Russell Carlson      John Corbett      Julian Cowley      Stefan Gijssels      Walter Horn      Hugh Jarrid      Chris Kelsey      Budd Kopman      Jon Morgan      Harvey Pekar      Alexandre Pierrepont      Massimo Ricci      Derek Taylor      Dan Warburton      Kevin Whitehead     

publications   Paris Transatlantic Magazine, The Wire, Signal to Noise

personal contacts   Emails, he wrote the liner notes for my CD Samuel and interviewed me for that.

reviewed   From the Diary of Dog Drexel, Beckett

bias   Favors the avant-garde.

reviewership   Ludicrously qualified, skilled writer, honest. 5 upturned noses.

musicianship   Fine violinist, composer, and improviser, Masters degree in music. 5 upturned noses.

aggregate rating   5 upturned noses.

from Beckett   There’s little direct correlation that I can find between the album’s five tracks and the Beckett works they take their titles from — Breath, Play, Come And Go, What Where and Rockaby (all plays as it turns out) — but dig a bit deeper and the similarities begin to appear. One of the reasons Beckett’s oeuvre has consistently fascinated musicians is its sheer musicality: a constant sense of play between micro and macro form, a concern for motive, idea, development, coupled with a wicked ear and subtle sense of humour. And that’s exactly what Fields is working with here. Sometimes the pieces are as ferociously determined as the monologue that propels The Unnamable to its unforgettable conclusion ("I can’t go on, I’ll go on"), sometimes they appear to slump into the ditch at the side of the road like Watt.