So, okay, I was looking forward to the new Field album, but I certainly didn't expect "Yesterday and Today" to be the best album of 2009 so far (which it is!) - I'll be surprised if anything this year manages to surpass it. Axel Willner's first album as The Field had transcendent singles (which were, not coincidentally, drawn from the stellar 12"s that preceded the CD release) but then also, frankly, some pretty terrible tracks - when he picks the wrong vocal sample to loop for eight minutes, watch out! "Yesterday and Today," on the other hand, is flawless - six extremely impressive tracks, two of which in particular are so mind-blowingly good that I've been playing them on continuous repeat, whenever I can pull myself away from listening to the album as a whole. The sound is both more organic and more expansive than his earlier work, which was often recorded on-the-fly (mixing the elements live on his laptop, and not bothering with re-edits); interestingly, Willner recorded this album with a full band, which he now tours with, and you can really tell the difference (the track "Sequenced" sounds more like a rock instrumental than anything else). The gauzy techno of "Sublime" has been subtly transformed into something more muscular and affecting; in short, "Yesterday and Today" is everything that's good about The Field's output, turned up to 11. Buy immediately!

Merck sublabel Narita delivers its swan song in the form of the compilation Terminal, showcasing some of the best unreleased tracks from its usual suspects. Anyone's who's heard previous Narita releases knows what to expect: hard-hitting techno tinged with experimental sounds. It felt to me like Narita didn't have enough time to say what it wanted to say about current techno music. There's something very compelling about experimental electronic producers' takes of dancefloor music, an idea Warp developed and abandoned with its Arcola sublabel and something I was hoping Narita would pick up the slack on. Early releases hinted at the true genius to come from the collision of techno and IDM, but sadly, beyond a few great singles and a couple albums, Narita never developed into the influencer on the genre it could have been with more time, and perhaps that has to do with it coming from the States and not Germany or the UK. Even so, what we did get out of Narita were a bunch of fresh takes on dancefloor music, and ideas that could linger on or develop more in the hands of other labels as these talented artists move on.

Arctic Hospital is Eric Bray, an American techno producer who has released the best 12" and album to date on Gabe Koch's dance-oriented Merck offshoot, Narita Records. "Neon Veils," his second full-length, comes to us by way of an unknown Japanese label (this is its first release), and gives us another sampling of Bray's IDM-inflected techno. The BPMs on this record are a bit higher than usual for the genre, and most of these tracks seem fine-tuned for the dancefloor, where earlier Arctic Hospital material seemed equally applicable to home listening. This material is surgically precise, icy, and devastating. With news of Narita's closing surfacing just a few days ago, it's nice to see other labels popping up to release this type of music.