OZ ARTS NASHVILLE PRESENTS A SPECIAL ALBUM-RELEASE CONCERT BY FOREIGN FIELDS, ACCLAIMED ELECTRONIC FOLK MUSIC DUO, NOVEMBER 3
Performance Is Part of OZ Arts’ Local Spotlight Series, TNT
NASHVILLE, TENN. – October 17, 2016 – On November 3, OZ Arts Nashville will present Nashville-based electronic folk music duo Foreign Fields, who will perform material from their new album, Take Cover, due out October 28. The album is the group’s first in since their highly successful debut, Anywhere But Where I Am, and the concert at OZ Arts is their only Nashville performance this year.
The performance will take place at 8.00 pm. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at www.ozartsnashville.org. OZ Arts is located at 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle in Nashville, Tenn.
Foreign Fields founding members Eric Hillman and Brian Holl began their musical partnership on the wintry plains of Wisconsin, but set a new course for the band in 2012 upon moving to Nashville, where they have built a cult following in the city’s indie-rock scene. They released Anywhere But Where I Am to critical and public acclaim in the spring of that year, performing live for the first time at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Spring 2015 saw Foreign Fields return to SXSW, sharing a stage with singer/songwriter Laura Marling, and giving what they describe as their most important performance to date. On the night of the show, however, Holl encountered a break from reality, and has faced an uphill battle of mental health issues since. Hillman, a new father, experienced the extreme juxtaposing emotions of immense joy at his daughter’s arrival and deep concern for the future of the world in which she will grow up. The band was met with countless pitfalls, creative blocks and personal hardships. Eventually finding a way through the mire and each embarking on a journey of rediscovery, Hillman and Holl acknowledged their new truths and recorded Take Cover in just a few months. The result is a sophomore album that is both deeply personal and sweepingly beautiful.
While drawing from painful experience, the album is remarkably life affirming. Devastating lyrics are wrapped in lush string arrangements, piano, saxophone, electronic pulses and driving drum beats. Alternating between the highs and lows of internal anxiety, some tracks throb with pop-like energy, while others tremble with desperation. Hillman and Holl orchestrate a sorrow that is as much alive as any moment of pure happiness.
“Making this album marked a shift in our approach,” said Hillman. “While our inspiration derived heavily in the past from broad natural landscapes and lush dreamy moments, this new material felt more insular, more direct. We moved our focus away from big, lavish tones into a tighter, more percussive, more constrained sound.”
“This live event with Foreign Fields is an important addition to the Tennessee-artists’ series TNT at OZ Arts,” said Lauren Snelling, artistic director at OZ Arts. “The guys are purposely moving away from live performance because it feels too formulaic and empty. We are honored to present their only live event in Nashville this year, and in so doing, hope to create an environment that feels intimate for both the audience and the artists; less of a concert with audience & performers, and more of a collective experience. Foreign Fields’ music is uniquely theirs – non-homogenous in its message and unapologetic in its intensity. There is a great deal of vulnerability transferred to the listener from the artists, and that creates a special kind of connection to the music.”
Take Cover will be released with a series of accompanying visual works centering around the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Created in collaboration with the Indie Ballet Collaborative, the videos are directed by Bennett Johnson, and choreographed by Ariel Asch, founder of the Indie Ballet Collaborative.
Foreign Fields stopped running up the basement steps; instead, they turned around and faced the darkness, cautiously daring it to do its worst. The Wisconsin audio/visual team begrudgingly donned the mantle of rock band after their debut album Anywhere But Where I Am was met with widespread, albeit unexpected, critical acclaim. There was something so immediate about the soft tapestry the duo wove, combining Brian Holl’s gentle vocals and dappled guitar with Eric Hillman’s cinematic compositional instincts to create the perfect score for the hours of dusk and dawn.
The years following Anywhere were filled with festivals and national tours, in which the band shared stages with Counting Crows, The Lone Bellow, Basia Bulat and Phox. But it wasn’t until after a show at SXSW with Laura Marling and Leon Bridges that everything changed for Foreign Fields. Holl, the quiet driving force behind the band’s operations, encountered a break from reality and he began a months-long process of regaining understanding about life and his role in it. Hillman, a new father, wrestled with the joy of his young daughter and the suffering of the world he knew she would grow up in—the pain he felt firsthand in the people he loved most. Together, the duo began a journey into the unknown. In the subsequent year they found themselves producing records for the bands Matthew and the Atlas and Boom Forest, scoring for several film and television projects and soundscaping the immersive interactive game Ashen.
Having stretched and grown creatively and personally, the creative team had begun to rediscover themselves. They knew more music was coming, so they earnestly whispered their truths into the abyss, and what came singing back was their second record, the effortless Take Cover.
About OZ Arts Nashville
Since opening in 2014, OZ Arts Nashville, a 501(c)(3) contemporary arts center, has changed the cultural landscape of the city. Housed in the former C.A.O. cigar warehouse owned by Nashville’s Ozgener family, OZ Arts, under the artistic leadership of Lauren Snelling, brings world-class performances and art installations to the city, and gives ambitious local artists opportunities to work on a grand scale. The flexible 10,000 square-foot, column-free venue, nestled amidst five acres of artfully landscaped grounds, is continually reconfigured to serve artists’ imaginations, and to challenge and inspire a diverse range of curious audiences. Tennessee Things (TNT, the program formerly known as Thursday Night Things) is a curated series of newly created artworks by Tennessee-based artists.
The TNT series is supported in part by the Tennessee Arts Commission and the Danner Foundation
For more information, please visit http://www.ozartsnashville.org/.
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Media Contact
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