From the release of their debut album Beat Pyramid in 2008, These New Puritans aimed to distance themselves from their post-punk counterparts. The Southend Scene from which they rose to prominence, one that had driven Jack Barnett to announce that he was embarrassed to be in a band, had moulded them to create scintillating music. This did not become apparent until the band’s exhilarating follow up album. 2010’s Hidden featuring a bass-woodwind ensemble, Taiko drums, and a children’s choir, bridging the gap between antagonistic art-punk and the beautifully formed neo-classical Field of Reeds.
The album, most faithful yet to drummer George Barnett’s vision and arguably one of the year’s most acclaimed, sees the band take on classical composition. Barnett tells me he merely sees the classical notation he learned for Hidden as a “tool for bringing his ideas to fruition”. The band’s leader and producer Graham Sutton worked with over 40 musicians and singers on the album, released in June of this year.
As I first stood listening to Field of Reeds, it’s elegance hung eerily in the darkness. I was alone, at nightfall, in a 17th century building. I was severely unnerved; it could not have been more perfect. We may have found a suitably jarring soundtrack for another remake of Walton’s 1979 When a Stranger Calls. Or at least this is what I was thinking as I backed into a murky corner of the room. As the tension culminates at the end of ‘Dream’ however, I was reminded more of Bernard Herrmann’s thrilling scores. The likelihood of this album developing a similarly cultish following? Likely. The likelihood of it making you peer edgily over your shoulder? Likely.
The orchestral gusto that Jherek Bishcoff dedicates to composing pop music for the 21st century, Barnett uses to thrust TNP far into the distance. Its depth is both encapsulating and unsettling. ‘The Way I Do’ launches into the shrouded expanse, commencing the hunt for a darkly seductive sound. Barnett leads us like Charon through the black waters, Steve Reich and Talk Talk reaching us as echoes from the shore. The quiet grandeur of it all conjures a up a sense of ancient strife and lamentation as we are braced by George’s familiar ‘call to war’ drums, made more sparse yet powerful for the album. The percussion, rather than providing the foundations for Field of Reeds, was added last to allow for the evolution of a haunting sound without punctuation.
Barnett heightens this pervasive feeling of anxiety, singing ‘There is something there’ in ‘Fragment Two’. The hawk used in recording for the album’s title track circles like Prometheus’s vultures, gliding effortlessly through the air, saturated with Adrian Peacock’s bass tones (the lowest in Britain). You can almost fall into the tracks, hearing the musicians move as they prepare to play. You can wander the rooms of the Funkhaus Nalepastraße, one of the largest integrated studio complexes in the world, and where TNP recorded the album. This post-war studio in Berlin stands isolated from its environment, the architects deliberately designing entrances and driveways that evade you. It is all rather bewitching.
Barnett is a responsive and thoughtful interviewee, patient given my complete inexperience and relative inability to conduct conversations over the phone.
“We played only one British festival this year: Number 6 in Portmeirion, where that guy got shot,” Barnett says grimly. “We mainly played festivals abroad: America, Japan, Poland. The production, facilities and staging at British festivals are fairly shoddy in comparison, perhaps due to oversubscription,” he offers.
After briefly musing over seeing Tom Daley on the television, Barnett decides that Britain is a “strange place”; one that is not particularly engrained within the band’s identity. This response is to be expected, typically given when attempting to define the band’s projects within a particular genre or scene. You can see why, “We are moving away from what our peers are doing,” he says.
Barnett explains that it was enjoyable to work again with André De Ridder, who conducted TNP’s Hidden Live tour with the Britten Sinfonia in 2010.
“He really knows the music,” he says, “we are really lucky”. Here Barnett is not only referring to the specialism and experience of those who surround him, but the autonomy and freedom they allow him. “This freedom is a real privilege. Our label trusts us 100% and we are grateful for this.”
This position Barnett describes is incredibly rare within a music industry often characterised as sensationalist, short termist and vacuous. I ask him about this.
“We scraped in just before the collapse,” he says, referring to the difficult economic environment in the last couple of years. “There is greater conservatism now; people are less willing to take risks. We would never have existed if we were starting out in the current climate, it’s just kids with money. We feel removed from this musical landscape; you have to mean it 100%”
You do not mean to say though, that the British music scene is devoid of any genuine feeling?
“No, we toured with East India Youth this summer, and they were great. There’s also some really exciting stuff going on in the contemporary British Jazz scene at the moment”. Those of us who have been delving deep underground hoping to find music as poignant and stirring as Field of Reeds can’t help but breathe a massive sigh of relief.
How did the band’s formative years serve to create such a strong feeling of individualism and creativity?
“I remember going to gigs from Southend in the van; we’d play Junk Club, Chinese restaurants and indie discos. It was noisy obtuse music that no one could dance to,” he says fondly. “From our first to second album we still felt a degree of expectation from our audiences, but we have lost this now.”
He is right; predictions aside we can now only expect something innovative and honest, something that is rare in the modern entertainement industry. I ask him about future projects for TNP?
“We are working on an animated video for which I wrote the script. We have tonnes of new ideas, but no budget, and animation allowed us liberation. I was really into drawing from a young age, but I had to specialise; not everyone can do everything, all of the time .
“In this time where the expert is frowned upon and the amateur is constantly praised, I believe if you want to do something well, specialism is very important. I would also love to do a soundtrack for a film, but you’d probably have to ask George [Barnett] about that.”
Is there anyone in the music industry you would particularly like to collaborate with in the future?
“Um, well in today’s Guardian, Elton John praises Field of Reeds… That’s pretty cool.”
So if you’re not willing to take my word on this, for goodness sake please take Elton John’s. These New Puritans play Leeds Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen on Saturday 19th October 2013.