The last time I thought about Nathan Fake was earlier this year, courtesy of a vaguely unlikely prompt in the form of the Hot Chip single "Flutes". Although a typically direct pop song in the Hot Chip idiom on paper, "Flutes" is a queasy and uneven thing on record, a transformation achieved mainly thanks to its careful use of a sound that I had previously mentally filed under Fake's name in my head. That sound-- a gently keening psychedelic wail, deployed via dial rather than sample trigger-- hallmarked the early Fake single "The Sky Was Pink" and instantly provided him with something not many electronic musicians ever get; an original claim in the ongoing electronic music sound patent wars.
It's a natural tendency for listeners to reduce some electronic musicians to signature sounds or moments in our heads, which is why, even eight years after "The Sky Was Pink", I wouldn't be at all surprised if that particular sound was still the first thing that came to mind for lots of people familiar with Fake's work. Following on 2006's effervescent Drowning in a Sea of Love and 2009's rougher-edged Hard Islands, the newly released Steam Days probably won't do anything to change that, nor will it do much to get Fake out of the (now ironically) decaying ghetto of bucolic, pastoral electronic music that he helped re-colonize in the latter half of the last decade. But if the small refinements here are anything to go by, it's hard to imagine that Fake cares much about any of that at all.
If Drowning in a Sea of Love exhibited a pre-occupation with fizzy synth melodies and Hard Islands with naked, almost brutal, rhythms, Steam Days is all about the synthesis of those two sides. With its glowing, organ-led refrain and clattering percussions, opener "Paean" establishes a marriage between melody and rhythm that more or less stays intact throughout. "Old Light" and "Harnser" offset coarse drum patterns with tasteful dollops of melody. Meanwhile, with its psych-tinged synths and counterbalanced time signatures, single "Iceni Strings" aims to strike the same notes of gut-wrenching unease as "The Sky Was Pink", albeit in a slightly more muted fashion.
This low-key approach runs throughout Steam Days and inadvertently adds up to make a comment on this particular genre of electronic music. In a context removed from any sort of cultural relevance or baggage, you could reasonably argue that this is Fake's most well-rounded record to date; the bigger question is whether such small refinements to such an established, well-trodden genre should merit attention from anyone other than diehards at this stage in the game. Never mind that a few of the track titles sounded like they were produced by a nostalgic IDM fake track name generator ("Sad Vember" and "Warble Epics"-- gah), it's telling that the two highlights here (the komische synth burner "Rue" and hip-hop inflected "Neketona") are the ones that most readily evoke the ghost of those longest of shadow-casters, Boards of Canada. Bottom line is that this is hugely referential music made for what feels like a dwindling subset of fans; I hope those guys still have some wistfulness in the tank.
