Field Music and the NASUWT Riverside Band release Binding Time for RSD24
For this year’s Record Store Day, we’re releasing a brand new LP, Binding Time – 10 songs written and arranged for a 7-piece brass section from the NASUWT Riverside Band. The songs were originally written as part of Durham Brass festival, and inspired by Redhills, the home of the Durham Miners Association. So if you’re keen to hear some songs about murder, methodism and running away from home to get rat-arsed with Oliver Reed, bedecked in cornets and euphoniums, get yourself along to your favourite record shop on 20th April.
Supports announced for Manchester and London Blowdry Colossus shows
We’re extremely happy to announce that the Peter Brewis BDC synth quartet will be joined by Laura J Martin at our show at The Castle Hotel in Manchester and by Sami El-Enany at our show at The Social in London. Follow links for tickets and watch out for a Blowdry Colossus live session on Marc Riley and Gideon Coe’s BBC 6 Music show later this month.
Peter Brewis will be taking the BlowDry Colossus synthesizer ensemble on the road in November. Come see us in Sunderland, London, Manchester and Glasgow. Ticket links here:
Peter Brewis announces new album, Blowdry Colossus
NOTE: Due to a slight delay in the vinyl pressing process, the Blowdry Colossus release date has been moved back to 6th October. APOLOGIES!
On 22nd September, Daylight Saving Records will release Blowdry Colossus, the new solo album by Field Music’s Peter Brewis. The record is Peter’s first solo venture since 2008’s The Week That Was and follows collaborative albums with Paul Smith (on 2014’s Frozen By Sight) and Sarah Hayes (on 2019’s You Tell Me). The album was recorded over the last year at the Field Music studio in Sunderland, and features contributions from Peter’s brother David, Sarah Hayes and Peter’s son Alexander.
The mostly-instrumental album takes cues from the knowing exotica of Yellow Magic Orchestra, the quizzical tunefulness of Thelonious Monk and the pastoral abstractions of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. And like Kraftwerk’s records of the mid and late-70s, this is synthesizer music as art music rather than dance music. But where Kraftwerk took the melodic purity of Schubert and gave it a chilly formality, on Blowdry Colossus, Peter takes the same elevation of melody and plunges it into a kind of playful chaos, heavy with rhythmic ingenuity.
“I wanted to make something where the music was the focus.” says Peter, “With songs, the lyrics tend to carry the meaning: ‘This song is about…’. I wanted the music to be the meaning – the melodies, harmonies, sounds, structures.”
The first track taken from the album is Lemoncadabra. You can hear it now on your preferred streaming service and right here. And you can pre-order the album on CD or vinyl through the Daylight Saving Records Bandcamp and at all your favourite record shops.
For Record Store Day 2023, we remastered, repressed and reissued Peter’s 2008 meisterwerk The Week That Was on clear vinyl. We’ve now put the remaining copies up for sale on the Field Music Bandcamp so if you didn’t manage to get a copy on RSD, now’s your chance.
Say hello to “Driving”, the second song from the upcoming John Monroe & Field Music EP, Songs from the Shelf. Much like opener Sleeping on the Floor, Driving takes place where nerves are frayed, sighs are deep and fingernails are bitten to the bone; a late night rant where you might hear echoes of Nilsson at his most brandy-soaked, looking for catharsis in most of the wrong places, but also finding at least a bit in the pounding of a piano’s keys.
On 3rd June, we’ll be at King’s Place in London for one final Soft Struggles show. For a taste of what we’ve been up to, here’s a little clip from our show at the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds, beautifully put together by the team at Opera North.
Field Music have been around for so long now that some of you may need a quick primer. Peter Brewis, David Brewis and Andrew Moore began recording the first Field Music album in 2003 at their own makeshift studio space in Sunderland. Since then, Peter and David have amassed a large and varied back-catalogue (with occasional contributions from Andrew) both as Field Music and in various individual and collaborative guises. A select discography of work where either one or both of the brothers have been a featured artist is shown below. All of these albums were recorded and mixed by Peter and David at the Field Music studio (now onto its third iteration). For a list of non-Field Music production and engineering credits, see Productions.
2005 – Field Music / Field Music
2006 – Field Music / Write Your Own History (collection of b-sides and early recordings)
2007 – Field Music / Tones of Town
2008 – School of Language (David solo) / Sea From Shore
2008 – The Week That Was (Peter solo) / The Week That Was
2010 – Field Music / Field Music (Measure)
2012 – Field Music / Plumb
2012 – Field Music / Play… (collection of cover versions)
2014 – School of Language – Old Fears
2014 – Paul Smith and Peter Brewis – Frozen By Sight
2015 – Field Music / Music for Drifters (instrumental soundtrack to John Grierson’s pioneering documentary)
2016 – Field Music / Commontime
2018 – Field Music / Open Here
2019 – You Tell Me (Peter, with Sarah Hayes) / You Tell Me
2019 – School of Language / 45
2020 – Field Music / Making a New World
2021 – Field Music / Flat White Moon
2023 – David Brewis / The Soft Struggles
2023 – John Monroe and Field Music / Songs from the Shelf EP
2023 – Peter Brewis / Blowdry Colossus
2024 – Field Music and the NASUWT Riverside Band / Binding Time
John Monroe & Field Music – Songs from the Shelf EP
16 years in the (sporadic) making, the next release on Daylight Saving Records will be an EP culled from the songs recorded by original Field Muscateer Andrew Moore under the mysterious, inexplicable pseudonym John Monroe. Sessions for these tracks began during the infamous post-Tones of Town hiatus, and for a million and one reasons were only completed this year.
