Limits of Language

Field Music returns with Limits of Language, their first album of new music in almost four years. The touring cycle for the Flat White Moon album concluded in 2022 with a sense of finality. For the first time since their Mercury-nominated album Plumb ten years earlier, Peter and David had no clear plan for what would come next. However, after six years of continuity, they recognized that if Field Music was to carry on, it would need to evolve in both sound and scope.

Solo projects followed, with 2023 seeing the arrival of David’s quietly jazzy The Soft Struggles and Peter’s playful electronica album Blowdry Colossus, alongside a limited-issue brass collaboration LP Binding Time and the vault-raiding John Monroe EP, made with original Field Music keyboard player Andrew Moore.

These solo albums provided fresh impetus for what would become the new Field Music record. While Peter was amassing the instrumental compositions that became Blowdry Colossus, he was also experimenting with a batch of songs that formed the basis of Limits of Language. These songs blend synthesized textures with off-the-cuff guitar flickers and layers of disorienting found-sound percussion.

Among these fleshed-out demos is “The Waitress of St Louis,” an ode to the now-closed Sunderland café Louis, which featured on the cover of their 2007 album Tones of Town, and to the Maggiore family who ran this cherished institution.

David’s contributions come from a different angle but lean into the same sonic palette, sharing a sense of the past becoming granulated. The album opener, “Six Weeks, Nine Wells,” juxtaposes the hazy ecstasies of summer holidays with the fear and foreboding of a child peeking into the adult world.

Limits of Language showcases Field Music's remarkable, bloody-minded run of releases, totaling an impressive twenty-one ‘Field Music Productions’ in nineteen years as a band.

Available to pre-order now.

Released on Friday 11th October 2024.