Butterfly Crush (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} crushzine) wrote,@ 2006-05-01 09:02:00 |
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NATHAN FAKE, Drowning In A Sea Of Love CD
One of the most commented-on aspects of records by Boards Of Canada is the sublime effectiveness with which they can summon a sense of times past, and so when the Boards' sonic inkwell is dipped into by some young pretender's quill it is usually with that precise knowledge of that which their warped, slightly off-colour keyboard melodies are so apt to inscribe.
However, while such musical signification does feature on this first album of electronic instrumentals by Norfolk boy Nathan Fake, the ends to which it is put differ immediately and strikingly from those of the BOC brand of evocation in which the 'memories' are kept always at a certain distance from the listener and enveloped in a sometimes disquieting otherness, like a strange house visited in a recurring dream in which one door remains forever locked and vaguely ominous. But on Fake tracks such as 'Charlie's House,' a baroque tapestry of silvery strands of sound, the aura of former days seems recollected with the utmost clarity and nostalgic yearning, seems devoid of alien character, and seems purely warm and joyful. The very finest example of this is perhaps 'Bumblechord,' the track on which this album's most eye-wateringly exquisite melody is played on resonant burnt-ochre synths as light percussive touches plash like rain on baking gravel or tarmac, and you can taste the weather of your half-remembered childhood summers.
Drowning In A Sea Of Love, though, is still some ways from being the wholesale bliss-out banquet that its title might indicate. In this respect, the CD design seems a telltale giveaway, filling its little booklet from the front cover on with pleasant photographs from Fake's own boyhood while reserving for the back of the case an image of a bomb plummeting earthwards. It's difficult to say whether the sequence of compositions is intended to correspond to the chronology of a life, and to argue that it is could easily lead to acts of over-assuming. 'Stops,' for instance, has a chirpy and incessant electro-xylophonic melody to which it adds contrapuntal heavy-weather drones and harsh draughts of shuffled-up heavy breathing. Is this, the opening track, raising the curtain on the primal scene?
What is certain, nevertheless, is that the first half of the running-order is dominated by tracks and titles that imply that the object of focus is an individual's formative period. In addition to those pieces already mentioned, there is one named 'Grandfathered' that rivals Vitalic's 'La Rock 01' as a superlative electronic representation of being or feeling in some thrilling state of motion, though instead of the Frenchman's blood-twisting rollercoaster this is all blurry, 360-degree melodic rotation - woozily slow, admittedly, but the excitement lies in those moments when the shaky, pixelated synths explode like fireworks into crushing over-driven ecstasy amid seraphic swells of machine-girl harmony.
After this apparent first phase, the record moves into more mature moods of dark doubt and passion. Thus Fake overlays the brooding and cruising analogue chords and breakbeats of 'The Sky Was Pink' with the electroluminescent screeches of a dying-swan guitar, while the gently waltzing rhythm and tender lamplight sounds of 'You Are Here' constitute an amoroso prom-night slow-dance that gets lovingly drenched in sub- (or, perhaps, supra-) rational static-burn distortion. And from there, Fake is not so much drowning in a sea of love as drowning in a sea of downbeat reflection through the few fuzzy electronic meditations that take us through the album's final act to its conclusion.
To admirers of any or all of M83, Ulrich Schnauss, Casino Versus Japan, Four Tet and, of course, Boards Of Canada, I can warmly recommend this full-length excursion into the romance of post-rock Proustronica as being of the first water.
One of the most commented-on aspects of records by Boards Of Canada is the sublime effectiveness with which they can summon a sense of times past, and so when the Boards' sonic inkwell is dipped into by some young pretender's quill it is usually with that precise knowledge of that which their warped, slightly off-colour keyboard melodies are so apt to inscribe.
However, while such musical signification does feature on this first album of electronic instrumentals by Norfolk boy Nathan Fake, the ends to which it is put differ immediately and strikingly from those of the BOC brand of evocation in which the 'memories' are kept always at a certain distance from the listener and enveloped in a sometimes disquieting otherness, like a strange house visited in a recurring dream in which one door remains forever locked and vaguely ominous. But on Fake tracks such as 'Charlie's House,' a baroque tapestry of silvery strands of sound, the aura of former days seems recollected with the utmost clarity and nostalgic yearning, seems devoid of alien character, and seems purely warm and joyful. The very finest example of this is perhaps 'Bumblechord,' the track on which this album's most eye-wateringly exquisite melody is played on resonant burnt-ochre synths as light percussive touches plash like rain on baking gravel or tarmac, and you can taste the weather of your half-remembered childhood summers.
Drowning In A Sea Of Love, though, is still some ways from being the wholesale bliss-out banquet that its title might indicate. In this respect, the CD design seems a telltale giveaway, filling its little booklet from the front cover on with pleasant photographs from Fake's own boyhood while reserving for the back of the case an image of a bomb plummeting earthwards. It's difficult to say whether the sequence of compositions is intended to correspond to the chronology of a life, and to argue that it is could easily lead to acts of over-assuming. 'Stops,' for instance, has a chirpy and incessant electro-xylophonic melody to which it adds contrapuntal heavy-weather drones and harsh draughts of shuffled-up heavy breathing. Is this, the opening track, raising the curtain on the primal scene?
What is certain, nevertheless, is that the first half of the running-order is dominated by tracks and titles that imply that the object of focus is an individual's formative period. In addition to those pieces already mentioned, there is one named 'Grandfathered' that rivals Vitalic's 'La Rock 01' as a superlative electronic representation of being or feeling in some thrilling state of motion, though instead of the Frenchman's blood-twisting rollercoaster this is all blurry, 360-degree melodic rotation - woozily slow, admittedly, but the excitement lies in those moments when the shaky, pixelated synths explode like fireworks into crushing over-driven ecstasy amid seraphic swells of machine-girl harmony.
After this apparent first phase, the record moves into more mature moods of dark doubt and passion. Thus Fake overlays the brooding and cruising analogue chords and breakbeats of 'The Sky Was Pink' with the electroluminescent screeches of a dying-swan guitar, while the gently waltzing rhythm and tender lamplight sounds of 'You Are Here' constitute an amoroso prom-night slow-dance that gets lovingly drenched in sub- (or, perhaps, supra-) rational static-burn distortion. And from there, Fake is not so much drowning in a sea of love as drowning in a sea of downbeat reflection through the few fuzzy electronic meditations that take us through the album's final act to its conclusion.
To admirers of any or all of M83, Ulrich Schnauss, Casino Versus Japan, Four Tet and, of course, Boards Of Canada, I can warmly recommend this full-length excursion into the romance of post-rock Proustronica as being of the first water.
