it had appeared on that album, it would have been one of the better songs, like "Everday" or "Silent."

But that first track makes a deceptive impression. Miraculously, Axel Willner manages to put a new spin on the old sound. The songs on Yesterday And Today have less hazy echo and more energy than the songs on Sublime. The highlight of this album is "Leave It," which uses Willner's usual drone-heavy compositional style, but hits on a brilliant idea in the form of a cold, reverberating chime that floats dispassionately above the chugging house beat. Willner then adds swaths of anthemic keyboards, which do what they always do in techno music and turn the track into a sweeping rush, a bona fide dancefloor anthem. It is twelve minutes long, but never drags. The last techno album where I could say that was Vocalcity. DJs everywhere, take note.

The second track "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" is a cover, which may explain why it departs from Willner's template more than anything else here. Most notably, it doesn't have the 4/4 house beat that Willner usually relies on. Instead, it has a curiously stuttering, machine-hip-hop sort of rhythm. Willner's patented wall-of-haze sound is present in the production on the sweeping, melodramatic strings, but the rhythm is built on manipulated piano lines. The chimes from "Leave It" show up here too, in a less prominent role.

The ending track "Sequenced" is less impressive, but still not bad. Like "Leave It," it's an attempt to give the Field sound a bit more dancefloor edge. This time, it's driven by a pattering mechanical synth that is common to some European techno (recent Solaris Heights singles are full of this kind of thing). The typical Field melodic hum (like in "I Have The Moon...") is laid over the top and sounds quite pleasant. The beat is a bit harder and more detailed than usual, which is a good touch. There is some languid variation over time. Fifteen minutes is a bit long, though -- after eleven minutes, the song changes tone and goes into a chilled-out ending, which is listenable, but not really attention-grabbing.

The structure of these songs is less fragmented compared to the first album. On Sublime, even the good songs were obviously just alternating between a couple of droning segments, without much in the way of transition. Here, the different sections blend together better.

Unfortunately, that still leaves two weak tracks on the second side. "The More That I Do" does the album a disservice as the lead single. It would have fit perfectly on the first album -- not on the first side with "Over The Ice" and "Good Things End," but on the second side with repetitive and unremarkable productions like "The Deal" and "Sun And Ice." It revolves around the repetition of a single vocal note, much like "The Deal," but the rhythm is more aggressive. This makes it sound like a broken record, which is irritating. As for the title track, it is another dancefloor production, but the compositional style repeats "Over The Ice" and "Good Things End," particularly in the way the blaring rhythm periodically congeals into a brief burst of noise. In the last three minutes, there is some relief from the rhythmic monotony in the form of a live-sounding percussion breakdown. However, the drums are accompanied by formless, generic synth waves, which makes the ending sound like an unfocused jam session.

On the whole, this album leaves a much better impression than From Here We Go Sublime. It is less monochromatic, less obvious about repeating the same ideas. "Leave It" is outstanding, a whole new level above anything on Sublime. The rest uses many of the same ideas, but often makes them sound vibrant. There's only one truly poor track, compared to the entire second side of Sublime. Still, a full third of the album's running time does suffer from monotony; it's pleasant listening, but not the IDM masterpiece Willner wants to make. The difference is that "Leave It" suggests that he's getting closer.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars oh my god, September 11, 2009

By 

Nate (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yesterday & Today (Audio CD)

People need to understand that this album is amazing. I bought "From Here We Go Sublime" and I loved it, but once I started listening to "Yesterday & Today" my opinion of electronic music changed forever. The songs on this album have more plays than any song in my iTunes library by an order of magnitude. I listen to it to write, to sleep, to drive, to live. It is one of the best albums I have ever listened to. The deceptively-disappointing 1-2 opening of "I Have The Moon, You Have the Internet" and "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" gives way to a foursome of songs too amazing to describe, and they wouldn't be as amazing without the slow-build intro of the first two songs. "The More That I Know" is my favorite song of the year and one of the best tracks I've ever heard. Ever. If you purchase this album, you will not believe how many times you will want to listen to it. Music rarely gets this good.

3.0 out of 5 stars The Field - Yesterday And Today, September 21, 2011

By 

scoundrel - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yesterday & Today (Audio CD)

YESTERDAY AND TODAY is a bit of a come-down for The Field after the stunning FROM HERE WE GO SUBLIME. So while "I Have the Moon, You Have the Internet" and "Leave It" follow the same pattern (loops and variations), Axel Willner tries his hand at some other textures as well, like the steel pans that end the former. But he's not always successful: the vocals on his cover of The Korgi's "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" aren't bad, per se, but they are a little out of place. (Besides, NRG still has a lock on the song with their rave anthem "I Need Your Lovin'.") John Stanier from Battles comes in to co-produce the title track, and here you hear the fault lines start to crack. The track begins like a version of "The Deal" but without the oomph, and around the 2/3rds point it simply peters out, while still continuing. "The More I Do" starts off great as well, but ends, curiously, on the steel pan again. The final track, "Sequenced," just seems to go on and on, aimlessly. It's an unfortunately end to an uneven album, one with its high points as well as its low points, definitely.