Field of Reeds


Field of Reeds is the third studio album by British art rock band These New Puritans, released on 10 June 2013 on Infectious Music. Produced by Jack Barnett and Graham Sutton, the album features prominent contributions from over thirty-eight session musicians, including jazz singer Elisa Rodrigues, and finds the band "reinventing themselves as a neoclassical ensemble." The album is the band's first without keyboardist Sophie Sleigh-Johnson, who departed from the band in 2012.
Released to widespread critical acclaim, Field of Reeds reached number ninety on the UK Albums Chart.

Background and recording

During the recording of Field of Reeds the band worked extensively with classical musicians and singers, including two large ensembles: the Stargaze Ensemble and the Synergy Vocal Ensemble. Regarding the recording process, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jack Barnett noted, "We pissed off a lot of people making this album, and drove a lot of people mad. We worked long hours of the day, every day. I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Maybe some of the musicians thought, 'It's some popular music project, we can all relax, put our feet up.' But it was a big challenge."

Release

On 13 June 2013 the band released a music video for the album's second track, "Fragment Two", directed by Daniel Askill. Videos were also made for "Organ Eternal" and "V ".

Critical reception

Field of Reeds received highly positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the album received an average score of 82 based on 26 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
In 2016, Fact placed Field of Reeds at number 26 on its list of the best post-rock albums of all time, with staff writer Chal Ravens describing the album as "one of only a few records that could claim to be a successor of Talk Talk's majestic strand of post-rock".

Track listing

Personnel

These New Puritans

;Singers
;Soloists
;Stargaze Ensemble
;Synergy Vocal Ensemble
;Children of St Mary's Church of England Primary School
;Others