A long standing member of Soundclick's electronica community, Adam Feilding (along with some others in the field) has become a firm favourite of mine. I must admit I do like his more recent poppier style, but even so this man has given me plenty of good tracks to savour over the years. I heard his New Beginnings track earlier this month because it is one the Sinewinder CD I started the month of with, and that is an example of what he does best, electronica with edge. Mind you, I also like the work he has been doing in other spheres, electro power pop for instance.

I kid you not...

Have a listen to It All Comes Down To This on his page, it's so 1980's electronica you can almost smell the shoulder pads and hair dye. At this stage, even though Open Up follows much the same electro pop path, this is a much darker, more complex peice that has more to do with Depeche Mode than Howard Jones, so don't expect this to hit you straight between the eyes because it isn't going to do that. Open Up is a track that you will have to do some work to get to know, you would have to be prepared to live with it for a while. If you do that, you might find - as I did - that it's complexity isn't as severe as it first appears and there is a very neat feel about the whole affair.

All pretty much expected, of course, when you deal with a musician like Adam Fielding, an artist with a long track record of delivering what is necessary. So it'll be no surprise whatsoever that is produced to within an inch of it's life and there isn't a loose end to be seen anywhere. Exactly the kind of tidy, efficient job you would expect. The sounds and instrumentation are - as usual - interesting without detracting from what the instrument is playing and it evokes the period beautifully. I also had to work my way slowly into Depeche Mode's more weighty material so it doesn't feel so tough doing it now with Adam. Heavyweight electronica delivered by a Soundclick legend.

Highly Recommended.

Steve Gilmore

Adam Fielding is a master of the ambient synth school of well crafted tracks.

Use of square wave modulated lead synth and nice chorused pads open this piece in a swell which quickly becomes a warm blanket of textures. The bass synth sounds pulses along smoothly in the opening.

There is a magnificent serene swirling effect as sounds unfold and build. The addition of crisper rhythm sounds at around 1:45 then drives the restrained energy of this track further.

There are lots of interesting panned synth noises and out-of-key noises imbedded in the sonic landscape to keep it interesting, but these never intrude.

The use if reverb and delay here is immaculate. The piece never loses interest, builds, then gets relief at 3:23 with a more subdued section - which enables it to build rhythmically again around 4:18.

This arrrangement has been cleverly planned and thought out.

This is true synthesizer art. Adam does what I wish I could - build a track sonically with a full palette of textures and nicely interwoven sounds, without losing or confusing the listener. Every patch is inspiringly selected to add to the piece.

Inspiring stuff. Count me as a new fan.

If you have 5 minutes and 38 seconds to spare, lend Adam your ears.

Pure genius here!

Young Adam (he of the infamous pink hat) is an electronica whizz I first came across in a collaboration with Inder Nirwan called Signal Flare. Although I liked the track, I had a couple of problems with it, even as it kicked my butt in a glorious way. It was sufficient, however, to make me take a closer look at Mr Fielding and what I say pleased me a lot. That led to me doing a special Double Header review of his work in October and believe me, I don't give those out lightly. He's also one of my Rising... nominations for 2004, definitely an artist you really should be checking out, even if the very thought of electronica brings you out in pustulent red spots.

Mind you, with this track to guide you to, it'll be blindingly obvious that this guy is just a bit special...

Sounding like a modern day Howard Jones (who he?) It All Comes Down To This is a track that pays homage to that '80's phenomenon 'electropop'. So now do you know who Howard Jones is? Stop with the fekkin blank look already and take a look at this and maybe that'll refresh your memory. New Romantics, Blitz and all that, wall to wall Human League for what seemed like an endless stretch of time, and the Thompson Twins for the rest. Mind you, there was some electropop I did like, notably Yaz, anything Mute etc. However, HoJo is what Adam's track sounds like so nrrr. I shouldn't make light of all this though because it might detract people away from the essential truth of this track.

ie it's RED HOT!!

Seriously, this is a track in a million. A great pop song with singable choruses, how about that? Decent lyrics too but it's the way Adam has stitched all this together that finally gets the track to hit home. I bet I'm not going to be the only one to make the HoJo comparision Ad, so I guess you'd better get used to it while you can. In the meantime the rest of us can absolutely wallow in the feel and spirit of that long ago time with this perfect little beauty of a tribute. As tasty a peice of electropop as I've ever heard - then and now.

Highly Recommended.

There's always a danger of falling victim to your relaxed intentions when doing chilled-out ambient tracks like this - it's easy to get lazy and use well-worn clichés, which is why there's so mich homogenous rubbish within this genre.

