Search Results for:

SCHOOL OF LANGUAGE

School Of Language

45

    School of Language is David Brewis, who also makes music with his brother Peter as Field Music. This is the third School of Language album, following on from Sea From Shore in 2008 and Old Fears in 2014.

    This is an album about Donald Trump - his dubious rise in politics, his capricious behaviour while in office and the motley cast of characters he has surrounded himself with.

    It’s not exactly a protest record, though it is shot through with anger. It’s definitely not a joke, though some of it is darkly funny. It is a tragedy and it is a farce. The songs are sung from different points of view, almost as if it’s a Donald Trump funk musical. One advisor sells Trump on the idea of a border wall. Another one feels he can’t quit because of the chaos that might follow. Rex Tillerson fumes at his plummeting status. Psychiatrists fret about the President’s mental stability. Hillary Clinton laments her loss. Trump himself brags and equivocates in his own unique, blustering style.

    45 was written and recorded in a little less than two months during gaps in the schedule at Field Music’s studio in Sunderland. It was inspired by Bob Woodward’s book Fear, articles in the Washington Post, The New Yorker and The New York Times and by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. It was also inspired by James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, The Meters, Otis Redding and Free.

    STAFF COMMENTS

    Barry says: It's an interesting approach to a catastrophic situation, but School Of Language's '45' handles the ridiculousness of the situation with a deserving amount of serious lyricism mixed in with a jaunty, funked-out instrumental focus. The lyrics here really speak volumes, and provide a wry and bleak juxtaposition to the whimsical playful funk.

    TRACK LISTING

    1. I’ve Got The Numbers
    2. Nobody Knows
    3. A Beautiful Wall
    4. Rocket Man
    5. Rex
    6. The Goldwater Rule
    7. Adult In The Room
    8. And Even If I Did
    9. Lock Her Up
    10. The Best People

    School Of Language

    More Fears EP

      School Of Language, aka Field Music’s David Brewis, releases new EP ‘More Fears’ via Memphis Industries.

      The EP features new song ‘Days Accelerate’ plus radical reworks of old tracks ‘Marine Life’ and ‘Keep Your Water’.

      David Brewis is best known as a member of Sunderland group Field Music though he has been using the nom de plume School Of Language since the ‘Sea From Shore’ album released in 2008.

      A pop polymath, the past twelve months have also seen David assemble and play in Eleanor Friedberger’s touring band, do production work for Maximo Park’s recent album and Futureheads-affiliates Rivals, Pea Sea and Frozen By Sight (a collaboration between brother Peter Brewis and Paul Smith), as well as remixes for Dutch Uncles, The Ralfe Band and The Phoenix Foundation.

      With brother Peter, David also composed a score for 1929 silent documentary ‘Drifters’ which they performed at the Aldeburgh and Berwick Film Festivals. Field Music remain on hiatus since the release of their Mercury prize nominated album ‘Plumb’ in 2012.

      School Of Language

      Old Fears

        “Simultaneously a classic and five billion years ahead of its time” - NME

        “Should satisfy fans of Field Music’s tightly wound pop” - Pitchfork

        The new School Of Language album is called ‘Old Fears’ and it’s set for release on Memphis Industries.

        ‘Old Fears’ is a pop record. A place of clipped falsetto, melancholic funk, iridescent electro, shimmering post-punk, futurist prog. A self-contained sphere of strange sensations. Beguiling textures. Lengthening shadows. At times it is both liminal and minimal, at others emotive and external. Ambiguous and ambient. Tantalising and tempered. Modern. Unique. And funny too. “I wrote a lot of notes and they seemed to distinctly split into things to do with love and things to do with fear,” says School Of Language’s David Brewis. “A lot of it has ended up with me looking back at when I was 19, 20 - my formative years. So though I wouldn’t want to call it a concept album it’s definitely themed.”

        Here each song has been honed and polished into something pure, like a vast block of marble chiselled down into a perfectly tiny delicate egg of Fabergé-esque perfection. Recorded throughout 2013 in Field Music’s studio on the banks of the River Wear in Sunderland, synth flourishes sit alongside the staccato jarring guitars of ‘A Smile Cracks’ and the metronomic rhythms of ‘Dress Up’. Like a Ballard novel or a George Shaw painting, ‘Between The Suburbs’ offers perhaps the most lyrical and poetic moment, where “Dogs chase patterns, play to attention / Bulbs glare on greasy roads...”

        The title track, meanwhile, is reminiscent of the haunting Giallo film scores of Goblin or Kosmische music at its most moving, while ‘Moment Of Doubt’ displays shades of Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt. Other oblique influences come in the form of early Justin Timberlake and N*E*R*D albums, “a bunch of disco records”, Canadian experimentalist Sandro Perri, Dr John, Fela Kuti and Shalamar.

        School Of Language is the nom de plume of David Brewis, a member of Mercury prize-nominated pop group Field Music. His first album as School Of Language, ‘Sea From Shore’, was released to wide acclaim in 2008. A pop polymath, the past twelve months have also seen David assemble and play in Eleanor Friedberger’s touring band, do production work for Maximo Park, Futureheads affiliates Rivals, Pea Sea and a collaboration between brother Peter Brewis and Paul Smith, as well as remixes for Dutch Uncles, The Ralfe Band and Phoenix Foundation.

        STAFF COMMENTS

        Andy says: More jerk-pop brilliance from Mr. Field Music.


        Latest Pre-Sales

        104 NEW ITEMS

        E-newsletter —
        Sign up
        Back to top