Album Review: Hard Islands - Nathan Fake

Evolutionary viewpoint:

Nathan Fake < God < Nathan Fake 2.0

Okay, maybe not quite true but what BlackPlastic is getting at is that Nathan Fake has changed. Grown. Developed. Evolved.

And the result is rather good.

Hard Islands feels like the love child of Nathan Fake's début, Drowning In a Sea of Love, and the best bits of James Holden's The Idiots Are Winning (released, as Hard Islands is, on Fake's own Border Community). The fuzzy, shoe-gazing rock and folk tinged elements of Fake's last record can still just about be heard deep in here but this is a much more dancefloor focused record and it's much harder as a result. And here is where Holden comes in - when we say dancefloor focused we mean the kind of dancefloor where the punters all sport quizical looks and struggle to move in time to the music.

Because Hard Islands sounds like minimal techno as created by someone who has never heard a techno record. It's the sound of music reverse engineered, disassembled and reassembled. Holden's track 'Idiot' is the closest thing BlackPlastic has heard to this but Nathan Fake has taken things one step further, creating six tracks that refuse to comply to the generally accepted standards of how dance music should "work".

At it's best the results are thrilling - the shifting, bouncing rhythms of 'Basic Mountain', the jerky acid of 'Castle Rising' - and by focusing on just six tracks, forgoing a full album for a mini album, Fake has created a set that doesn't out-stay its welcome.

Available on Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 (affiliate links).

BP x