Adam Fielding manages to avoid this, using some imaginative processing on the minimal beats and some busy, unreadable lead lines with an echoey sine wave sond. The latter part feels like it should be slightly louder in the mix so that it grabs the ear. It could also do with more of a "dry" than "wet" signal but it risks becoming lame if it's too clear. The usual corny swirling pads and evolving synth sounds are present, but these provide a musical journey that you're willing to go on.

The mix has a good sense of depth as a result of large but well-used reverbs. This can make the mix muddy, and that's the case here to some extent, but it can be avoided by precision EQing either the dry signals or the reverb return, and taking out some of the lower mids as far down as 200hz. The track could do with a warmer and fuller bottom end to make it really big, but on the whole it's good. Let it wrap you up and carry you away.

So what is it with this guy? Seems like the whole world and his electronica brother is getting all hot and heavy under the collar about him, doesn't it? I don't know about the rest of you, but I felt duty bound this month to check him out of my own acord seeing as the lazy basket can't be arsed to put himself down on my review list. Yes, yes, I know you've been banging on at me for months and months (Oi!! who said years!!) to check him out but I'm a lazy sod meself innit? So, better late than never, ol' Gilmore is on the case and ears all a-flutter (the image of Dumbo springs to mind) I settle meself down to an extended Ad listening session.

Actually, Adam and I have a common musical experience. When I first started getting involved in making music on the computer (that'd be around 1988). After struggling manfully with the woefully inadequate MUDi (oops, that should read MIDI but the thoughts the same), I came across something that blew me away. It was a small audio file called a MOD. The sound of these tiny files (usually no more than 150-200k) was awesome, and the artists the MOD scene threw up were even more awesome ultimately convincing me that this is where the future of music lay. To make these files people used programs called 'trackers' (Fast Tracker was my choice, Protracker was Adam's) and I spent a good 10 years in that scene pumping out endless tracks. Therefore anyone who recognised and participated in that early Internet music scene was going to be alright in my books. Since then, I've moved on to Cubase and Fruity Studio and Adam moved into the Reason scene. See, not just a review, but a historical treatise too!!

One of the reasons I also chose to take a look at a further Adam Fielding track - People Of Earth - was because I used some of the Michael Rennie film clips in some of my MODs. So ,enough of the jabber-jabber, let's have at him....

Rain Catcher opens as if you were at an Underworld gig, all crowd noise and dirty electronic grunge which ultimately sets the scene perfectly for the track to follow which reminds me strongly of some of the neater Underworld peices. Musically I found this a exquisitely neat cross between the hard edges of say Prodigy and the (to my mind) better work of Underworld. To use the names of these two bands in the same sentence when describing an artists work is indeed a huge compliment, as I hope Adam is aware. I have long been a fan of both bands - for different reasons. At 3:10 Rain Catcher doesn't seem anything like long enough by a long, long way and I personally could have done with an extra couple of minutes and a much more extended workout of this deceptively dense track. Nonetheless, the production quality and the choice of sound textures was enough to convince me that this guy DOES indeed need some closer inspection than I have given him so far. This is probably the most unique blend of electronica I have heard for a long, long time.

People Of Earth isn't an Adam Fielding track per se; it's a mix of a Fahrenheit 451 track (another electronic artist I have come to greatly appreciate and the subject of a double header in his own right this month). Again, the tones and feel of this track are an intoxicating blend of hard and soft that defies description, which I guess is one of the reasons this guy is so popular. In addition, there's a druggy, acid-trip rhythm to this that really appeals to me. Having listened extensively to both these tracks, I couldn't help but go online and take a snapshot of what else this guy has going on... Places I Should Have Seen, during the few minutes I listened to it was more chilled and less electronic sounding than any of the tracks I had reviewed and showed me a much more mellow side of this artist, and one I really got into - so much so that ended up downloading that too.

After all this activity, it struck me that the baying of the electronica crowd for us to notice this artist is indeed fully justified - whether you like it hard and heavy (Rain Catcher, People Of Earth) or mild n mellow (Places I Should Have Seen). Definitely an artist I'm going to keeping a lot closer eye on in the future, and judging by the standard and quality of the tracks I've heard, one who knows exactly what he's doing. I'd say it was an even bet right now that I am probably going to be keeping Rain Catcher for it's unique blend and Places for it's sheer beauty - and that in my books is a pretty good start.

I suggest that if electronica of a high order is your thing, you should do the same. Well worth the extra effort.