The DNA of These New Puritans New Album 'Field Of Reeds'

These New Puritans critically acclaimed album Hidden was an ambitious and pioneering record that some people thought they’d be unable to better. Fortunately, some people are morons. They’ve returned with a follow-up record even grander in scope, pushing the fringes of classical, avant-garde and pop way beyond the horizon. We’re not just saying that in the way journalists always say a band’s new album is better than the last, it’s properly brilliant. Fields Of Reeds took a year to undertake and brought together huge orchestral scores. On the day the record is released in the UK, we spoke to the group’s composer-in-chief, Jack Barnett, and asked him to break down the record to its basic genetic structure.

The Rule

No more than ten people playing at one time.

Ambitious projects like these often collapse under the weight of their intent. Barnett avoids clutter by insisting no more than ten people were playing at one time. "That's the absolute maximum, and sometimes it’s just piano and voice. When we do use classical instrumentation, there are only five people playing in each section. It’s more melodic and harmonic, and in that way, more song based." The result is a record that has both a heterogeneity of instrumentation and an abundance of space.

The Studio

Funkhaus Nalepastraße

The band left Southend and headed to Berlin, to record in the former DDR concert hall Funkhaus Nalepastraße, a huge studio complex replete with echo chambers and equipment from before the wall fell. “It’s a great studio, this post-war complex of buildings that have all these different rooms. It was basically used to make radio plays so it has all these rooms for different effects. We kept on drawing the curtains because we wanted a drier sound, stuff like that."

The Beat

Or lack thereof

Unlike their last record, there’s no tribal percussion to punctuate the sound. It means that daunting soundscapes evolve slowly. “Usually when you start making a record, you record the drums first and work everything else around that. With this, it was like, where do you start? So different tracks would be based around different parts of the orchestra.” When drums finally arrive, they’re intense and unexpected. “The lack of percussive sounds certainly makes the few that remain more powerful. It just feels so much bigger because up until then you’ve only had two violins.”

The Microphone

The Neumann Model Head

The Model Head looks like a crash-test dummy but is actually one of the most advanced microphones in the world. “It models human hearing basically. So we used that for things like the glass smashing sound, where you want the effect to be a pane smashed over your head, with all the little fragments bouncing off your ear. It's one thing you could just sample, but that’s boring. George had to wear all this protective stuff when he was doing it. They were finding bits of glass weeks after we left.”

The Collaborators

Andre de Ridder and Hans EK

TNP are known for working in an insular unit, but the scale of this record meant they had to bring in others that shared their vision. There was Andre de Ridder, the German conductor, who has led Philharmonic orchestras around the world, including at the Proms. “Sometimes you get these sessions with some anonymous, shady figure who doesn’t particularly respect what you're doing. It’s good to have someone with an understanding of the music. There’s so much arranged stuff on this record, you need to get classical musicians in. So we got people like Ridder to ease some of the workload.”

They also involved Hans Ek, a Swedish conductor and arranger who has spent 40 years working with classical, jazz and pop groups. “I know what I’m doing with the brass and woodwind, but strings are a bit of a risk and he really helps out. I’ll send a file of me playing the songs and then he’ll help with scoring.”

Were they nervous about bringing in people from outside on such a personal project? “I write everything but there are a lot of craftsmen involved. It’s like building a house, where you need a plumber and a carpenter and other people. Having never been in one of those bands that just jam stuff out, it’s hard to tell, but what I gather is they go in and it can be a bit looser. I prefer music that is defined. When you have a lot of people playing, changes have to be discussed and so are more gradual."

The duration

One year

The first session was in April 2012 and they finally finished mixing in March 2013. “When me and Graham were editing for two months, 12 hours a day, it was quite intense, hard work.” What does that level of commitment do to a man? “Well there’s relationships falling apart and breakdowns. We’ve all aged a lot. That’s the fun though isn’t it? There’d be no point otherwise really. We might as well do it properly even if its going to take a few years off our life expectancy."

The one thing we couldn’t have made this record without

Notebooks

"I’ve got a couple of notebooks that I've used since the end of Hidden. Obviously, I'm thinking about music a lot of the time so I write the lyrics relatively close to the end. Music just flows, whereas lyrics, I have to sit down, nine to five with. It’s a proper desk job type thing and I have to work on it really hard. The most important thing is that you mean what you’re singing but it also doesn’t matter what your singing means. Sometimes I'm just singing a sound but for whatever reason that sound was what felt right.

The theme

Hope

"In a way this album is a lot more human than the stuff we’ve done before. There’s no pretence in it at all. As cliche as it sounds, it's from the heart. It’s just basic stuff that you can’t beat. Just life. The song "Fragment Two", for example, is about hope. How in small things there is value."

How to listen to it

Headphones

"Someone who interviewed us said they listened to it on laptop speakers, which is bizarre giving the amount of attention I've given to this. It takes on a different character when you listen to it through headphones. I only ever listen to music through headphones."

The sample

A live recording of a Hawk’s wings flapping

"We recorded a hawk and it had a vicious sound. She was a proper predator. She was hard to get hold of too, we spoke to a lot of people beforehand, like people from conservations, but they probably just thought we were a bit mad. Then we went to a pest control. He was open minded, came along and the bird did some flying for us and we recorded it. It was very difficult because the air pressure caused by the wing’s movements is disruptive for the recording. Get as high as you can get is my advice for recording a hawk."

The inspiration

Lou Reed

Blue Mask is a record that just makes me laugh. It just sounds like they’re making up the lyrics as they go along. Lou Reed is in an enviable position that I suppose everyone wants. He can just do whatever he wants with some financial protection. We try to do the same thing but without any of the security. We've made a record that totally disregards future careers, finances without any of the cushions. I'm willing to do that because I make music that I believe in, and I'm in a lucky position where the label gets it completely. Very, very few bands have that."

Fields Of Reeds is out now. Buy it from iTunes or a shop.