The 19 track ‘Making a New World” will be released on 10 January 2020
Field Music’s new release is “Making A New World”, a 19 track song cycle about the after-effects of the First World War. But this is not an album about war and it is not, in any traditional sense, an album about remembrance. There are songs here about air traffic control and gender reassignment surgery. There are songs about Tiananmen Square and about ultrasound. There are even songs about Becontree Housing Estate and about sanitary towels!!
“We imagined the lines from that image continuing across the next hundred years,” says the band’s David Brewis, “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.” If the original intention might have been to create a mostly instrumental piece, this research forced and inspired a different approach. These were stories itching to be told.
First single from the new album is “Only In a Man’s World” which you can listen to now HERE. David says of the song :
“I found myself looking at the history of sanitary pads – it turns out the modern design was developed from a wartime surgical dressing. The advertising hasn’t changed much in a hundred years i.e. Hey Ladies! Let’s not mention it too loudly but here is the perfect product to keep you feeling normal WHILE THE DISGUSTING THING HAPPENS. 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?!
I kept asking myself, is it okay to write this? But I think confronting my own embarrassment is a pretty fundamental part of what the song is about.”
Making a New World grew from a project the band undertook for the Imperial War Museum and were first performed at their sites in Salford and London in January 2019. The songs are in a kind of chronological order, starting with the end of the war itself. Songs about soldiers returning to a profoundly altered world, Dr Harold Gillies, whose pioneering work on skin grafts for injured servicemen led him, in the 1940s, to perform some of the very first gender reassignment surgeries. How the horrors of war inspired the Dada movement, and a particular funky number about the German Treasury and their 91 year reparation debts outlined n the Treaty of Versailles.
This is Field Music’s first true concept album. It’s also their first record, at least since 2007’s Tones of Town, which really is a “band” album. While most of Field Music’s output has been pieced together primarily by brothers Peter and David Brewis, the basic tracks for Making A New World were recorded in two full-run throughs by the Field Music live band – Liz Corney on keyboards, Kevin Dosdale on guitar and Andrew Lowther on bass, with Peter and David on guitar and drums respectively – in a single day, following the final performance at IWM London.
Field Music will be performing Making a New World in its entirety, with each song accompanied by visuals created by the band’s Kevin Dosdale. There will also be a bonus set of classics from the Field Music oeuvre.
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
January Instores
Thu Jan 9, Liverpool, Phase One instore
Fri Jan 10, Manchester, Piccadilly Records outstore at Soup Kitchen
Sat Jan 11, Edinburgh outstore at The Mash House
Wed Jan 15, London Rough Trade East instore
Thu Jan 16, Bristol, Rough Trade Bristol instore
Fri Jan 17, Brighton, Resident Music instore
Sun Jan 19, Newcastle, Reflex outstore at The Cluny
