Field Music - 20 Year Anniversary Edition

Field Music release an expanded 2-disc edition of their self-titled debut, in celebration of the album’s 20th anniversary. The second disc of this new set includes the first ever vinyl release for the 2006 b-sides collection, Write Your Own History, as well as 3 more rare/unreleased recordings from the band’s formative years, brand new liner notes from former NME writer James Snodgrass, and archive material from the North East music milieu which gave birth to Field Music, The Futureheads, Maximo Park and more.

Field Music’s debut album arrived when post-punk-influenced guitar music was enjoying a popular renaissance. But where other bands combined skinny jeans and football chants, Peter and David Brewis, along with keyboard-player Andrew Moore, constructed a soundworld which was sonically terse, but brimming with musical detail and sophistication, borrowing from the baroque-pop excursions of Van Dyke Parks, The Left Banke and Todd Rundgren, as much as from Wire and Television. Setting a template which has sustained the band ever since, the album was self-produced at the band’s own studio space in Sunderland, with the brothers’ lofty ambitions far outstripping their limited experience. “As naive as it might sound, we really wanted to make music which didn’t rely on clichés,” says David, “And, while I don’t think we quite succeeded, I do think that first record stands as something quite unique.”

This reissue also marks 20 years of the band’s association with the pioneering and beloved Memphis Industries label. “Back in the summer of 2004, we sent a CD-R of the unmixed album to them with a half-pleading, half-defiant letter, saying we’d release it ourselves if no one else was interested,” remembers David, “and it must have landed on their desk at an opportune moment because 20 years and 21 albums later, they’re still putting up with us.”