field-music
Andy Martin

Field Music prep 'Making a New World' (listen to "Only In A Man's World")

UK band Field Music will release new album, Making a New World, on January 10 via Memphis Industries. It’s a 19-track concept album about the after-effects of the First World War, but not in the traditional sense. It stemmed from an image in a 1919 publication on munitions by the US War Department, made using “sound ranging,” a “technique that utilised an array of transducers to capture the vibrations of gunfire at the front.” From the press release:

These vibrations were displayed on a graph, similar to a seismograph, where the distances between peaks on different lines could be used to pinpoint the location of enemy armaments. This particular image showed the minute leading up to 11am on 11th November 1918, and the minute immediately after. One minute of oppressive, juddering noise and one minute of near-silence.

“We imagined the lines from that image continuing across the next hundred years,” says the band’s David Brewis (who released an album about Donald Trump earlier this year), “and we looked for stories which tied back to specific events from the war or the immediate aftermath. In writing these songs, we felt we were pulling the war towards us — out of remembrance and into the everyday — into the now.” There are songs about gender reassignment surgery, air traffic control, Tiananmen Square and ultrasound. And then there’s first single “Only in a Man’s World.” David Brewis:

I found myself researching the development of sanitary pads – not a statement I’ve ever imagined myself making – and was surprised at how little the advertising material has changed in a hundred years. It’s still, Hey Ladies! Let’s not mention it too loudly but here is the perfect product to keep you feeling normal WHILE THE DISGUSTING, DIRTY THING HAPPENS. And you realise that it’s a kind of madness that a monthly occurrence for billions of women – something absolutely necessary for the survival of humanity – is seen as shameful or dirty – and is taxed MORE than razor blades?!

At every stage of making this song, I had to ask myself, am I allowed to do this? Is it okay to do this? And I cringed in the next room when I first showed it to my wife. But I think confronting my own embarrassment is a pretty fundamental part of what the song is about.

Musically, “Only in a Man’s World” falls a little into Talking Heads territory, but in a very Field Music kind of way. You can listen to that, and check out the album art and tracklist, below.

Field Music also have UK tour dates on the horizon. Those are listed below. too.

Andy Martin
Andy Martin

Making a New World tracklist:
1. Sound Raging
2. Silence
3. Coffee or Wine
4. Best Kept Garden
5. I Thought You Were Something Else
6. Between Nations
7. A Change of Heir
8. Do You Read Me
9. From A Dream, Into My Arms
10. Beyond That Of Courtesy
11. A Shot To The Arm
12. A Common Language Pt 1
13. A Common Language Pt 2
14. Nikon Pt 1
15. Nikon Pt 2
16. If The Wind Blows Toward The Hospital
17. Only In A Man’s World
18. Money Is A Memory
19. An Independent State

Field Music – Tour Dates
9 Nov – Dundee, Neon at Night
01 Feb – Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery
21 Feb – Nottingham, Rescue Rooms
22 Feb – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
27 Feb – Whitley Bay, Playhouse
28 Feb – Manchester, Dancehouse
29 Feb – London, EartH

Categories: