Nathan Fake :: Evaporator (InFiné)

Evaporator, then, sees the pop accessibility and playful experiment latent in releases from debut Drowning In A Sea Of Love (2006) to the recent Crystal Vision redirected by NF through a prism of deep electronica, trance uplift and ambient sweep; also, incidentally, continuing inclusion of fruitful team-ups with spirit kin (e.g. Border Community bud Dextro on “Baltasound” and Clark for “Orbiting Meadows”) into his lone M.O..

Two decades of self-inquiry into a lucid tactile form

 

After a longish hiatus comes Evaporator, Nathan Fake returning with the product of six weeks last summer distilling two decades of self-inquiry into a lucid tactile form of ‘airy daytime music’ (his words). His first InFiné outing shifts from the night-time kicks of Blizzards (2020) and Crystal Vision (2023) towards light and aperture; analog synths and rhythmic architecture bristle with space and pace, density dissolved into motion—wind in hair, wide skies, open plains. You get the picture.

Evaporator goes in where ageing technology meets creative refresh, old faithful software (Cubase VST5), engine of two decades of music, rarely updated; NF professes to have felt slightly ashamed of using such old tech—that is till a mini-epiphany showed it to be the essence of Faking It; artist and instrument at peak synergy, music-making become quasi-automatic, it more or less fell into place, Evaporator (title) auto-suggested, ideas looping and evolving till all locked into place, feeling right; not so much ‘overtly confrontational electronic club’ or ‘after-party’ music as what NF describes as ‘quite pleasant…accessible […] daytime aerial.’

A glimpse of the above comes on “The Ice House,” glassy FM synths in flighty dialog with crystal arpeggios and sparse yet sturdy bass; such unmediated channelings seem to look back while aiming ahead, a key trait of NF musical practice. As with the eponymous process, tracks possess a will-to-morph, sounds seldom static. “Aiwa” recalls Providence‘s (2017) introspection, incited by Steam Days‘s (2012) timbral experiment, hefty slams and clanks colliding in a flood of harmonic buzz. “Hypercube” heads for a similar chronological confluence, a nagging rave-redolent synth line infused with the crackling energy of a festival anthem update,“Bialystok” pitching inf(l)ected garage down to good driving effect. “You’ll Find a Way” warps static into energy shivers, synth strings mounting to slow-release chord-gush, the most kinetic mutations coming late, e.g. “Slow Yamaha”’s blend of sharp melody and heated-up drums, kaleidoscopic laser pulse ‘n’ fizz all round, peaking in atomic ecstasis.

Evaporator, then, sees the pop accessibility and playful experiment latent in releases from debut Drowning In A Sea Of Love (2006) to the recent Crystal Vision redirected by NF through a prism of deep electronica, trance uplift and ambient sweep; also, incidentally, continuing inclusion of fruitful team-ups with spirit kin (e.g. Border Community bud Dextro on “Baltasound” and Clark for “Orbiting Meadows”) into his lone M.O..

Evaporator is available on InFiné. [Bandcamp]