martes 09 junio de 2009, 17:43
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 | you hid Miembro Pro | | Miembro desde: 22 octubre 2006 Ubicación: border community | |
| Nathan Fake talks music and his "Hard Islands" LP - Beatportal Interview (June 2009)
Several times he drops Americanisms like ‘awesome’ and ‘totally’, and the guy seems to be a bit of a ‘dude’ – a free spirited artist – which makes James Holden’s Border Community label a perfect home for him and his new mini-album ‘Hard Islands’.
The six track album sees Fake move away from the shoegaze moments of his first LP ‘Drowning in a Sea of Love’ towards more club-focused techno. However, it is far from being a standard set of DJ tools, with Fake’s typically grandiose vision of sound prominent throughout.
With five years between ‘Drowning in a Sea of Love’ and his new album, the concept behind Fake’s musical rationale has changed.
“With the first album I started off making pretty straight techno then I got into more textural and melodic stuff. So, with this new record it ended up being quite a bit tougher sounding than my previous tracks,” he says.
“It’s a sound I’ve kind of naturally arrived at though; like a mixture of everything I’ve done in the past with some new ideas.
“Playing live has also had quite an influence on the way I write music, I think this stuff sounds a bit more human and alive than my earlier work. I definitely think it’s my best work so far.”
One of the biggest inspirations behind Fake’s creations is human contact. “I guess people are ultimately the muse in mine and everyone’s lives.
“For me meeting and talking to people can be hugely influential, more so than listening to music,”he says. 
I ask him on a personal level what it means to be part of Border Community and belonging to such a unique collective.
He says, “It’s been great really. We’re all mates, which make things nicer, and the label is run really well and in a pretty relaxed way.
“It’s cool how like-minded people are attracted to the label like Luke Abbott and Wesley Matsell.
“We all come from pretty different backgrounds and parts of the country and world but are into a lot of the same stuff.”
Of all the artists on Border Community, Fake has built a close working relationship with Vincent Oliver. “We’re good pals, have been for a few years. We’ve seen each other’s nuts quite a few times. We toured my first album together. He was on visuals while I was on music for the live shows.
“We’ve also remixed each other and keep meaning to make some awesome music together hopefully that’ll happen this year too”.
Is there a philosophy behind the lives of the Border Community residents or some alpha code we should be aware of? He laughs and says “No. Well, it’s just a label. Everyone does their own thing it’s not like it’s an impenetrable clique or something.”
Speaking of his current favorite contributors to society and music, Fake says “I really like Charlie Brooker. He hits the nail on the head every time. In terms of music I’m into Animal Collective’s last album.
“It’s the most positive-sounding music in the world and there’s a real kind of “magic” element to their music.
“I’ve recently come back to a Stars of the Lid album which I bought a couple of years ago; this music sounds like it was forged out of nothing from nowhere. If you listen you’ll see what I mean. It sounds otherworldly and alien and completely magical.” 
Fake is not a DJ and uses only midi controllers and a laptop when he plays in clubs. “It’s just a laptop with a couple of midi controllers,” he says.
“I like to keep ‘live’ pretty simple so everything is right at my fingertips and I can rock out.”
Fake’s best gigs include, “A pretty intense free gig in a little bar in Reykjavik a couple years ago that was quite special, a festival in the hills in Japan at about 7am, and a party in a forest in Lithuania where loads of moths kept landing on my face and crawling under my clothes.”
On the subject of ‘rocking it’, Fake once suggested his music was “rock & roll”. That blurring of boundaries can be heard on ‘Hard Islands’, which features live drum sounds intertwined with hard electro breaks, 303s, and driving bleeps. It’s very much in between worlds, and as such, sounds entirely unique.
He says, “All music has to be classified for the media or commercial purposes. And yeah, all genre boundaries are blurred for sure. Never ask a musician what style of music he or she makes!”
Fake’s song titles have always been interesting. “At the time the ‘Drowning in a Sea of Love’ title was kind of ironic but titles come from everywhere,” he says.
“They’re usually a reference to something personal but never very literal references. Other times if the music is like that too it can be completely random and impulsive or you might just think of a word or phrase that, whether it means something or not phonetically, sounds really nice.”
On the title for his most famous track ‘The Sky Was Pink’ from 2004, Fake says, “It was pink for a little while about a million years ago but it hasn’t been like that since then.”
Despite the complexity and richness of Fake’s productions, his studio remains quite simple. “I use a PC with some random bits of software and have hardware like a couple of drum machines. I also just bought a SH-09 which is a lot of fun,” he says.
‘Hard Islands’ sounds futuristic. It has a bold vision, and Fake is not afraid to combine genres that are not traditionally the easiest of bed fellows.
His philosophy on the progression of electronic music offers a unique insight into his mind. “All genres will carry on growing until they all engulf each other and all music sounds like a sort of nondescript humming noise in similarity to the way that languages and dialects get ironed out into characterless standardised versions of their former selves,” he says, before the clock runs out on our interview.
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