Axel Willner has had loops on his mind a lot lately. He should, probably: A broad definition of "loop" would encompass every single component piece of Wilner's work, especially given his fondness for manicured sampling as the Field. His third Field album, Looping State of Mind, dropped last fall, and here he returns as Loops of Your Heart, a new project in the vein of the masters of German electronic music from whom he takes many of his cues.
I'm always surprised, when revisiting the Field albums, how fast the tracks are. Willner's tempos blur his loops into proto-trance, and they would sound furious if they weren't so pretty. On And Never Ending Nights, Willner slows his roll. His loops, instead of being swept into currents of sound, ripple in muddy puddles. The result is a small and willing homage to the earthen psychedelia of artists like Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, and Klaus Schulze.
It's an attractive position for Willner to take: The Field records are airtight and modern, rarely betraying influence. Never Ending Nights is too sober to effect the Martian moonscapes of those early electronic masters: It is compact in concept and execution. Where Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel allowed their instruments to fever for 20 and 30 minutes, Willner attacks and releases precisely. Maybe we're all inured to these extended, chapped arpeggios, or perhaps Willner is too tethered to his predecessors, but Never Ending Nights settles into a comfy pocket somewhere between motorik patter and ambiet drift.
Willner is most successful when he tunes one of his sequencers to a snake-y rhythm. "Broken Bow" clangs and quivers for three minutes before a prowling synthesizer and growling guitar feedback hijack the track. "Lost in the Mirror" is too simple and good to screw up: a phasing arpeggio tickles the red as saucers hover. It is one excellent note. But if Willner seems in exact control of rhythmic elements, he's less certain of glacial ones. "Neukölln" and "Cries" both lack conviction, trusting the lapping tones of his keyboards to provide both beauty and structure.
Never Ending Nights does contain one truly modern moment. During the opening minutes of "Little You, You Should Develop"-- a pretty, faded bauble-- titular electronic splinters rise from the background. It's the singular sound-- I kid you not-- of a cell phone brushing too close to a speaker (and just as you check for flashing lights while driving and listening to hip-hop, so too will you check the location of your phone). Loops of Your Heart isn't as darkly imaginative as Black to Comm or as committed as Emeralds, and we are long past the point where we can call this manner of composition "experimental." Willner, though, is an able synth scientist and a reverent listener. Never Ending Nights contains just enough detail to save it from pastiche and in doing so offers a glimpse into Willner's influences.
