Making a New World

Making a New World is the seventh studio album by English rock band Field Music. It was released through Memphis Industries on 10 January 2020. The songs were originally composed by David and Peter Brewis for a project commissioned by the Imperial War Museum. The album is about the after-effects of World War I and how they impacted the 100 years after the war's end. It is considered the band's first concept album.

Making a New World
Studio album by
Released10 January 2020
Genre
Length42:21
LabelMemphis Industries
Field Music chronology
Open Here
(2018)
Making a New World
(2020)
Flat White Moon
(2021)
Singles from Making a New World
  1. "Only in a Man's World"
    Released: 18 September 2019
  2. "Money Is a Memory"
    Released: 20 November 2019
  3. "Beyond That of Courtesy"
    Released: 11 December 2019
  4. "Do You Read Me?"
    Released: 3 January 2020

The starting point for the museum project was an image called "The End of the War", a visualisation of the vibrations from when gunfire ceased at the exact moment that the war ended. After conducting research, the Brewis brothers decided against writing songs broadly about World War I. They instead focused on individual stories inspired by technological, political, sociological, and cultural advancements over the course of the next century that directly or indirectly stemmed from the war.

A variety of topics are addressed in the songs on Making a New World, including war reparations, social housing reforms, women's suffrage, the Dada movement, the Tiananmen Square protests, sanitary napkins, gender realignment operations, and the development of technologies such as ultrasound, synthesisers, and air-to-ground radio communication. The primary recordings for the album came from two real-time band run-throughs by Field Music, recorded in a single day shortly after the original museum performances. The band's guitarist Kevin Dosdale designed visuals used for the former's tour dates and the museum shows.

Making a New World features a diverse mix of styles, genres, and instruments, as well as multiple shifts in mood and tone, sophisticated vocal harmony, and brief instrumental vignettes. The album received generally positive reviews from music critics and was praised for the ambition and originality, with Field Music being complimented for making such lofty subject matter enjoyable. Some critics were more negative, saying it was the wrong platform for the concept, or that too many ideas were contained to form a cohesive album.

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