...Which I forgot to mention in my previous post: the video! As the Field played last night, a video played along on a projection screen hung to the left of the stage (would've been better right behind the band, but so it goes). The basic concept of the video was this: quick, flickering flashes between big modern/industrial landscapes (a freeway, some silos, telephone wires) and identically composed scenes of human scale, with a person wearing a paper mask of Axel Willner's face interacting with various ordinary objects. So, the video would strobe between the silos and some similarly arranged buckets, on which a flickering Willner, apearing only in the frames with the buckets, but leaving a ghost image on the landscapes, would drum, giving the appearance of a giant playing bongos on some factory. A stack of shipping containers became a stack of books became the shipping containers, with a wavering giant stepping over them. Telephone lines became loose, sagging harp strings to be plucked. A field beside a freeway became carpet for Willner to vacuum. It was such a simple idea, but it was executed so flawlessly and with such fun. It was fantastic. (A friend told me that the video, which appeared black & white when I saw it was actually in color at some point, and that while the b&w looked "artsy," the color version looked "cheesy" and "Eastern European"—I'm not sure about that, having only seen the b&w, but I thought it was great.)

You can catch some glimpses of it (in "cheesy" technicolor!) here (not from last night's performance):

Dave's right, last night's show deserves all the ink we can spare. It was epic. At least two reviews epic, so here's my added two cents:

Regarding the Field as live band: The first song that really showed off the live band was "Leave It," on with it's low, humming bass guitar groove and its echoing glockenspiel, the latter of which seemed to loop and vary on a different time signature than the rest of the song, resetting and rearranging in odd ways. I have to say though that, with the exception of one moment when the rest of the band dropped out, you never really heard the live drums. As much as the live instrumentation has really opened the Field's songs up—there's really a subtle newfound depth to the new album—the core of Axel Willner's tracks are still his breathy, misted samples, which Willner controlled last night with the use of a hardware sampler. What I love about the Field is how he makes the small changes feel so monumental. He'll be working one hypnotic loop for minutes, and then he'll just, like, nudge the loop point forward half a second to catch a different fragment of sound, and it totally changes the whole tone (this was especially true of the tracks from Sublime)—it's minimalist, but once you get into it the payoffs are so great. (A friend suggests that you have to have done E to really "get" the Field, and cliche as it is, he may be right—last night certainly felt right ecstatic.) Also, second the total kick-starting power of "The Little Heart Beats So Fast," with it's insistent drum machine beat and sampled "uh," its floating vocals and percolating acid bass line—holy shit, that one lit the place up.

I'd never seen the Field as a live band before, and it was a pleasant surprise. No surprise with The Juan Maclean, though, who I had seen before as a live band and who I knew would tear the roof off the fucker last night. Dude's theremin skills are silly. Nancy Whang's presence on the mic is totalitarian. Jerry Fuchs is such a fucking machine of a drummer—give the drummer a break, Juan—he should start an instructional video series (possibly to be called "Fuchsing Around with Jerry Fuchs"). "Happy House" was indeed an unreal epic, peaking more times than should be physically/mathematically possible for a single track. "Give Me Every Little Thing" and "One Day" were outstanding as well, the former remains one hell of an aerobic electro funk jam, the latter boasts the best orchestral stabs of 2009—I could really use a remix of this song that just loops that break for like nine minutes (seems like something the Field could pull off, no?). Most surprising for me was "No Time," which, on record, kind of blends in amongst the several excellent electro pop numbers; last night, though, Maclean and Whang's cold back-and-forth, and especially Whang's taunting chorus, were just totally convincing. Bodies are made for moving.

I initially thought The Stranger may have overdone it with our coverage of this show (see this, that, and the other). But after witnessing it, I think we gave it exactly the amount of ink/webspace it merited.

On the way to Nectar, I heard the Field’s “Yesterday and Today” on KEXP—an auspicious omen. I arrived at the club while DJ Nordic Soul was airing out a cluster of Modeselektor and Moderat cuts and the place was, uh, moderately full. When the stoic Swedes in the Field took the stage, Nectar’s patio emptied and the floor became surprisingly packed for a non-rock show on a Monday night.

The Field began with several minutes of muffled, implied beats and increasingly billowing tension, which never quite reached the release I was hoping for (I think it may have been “Yesterday and Today” sans Stanier’s drumming or something from one of the Pop Ambient comps; anybody?). They followed that with a hypnotic, Chain Reactionary dub-techno spangle of “Leave It.” So far, so understated. Then the Field bust into lubricious disco throb of “The Little Heart Beats So Fast,” with its artfully arrayed stuttered “uh”s, and even the bartenders started to dance—and not facetiously, either. The track struck a perfect balance between exertion and exultation. From that refreshing blast, they segued into “The More That I Do,” whose brash, buoyant cascading guitars and synths induced waves of joy. The bliss just kept on coming with “Over the Ice,” in which Field general Axel Willner morphed human phonemes into gull cries. When the track broke down into just the bass line, it elicited ecstatic cheers from the crowd, which seemed near capacity by this point.

The Field ended their set, cleverly enough, with “Good Things End.” Ascending gray synth spirals and rippling bass tones lent industrial texture to the rhythm while Willner looped murmurs into a susurrant mantra. My only complaint: The Field’s set needed to be louder. This music should totally envelop the house. I’m not asking for My Bloody Valentine-esque volume levels, but the sound man wasn’t doing justice to the Field’s swarming shoegazetronica (sorry). We were merely buffeted when complete immersion was called for.

I have no volume quibbles with the Juan Maclean’s performance. They sounded damned potent. Bolstered by Nancy Whang on vocals, Jerry Fuchs on drums, and Nicholas Milhiser on keyboards, John Maclean multi-tasked with panache on synth, Theremin, cowbell, and other percussion toys. They charged out of the gate with the hugely impressive prog disco of “The Simple Life,” its curvaceous Theremin motif and eerily bleeping keyboards seductive as a motherfucker. The Juan Maclean also sashayed through the glossy electro funk of “The Station,” strutted through the sternly hedonistic “Give Me Every Little Thing,” shimmied through “One Day,” and bang-bang-boogied through the emphatic disco of “No Time” (Human League “Being Boiled” homage acknowledged). We were saddened by robotic wiggler “The Future Will Come”’s absence, but, honestly, that was negated by “Happy House,” whose climax was no less shattering just because it was expected. Extended to 22 minutes (up from the LP's 12:26), “Happy House” (the Juan Maclean’s best song) built from peak to peak, downshifted for a minute, and then climbed to yet higher and higher peaks. For one stretch, it seemed as if the group members were channeling the relentless, acidic 303 fibrillations as heard on many a ’90s trance-techno release by the German label Harthouse. The entire 22 minutes of it were fucking incredible, an epic display of dance-music dynamics that even ADHD sufferers probably hated to see end.

The show should’ve finished there, so we could've all floated home powered by the euphoria “Happy House” had instilled. But in the rapturous afterglow, Stranger tech guru Briango griped about the Juan Maclean not doing “Tonight,” his favorite cut off The Future Will Come. Somehow, from backstage, the band heard him and returned to perform that romance-infused disco number. Never underestimate the persuasive powers of Briango.