Field Music

Morton Feldman is without doubt one of the most remarkable and influential composers of the second half of 20‐th century America. His experimental works (where the course of a composition is often open to multiple interpretations) are based on melodic cells which are endlessly and subtly varied and developed in immensely long and slow moving structures (sometimes of several hours), producing a hallucinatory effect on the audience.

The two years since Commontime have been strange and turbulent. If you thought the world made some kind of sense, you may have questioned yourself a few times in the past two years. And that questioning, that erosion of faith - in people, in institutions, in shared experience - runs through every song on the new Field Music album.

In the autumn of 1984 Anthony Phillips (ex-Genesis) was commissioned by music publishers De Wolfe to write and record an album of library music for use on TV and Film. In marked contrast to the solo 12-string pieces he was working on at the same time for Twelve, the library project had a number of requirements in the initial brief, one of the key ones being the use of then-contemporary electronic drum and synthesiser sounds.
Anthony composed a number of tracks for the project and scored a selection of them which were then recorded by some top session musicians (credited on the original album sleeve under the name 'X-Cess') in De Wolfe's London studio in the spring of 1985…