fields & fields & fields (ft. small town girl) - Milk Crate

‘fields & fields & fields’ is an ambient collaboration between Sydney artists small town girl and Milk Crate. Small town girl wrote and mixed the instrumental, and Milk Crate (Danae Cortejos) provided vocals and lyrics. Overall, the track is very pensive and reflective, very calm and peaceful. It feels like you’re driving on a highway with meadows and fields surrounding you. The sun shines down through the window - you roll it down. There are beautiful yellow flowers everywhere. The synth glitches and repeats, and then progresses forwards a little, almost remnant of a tape rolling. The track feels cyclical, a slow progression building throughout and finally releasing into freedom towards the end.
small town girl sent me this instrumental to experiment with a few years back - and I added some vocal layers/harmonies on to it! We just wanted to play around with vocal layering and see what came out of it, was super experimental. It was just kind of sitting around untouched but I really loved how the instrumental and vocals sounded together, so wanted to release something a bit different :) When I was listening to the track to write lyrics I just kept seeing me walking through fields and it felt super transcendent and ethereal - very peaceful.
The MV is inspired by me escaping abusive situations - the pipe dream. It eats away at you - showing kindness and patience in the face of a lot of abuse, not getting angry and just sucking it up, being gaslit for showing how you really feel - silenced. The footage is super hazy and that’s how it felt being in an abusive situation, false promises, being high all the time, waiting for change to happen. The clips of me moving backwards reflect me feeling like I’m being dragged backwards into unhealthy situations, being pulled back into drug abuse and an abusive relationship. You get lured back into these situations, you make a little progress and move forward for a while, and then it pulls you back again. It’s so hard to walk away from these situations when it feels like there is a rope binding you, moving you back towards the abuse and not letting you leave. You just become numb and feel like you’re not even a person anymore, not really there, just a shell of what you once were.
And then one day you make a choice that changes your life, or a lot of little ones that build up to it, and you are finally free :). You don’t need any thing or anyone else to complete you.
If you or someone you know is experiencing violence or abuse, you can call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 (Australia).
Lyrics:
“All I see are fields, and fields, and fields.
Fields, and fields, and fields, and fields.
All I see are fields, and fields, and fields.
Fields, and fields, and fields, and fields.
All I feel is real, is real, is real,
Real, is real, is real, is real.
All I feel is real, is real, is real,
Real, is real, is real, is real.”
Instrumental by small town girl (Joel Peterson)
Vocals and lyrics by milk crate
Video edited by Milk Crate
Old footage by scram
small town girls links:
Spotify: small town girl
Bandcamp: smalltowngirl-...
Instagram: / xo_small_town_girl_xo
Soundcloud: / small-town-girl-584993976
Milk Crate links:
Spotify: Milk Crate
Website: milkcrate.neoc...
Instagram: / milk.crate
Soundcloud: / milkcrate9