Craven Faults :: Sidings (The Leaf Label)

Northern mysterion Craven Faults maps post-industrial Yorkshire through shadowy analog synths and hypnotic rhythms, with Sidings turning regional history, industrial decay, and seminal music influences into a mesmeric, hour-long sonic archaeology.

Synth lenses on Northern decay

Northern mysterion, Craven Faults, brings a shadowy set of synthesis and syncopation psychogeographically fuelled by post-industrial Yorkshire and associated seminal music history: Sidings sees The North darkly—not so much as if through a glass as an analog synth lens, advancing the series Standers (2023) > Bounds (2024) > Thwaite Watermill (2024) in an hour-long musico-cultural archaeology of Yorkshire.

It sets out, solemn in tenor and dynamic, no-frills analog, unrefined yet stratified, rhythm-melody refreshed by new layers. Traversing a Yorkshire of bleak moorland and crags, and industrial decay, drawing from historic recordings, studios and gigs—Gold Star Studios and Morton Subotnick‘s San Francisco Tape Music Center to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry‘s Black Ark and Cargo Records (cf. Joy Division, The Fall) in the ’80s heyday, with echoes of Tangerine Dream, Berlin School, Kosmische, etc., Sidings creates a mesmeric percolating sound from this sense of place and influence.

Long tracks bookend shorter; rail-themed titles signal: “Ganger”’s pared-back beats accrue a nagging jangle, steady pulse from metronome kick and low-end synth boom, shifting as an etheric motif recurs into a spectral wail. CF builds tension till release seems inevitable, but… “Stoneyman” racks it up anew with ’70s library music overtones as if something wicked this way comes, chug-pulse intensifying to snare shots evoking brake hiss. Rhythm, tempo, timbre (percussion, keys) nod to Kraftwerk as arpeggios intersect, building to a sequence of heightened intensity before standstill.

The same steady tempo runs through, from the close-up chug and distant figure of “Up Goods Distant, Down Goods Home,” a Kosmische ride on neo-motorik fuel to hauntological melodics (cf. Ghost Box, Pye Corner Audio) to “Yard Loup” and “Drover Sike Hole,” ambient-leaning vignettes that mix,  respectively, organ-y buzz-drone with high-pitch future-based electronix and swelling hum, feedback crackle with euphonic vox tones; and “Incline Huts” whose saw-tooth synth figures bear uneasy intimations which subside to bright electronic bubble, the final “Far Closes” ending in a surge of emotion extruded through an icy synth ‘scape.

Analog synth and synco-beats, somehow timeless, seem to articulate the rhythms of work and a heavy freight of lives lived on hard ground; thus CF seems, paradoxically, to bespeak a certain gruff inarticulacy. Live shows with faceless artist, back to audience behind modular banks, have grown a following for his Berlin-schooled hardware jams; content infusion from visuals—drone shots of Yorkshire country, motorist POVs of regional roads, the turn of historical wheels of industry—bolstering concept into a strong statement of a sense of place and a feel for its people and history.

Overall, perhaps the most engaging CF release yet, Sidings continues to resonate long beyond play-through.

Sidings is available on The Leaf Label. [Bandcamp]