Field Music’s forthcoming LP, Making A New World (Memphis Industries), is out this Friday, and today the band is sharing a final single from the album entitled “Do You Read Me?” A characteristically eccentric release, the album is a 19 track song cycle about the historical echoes of the First World War, that grew out of a project they undertook for the Imperial War Museum which was first performed at the museum in London earlier this year. Each track tackles a specific subject and are arranged chronologically from the Armistice, and the early singles have included “Only In A Man’s World,” a song about the development of menstrual pads which grew out of war era medical equipment, “Money Is A Memory” which is about Germany’s war reparations and is written from the perspective of an office worker in the German Treasury preparing documents for the final installment on the country’s reparation debts, and “Beyond That of Courtesy,” a song about post-war women’s political movements in Europe.

“Do You Read Me?” references the first transmission of a human voice from an inflight plane to a ground controller in 1917 over the battlefields of the First World War. As Field Music’s David Brewis explains: “We imagined that an ace pilot had been having these moments of freedom above the fighting but in order to make it safe, to make it work, he had to be tied down by these radio transmissions from the ground, so it’s a bit of wishful thinking”.

Field Music will be performing Making a New World in its entirety, with each song accompanied by visuals created by Dosdale. There will also be a bonus set of classics from the Field Music oeuvre. Full details can be found below.

Tour Dates
31 Jan – Kendal, Brewery Arts Centre
01 Feb – Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery
21 Feb – Nottingham, Rescue Rooms
22 Feb – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
27 Feb – Whitley Bay, Playhouse
28 Feb – Manchester, Dancehouse
29 Feb – London, EartH