Has Axel Wilner changed, or has the world changed? The artist who built an impressive career on making the same album over and over—and making every single one compelling—sounds a little different on his new EP Now You Exist, his first record in eight years. Maybe it’s because it’s on Studio Barnhus instead of his usual home of Kompakt, but it comes off loose and relaxed, unmoored from the clinical techno beats of his most revered work; it sets off on the wide-open path Infinite Moment laid out in 2018 and then veers ruggedly off road. With its over-the-top emotions and genuine hooks, Now You Exist recalls a more unhurried, washed-out version of his debut album, From Here We Go Sublime, sprawled out in the sun and left to bake for a while.
The biggest difference between the old Field and the new Field is in the drums. Those early records often had stiff rhythms built on Kompakt’s minimal techno blueprint. They were usually obscured by haze and fog, muffled like heartbeats; the clipped vocals or carefully hewn samples provided most of the rhythm anyway. Here, when the drums finally land about halfway into the eight-minute “In Our Dreams,” they feel limber. It’s as if after years of stiffness and tension, Willner finally stretched out, cracking his neck and shoulders in just the right way.
Though the Field’s formula remains intact, the looser energy gives the project a new lease on life. The percussion on “Hey Baby” is rough and tumble like the rickety drum machines of mid-late-’80s Chicago house records, and underneath, the whole track swells and recedes as if it were breathing. “Hey Baby” pulls the Field away from the celestial and into the earthly, like he stopped making art for blue-chip galleries and moved onto some decrepit warehouse on the outskirts of town. It’s not that his music is any less pretty—it’s beautiful—but everything feels rougher, from the sound design to the looping itself. Even when he pulls the same old trick of letting the sample play out on “333 706,” it hardens into sandpapery shoegaze. It’s not the first time he’s used those kinds of textures, but it’s the first time you can really feel the edges.
The most arresting track on Now You Exist is also the most stereotypical. Looking back even further than From Here We Go Sublime, “Another Day” casts its glance past the first few GAS records and squarely on Wolfgang Voigt’s Love Inc. album Life’s a Gas. All weepy strings and Sofia Coppola grandeur, it sounds old-fashioned, either like a pre-war Vera Lynn ballad or a particularly lush doo-wop track. After the breakdown plunges into a low-pass filter, the song emerges out the other hand with a fully fledged vocal, lyrics and all—a relatively rarity in Willner’s world of half-syllables and blurred phrases. I can’t tell if it’s a sample or not, but the voice’s arch enunciation and cryptic lyrics (“What should I say when they ask me? How can you face goodbye?”) add an explicit, soap opera–level emotional heft to Willner’s usually implicit feelings.
Now You Exist isn’t likely to convert anyone who wasn’t already a fan of Willner’s vaguely schmaltzy techno. In fact, it’s even more schmaltzy now. But it suits him, and it suits Studio Barnhus, a label that has never been afraid of melodrama and humor, and now has encouraged him to bring out a human aspect that has always felt a little hidden before. My favorite bit is at the very end, when Willner reverses his usual plot twist. The sample fades out early, like a tape coming unspooled, leaving only the drums behind, loping their way toward oblivion. It’s different than usual, but it’s still kind of the same as it always was, and it feels profound either way. In other words, it’s the Field.
