Field Music

Field Music

Field Music is an art rock and indie rock group from Sunderland, United Kingdom, active since 2004. The band is led by brothers David Brewis and Peter Brewis, and its line-up also includes Ian Black, Kev Dosdale, Andrew Moore and Tom English. Over time, other musicians have also played with the group, including Damo Waters, Andrew Lowther, Peter Gofton, Mark Simms, Emma Fisk, Peter Richardson, Liz Corney and Pauline Brandon.

Albums and releases

The group has released eight main studio albums: Field Music (2005), Tones of Town (2007), Field Music (Measure) (2010), Plumb (2012), Commontime (2016), Open Here (2018), Making A New World (2020) and Flat White Moon (2021). A ninth album, Limits of Language, appears in 2024.

Alongside these, Field Music issues a B-sides compilation, Write Your Own History (2006), a covers collection, Field Music Play... (2012), the soundtrack Music For Drifters (2015), and the EP Another Shot (2021), which contains songs written and recorded around the same period as Flat White Moon. Binding Time is a separate release made in limited quantity for Record Store Day 2024.

Commissioned projects and themes

Several releases begin as commissions before becoming albums. Music For Drifters is commissioned by the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival and serves as a soundtrack to the 1929 silent film Drifters. Making A New World is commissioned by the Imperial War Museum and is a concept album about the end of the First World War and its effects over the following century. Binding Time is commissioned by the Durham Miners Association, inspired by the history and legacy of local mining, and arranged for and performed at the Durham Brass Festival with brass players from the NASUWT Riverside Band.

Activity and related projects

After Tones of Town, the band announces a break, and the Brewis brothers release solo material before the group reconvenes in 2009. David Brewis records as School of Language, which has three albums and an EP, while Peter Brewis works under his own name and with other artists, including Paul Smith of Maxïmo Park on Frozen By Sight and Sarah Hayes of Admiral Fallow on You Tell Me.

In 2022, the Brewis brothers create Daylight Saving Records for their own releases and other related projects. The label issues Slug’s Thy Socialite!, David Brewis’s acoustic solo album The Soft Struggles, the collaborative EP Songs From The Shelf with former member Andrew Moore, and Peter Brewis’s mostly instrumental electronic solo album Blowdry Colossus, all in 2023. Binding Time is the first Field Music album released on Daylight Saving Records.

Recognition

Plumb is nominated for the 2012 Mercury Prize. The band also describes its music as experimental pop, and all of its albums are self-produced at the group’s studio space in Sunderland.