That Was The Show That Was: The Field | Great Scott

Many fans of electronic music have likely experienced a live performance comprised of little more than a man staring intently at his laptop and at least appearing oblivious to his surroundings. And so the prospect of Stockholm-based Axel Willner's The Field performing its music augmented by a band -- as happened very, very early this morning at Great Scott -- was a particularly enticing proposition. It turns out that the spectacle was still little more than the old man-and-his-machine trope, although Mr. Willner was indeed augmented by two cohorts who shifted roles providing drums, electric bass and a second machine of some sort (a sequencer mixer deck thingy? our knowledge of such hardware is, ahem, minimal). Fortunately, the minimal electronic music that is the musical currency of The Field is indeed sublime. The live sound from our perch directly in front of the house sound desk was visceral and perfect, and the young crowd -- smaller than we expected, given the deserved renown of the performer; how far that performer had traveled to be there; and how rare in Boston such appearances by said performer are -- was well into it.

The only disappointment of the show was its relative brevity. Granted, The Field's compositions regularly stretch past the five-minute mark, and the show lasted some 40 minutes. But even so, we only recall a handful of tracks being administered to the crowd by Willner, et al. According to our sharp-minded show-going cohort The Urban Legend, the set list was:

Night
The Little Heart Beats So Fast
Everyday
Over The Ice

It felt strange for The Field to be breaking down its gear and leaving the stage a few minutes before 1AM. Perhaps we misjudged and the trio came back for a second set. But it certainly didn't feel like that was going to happen, so we packed it in. No video of last night's show has hit the YouTubes yet, but there is a good, short clip of The Field doing "Everyday" at the Paradise Rock Club in April right here. We shot some pictures last night, and you can view a Flickr slideshow right here.

[Link to song at Imeem removed because the embed broke our layout]
Listen to tracks by The Field at Hype Machine right here.

The Field: Internerdsz | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr