The Field – Cupid's Head

Recorded using only hardware, and no computers, Axel Willner’s fourth solo album since 2007’s much-lauded debut From Here We Go Sublime is, typical to form, the same but different, maintaining the artist’s trademark of making small changes to create an altogether different mood. Deeper and darker, Cupid’s Head came out of an intense period of “producer’s block”, and the influence of his less melodic, more repetitious side projects Loops Of Your Heart and Black Fog is evident.

Darker doesn’t mean inaccessible, though; the sentimental contemplation of FHWGS, gleaned from its subtle instrumentation, is eschewed for an equally compelling state of suspended hypnotism, pointing at something larger and more futuristic. In fact, it’s when the tiny, tight R&B-tinged loops and propelling 4/4 beat which characterise the album release into a claustrophobic acid-techno pulse on the album’s climax, Black Sea, that you truly get the sense of its dystopian core. [Rosie Davies]