Tracklist:

1. Drumeoscene
2. Lemoncadabra
3. Blowdry Colossus
4. Second Hand Slow
5. Warm Wind
6. Generation Dial Up
7. Dog Bark Dark
8. Smith Made Up
9. Panda Tonic

On 22nd September, Daylight Saving Records will release Blowdry Colossus, the new solo album by Field Musics Peter Brewis. The record is Peters first solo venture since 2008s The Week That Was and follows collaborative albums with Paul Smith (on 2014s Frozen By Sight) and Sarah Hayes (on 2019s You Tell Me). The album was recorded over the last year at the Field Music studio in Sunderland, and features contributions from Peters brother David, Sarah Hayes and Peters son Alexander.

Peters work with Field Music, and across all the parallel projects hes undertaken, has always been characterised by curiosity; an urge to find new musical and lyrical avenues to explore, to mine under-appreciated influences, to combine disparate musical strands. Blowdry Colossus makes this tendency more explicit than ever.

I wanted to make something where the music was the focus. says Peter, With songs, the lyrics tend to carry the meaning: This song is about…’. I wanted the music to be the meaning – the melodies, harmonies, sounds, structures.

The mostly-instrumental album takes cues from the knowing exotica of Yellow Magic Orchestra, the quizzical tunefulness of Thelonious Monk and the pastoral abstractions of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. It also has more than a touch of the hyperactive fizz of 8-bit game soundtracks. And like Kraftwerks records of the mid and late-70s, this is synthesizer music as art music rather than dance music. But where Kraftwerk took the melodic purity of Schubert and gave it a chilly formality, on Blowdry Colossus, Peter takes the same elevation of melody and plunges it into a kind of playful chaos, heavy with rhythmic ingenuity.

The record is also heavy with sonic mutation. A piano is fed through a ring-modulator until it resembles a flute. A flute combines with an old casio and becomes a ghostly, tuneful breath. Synth drum loops morph into arpeggios of bubbles, or are remade as overdriven hiccups. And, of course, theres the eponymous hero of the title track: a hairdryer fugue gradually giving way to a squelching, off-balance take on Zeppelin-esque riff rock.

The only lyrics on the album appear on Dog Bark Dark, a surreal wild-dog chase. I thought Id have one actual song on here, for something different! says Peter, I was thinking of YMO, Quincy Jones, early 90s dance and Captain Beefheart. And the guitar solo was meant to be the discarded bits from Steve Millers Abracadabra.

Throughout the album, it feels like weve been diligently following the steps of the KLFs seminal Manual, but once we were sitting in the studio, drinking tea and tinkering with the sequencer, we decided to give up on having a number one hit and keep playing purely for the joy. Hence, the foray into New Jack Swing on Generation Dial Up or the Eno-esque interlude of Warm Wind.