The Field

Swedish electronic musician Axel Willner, working as The Field, counts among the Kompakt roster's most admired and divisive techno figures. Across the years his richly emotive approach shifted only gradually, beginning with pop-leaning techno built on inventive sampling and later moving into more refined, expansive textures. Critics and listeners warmly received the 2007 debut From Here We Go Sublime, after which he issued new material at a consistent pace, each album wrapped in uniform, minimal artwork. With 2016's The Follower and 2018's Infinite Moment the project moved further into dub-oriented production and shoegaze-like textural depth.

The Field's first outing, Things Keep Falling Down, appeared in early 2005. The striking 12-inch held two extended blissed-out trance-techno cuts, one of them "Thought vs. Action," which drew cleverly on the Four Tops' "I'll Be There" introduction. Follow-up release Sun and Ice incorporated samples from Lionel Richie and Kate Bush and directly preceded the 2007 album From Here We Go Sublime. Tracks featured on Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2007 and Pop Ambient 2008 compilations came before 2009's Yesterday and Today, whose rhythmic variety resulted from contributions by several instrumentalists, among them Battles drummer John Stanier. Looping State of Mind arrived in 2011 and presented Willner's strongest amalgamations of shoegaze, ambient dub, and techno. Cupid's Head in 2013 and The Follower in 2016, signaled by their sleeve colors, adopted darker tones and were realized entirely by Willner. He has also performed as part of Cologne Tape and released material under solo aliases including Loops of Your Heart. Infinite Moment surfaced in 2018 as The Field's sixth full-length, probing even further into the dark textures and searching sonorities explored on recent records.