I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: October 26, 2025] William Fields

I have one Autechre album and I don’t really listen to it.  But when they announced this American tour (their first time playing here in ten years), I asked my friend Lar, who had seen them if I should go.  He told me an amusing story about how he liked the show but he took his significant other to the show and she almost broke up with him because of it.

But when I dove a little more deeply into the show it sounded like a unique experience that I’d like to try.

There was an opening act listed, but we had two opening acts.  William Fields is a Philadelphia based DJ whose bio says

William Fields is an artist and musician from the Phildelphia area whose work explores the intersection of generative processes, improvisation, and audio-visual correspondence.

What does that mean?  Beats me.  But here’s some reviews

“Some of the most mind-blowing algorithmically generated music I’d ever heard”  — Richard Devine

“William Fields is at the absolute front of algorithmic music and this tremendous 24 hour collection is some of the wildest stuff out there… TOP NOTCH” — Telefon Tel Aviv

That still doesn’t quite explain it but this kind of does

I was completely blown away… the pinnacle of bleeps and bloops and everyone deserves to know it.”  — Colin Benders

So, yup, he makes bleeps and bloops.  He stood at the left side of the stage with a laptop and proceeded to make 30 minutes worth of glitchy noisy dance “music.”  I put music in quotes not as an insult, but because it is not conventionally musical.  It’s percussion heavy and very noisey.

This is not my scene, so the language is hard for me to use effectively.  But Igloo magazine says Fields’ music feels

like malfunctioning circuitry dragging itself through pixelated wastelands—erratic pulses collide with serene disarray, conjuring surreal environments that hum with quiet intensity.

And that’s pretty accurate.

Anyone with no tolerance for experimental music would hate this.  But if you are open to weird, unexpected sounds, this is a really neat experience.  And the crowd (who is obviously down with noise) broke into applause several times during his set.

The funny thing about this show is that William Fields and Mark Broom are both skinny bald white guys (as are the two guys in Autechre), and since I don’t know anything about the scene, I didn’t know who was first (Fields was) and when Broom came out and looked vaguely the same, I did have to laugh.

So his set was cool and I have since listened to one of his recordings.  It’s definitely not something I’d listen to all the time, but I did find it pretty fascinating.