Friday, July 21, 2006

In a Field of their own?


The other week I bumped into an old friend I hadn’t seen in ages recently, and amongst other things, he raved about Fields, a band who had blown him away at a recent gig. Then oddly enough, a couple of days later, they popped up on my myspace with a friend request. Well, that was an interesting enough coincidence to get me to check them out.

Mind you, I don’t think I heard them properly. Their myspace site describes them as indie/ folk/ electro, which seems fair enough. But I think I must have just tuned into the ‘folk’ bit. I left them for a while. Then I noticed that they’re doing a residency at the shoegazing-revivalist club Sonic Cathedral at the Legion bar in Shoreditch. “That’s odd, I thought – they don’t sound like that kind of band”. So I listened again, and would you believe it, they are.

Check them out. Hark! – hear the waves of guitar noise. Hear the big keyboard sound (I guess that accounts for the ‘electro’ tag – there’s little other evidence of it). Hear the floaty, melodic vocals. So yeah, that seems right. But they’re more than shoegazing revivalists. It’s not all electric noise. They have some nice acoustic tunes too, and although these are officially demos, it would be a shame if the amps were cranked up on the ‘real’ versions.

Anyway, I think they’re pretty good, and easily one of the best bands who have ‘discovered’ me through myspace. I should be down at the Legion on 24 August to see what the Fields live experience is like. An added bonus is that they’re playing with the touted iLiKETRAiNS, who seem to be decent too (certainly headphonesex thinks so).

Download: Fields – Brittle Sticks
Download: Fields – Charming the Flames
Download: Fields – Skulls and Flesh and More

There are more free downloads on their myspace and even more on their download page. Go on – use up some more space on your iPod.

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