Walking The Weird Path with Nathan Fake

Photo: Nathan Fake / Credit: Border Community

It's coming up to a dozen years since the world was introduced to the sonic stylings of Norfolk born Nathan Fake.

As one of the first producers to release material on James Holden's pivotal Border Community imprint, Fake has gone on to become one of the label's anchors, quietly evolving his sound from the dreamy IDM leaning dance floor flavours of his debut 'Outhouse' to the caustic, mangled brilliance of later works like LPs Hard Islands and Steam Days, via a wealth of left of field outings that straddle the worlds of techno, live experimentation and nostalgic ambience.

With his and Wesley Matsell's imprint Cambria Instruments launching back in August, and an impending live show at Leeds' Canal Mills on December 11th, we thought it high time we spoke to the man himself to learn more about this brand new venture, and at the same time discuss the downsides of accidentally creating a club banger, the importance of live electronic music, and the journey from being a kid messing about with a tape recorder to becoming an internationally esteemed auteur.

Hello! Cheers for chatting to us. So we first wanted to get the lowdown on your new imprint Cambria Instruments which started in August wasn't it? It certainly sounds like some of your trippiest output to date.

Oh, cool, thank you.

How did the label come about?

Well basically me and Wesley know each other from Border Community. He's a relative newcomer, but we just sort of became mates because we were into exactly the same stuff. We were always talking about making tunes together but we never really got round to that, so we came up with the idea of doing a label. We've got plenty of tunes just lying around that probably wouldn't fit with Border Community.

The first release (below) is very different to the sort of stuff we've put out before. So it's nothing major but we just wanted a little outlet for some of our random, little records. We're just concentrating on our own stuff, for now.

Would you say it's a home for your more experimental stuff?

Yeah, well, not necessarily experimental, but just kind of different, novelty records. It gives us total freedom really.

So when is the next release out, and will it be from you or Wesley?

It's coming from me, its an EP that's getting mastered now, it should hopefully be out before Christmas.

Has that been your sole focus of late then or have you been working on other bits and pieces?

I've just been doing a bunch of remixes really. I've actually just moved studios recently so I've just been kind of working on rebuilding and expanding the studio.

I'm indirectly working on an album too and doing a few little collaborations. I'm doing a thing with a Nonclassical orchestra - Gabriel Prokofiev and his guys which will be at Bloc in London in a couple of weeks.

So it's obviously something totally different for me, I've never collaborated with anyone really, I've always worked on my own so I thought it would be nice to do something interesting like that.

That's quite something then for your first real collaboration to be with an entire orchestra.

Yeah, well it's just a sort of an improvisational live thing really but yeah, pretty exciting.

Speaking of your live performances (watch him tear up the Boiler Room above), you seemed to tour Steam Days for a pretty long time. From what we've read it sounds as if your touring schedule was fairly intense, how did you find the whole experience?

With 'Steam Days' I did loads of gigs to promote it and follow it up. It wasn't so much a definitive tour, I guess it was more like a string of dates around Europe and Japan and stuff.

I did a tour with Clark and Jon Hopkins after an initial tour with Orbital when the album came out. That came along at a really good time and ended up being good way of promoting the album. 

Playing live is one of the things that influences my music the most, composition wise, working with arrangements, what I do in the studio. Before I started doing gigs a lot I worked in a completely different way. I mean its been eight years since I started doing gigs but the way I approach putting music together is still evolving. 

You can definitely hear that live element in your records, especially on Steam Days which in parts sounds like you are actually there riffing, changing levels, manipulating filters giving it that hands on feel. Do you find it's important to put that live, human element into your work?

Yeah it is, its one of the essential parts of my music at the moment, I can't really write stuff that has rigid eight bar arrangements - everything has to be sort of irregular. I guess it might sound messy to some people but to me I get really excited about music that kind of darts about the place and feels chaotic. I mean its all controlled but chaotic as well.

Yeah that's particularly noticeable in tracks like 'Iceni Strings' (above), which on first listen is pretty puzzling with its seemingly odd time signatures and that, but after a few listens it all beings to make perfect sense.

Haha, yeah.

Now you mentioned Orbital earlier on, as a bit of background, were they one of your earliest encounters with electronic music? Did hearing them play a pivotal role in you getting into the world of electronic music?

Yeah it was when I was at school and my brother got the 'In Sides' album off one of his mates, but I ended up listening to it way more than he did.

I was into The Prodigy and stuff at the time, but because of where I grew up in rural Norfolk, there were no radio stations or anything going on so the music you heard was stuff on Radio One, or through my mates or my brother's mates, so I didn't really have access to much music at all. Orbital was the first serious electronic music I ever heard, and from then I went on to hear stuff like Aphex Twin.

I actually used to play along to Orbital on the keyboard which lead to my writing my own melodies. I didnt really know how electronic music was made, so I just went along to music shops in Norwich and tried to ask people what I could buy to do it.

I ended up buying a drum machine and a sampler... So yeah for a few years I was making incredibly basic stuff with just a tape recorder and sampler and a Boss drum machine. I ended up buying a Roland Groovebox which is still a toy but it enabled me to make proper loops.

It sounds like you went in at the deep end, actually buying the hardware to write music rather than playing around with a bit of software on a PC as most people would have.

Yeah a lot of emerging artists now are really young, they get younger and younger, so a thirteen or fourteen year old now has got full access to the internet and you can download software, you can download any bit of music.

It makes me feel kind of old actually, because when I was little there was no internet, I hardly had access to any music, I was just walking this weird little path on my own.

Although you were relatively young when you had your debut release on Border Community.

Yeah I was 19.

But suppose nowadays you're getting young producers like say Happa who was 15 when he released his first work, and it just sounds immense. It sounds so beyond his years, like the work of a drug addled 40 year old madman and yet it's this young producer who is making incredible techno.

I know yeah, I mean he's obviously really talented. I suppose this is the first generation that has grown up with all this technology from being little kids so you sort of learn it straight away, people are bound to get accomplished much younger because they've had access to all of it from really early.

Before long you'll have some ten year old kid making techno and getting signed to R&S or something (laughs).

One of your earliest works that we came across was 'Undoing The Laces' (below).

Oh yeah, from the 'Dinamo EP'.

That's quite an out-an-out dance floor, acid track, do you ever get the urge to do something straight up dance floor again?

Yeah totally, the EP that's coming out next is a lot more dance floor aimed. I mean that tune was just a bit of laugh actually, its really old now, it must be about 11 years old. It was just a 303 plugin, emulator type thing and I ended up smashing out this tune.

I sent it to the guy at Traum and he really liked it. You know I actually listened to that again for the first time in years the other day and I just kind of cringed a bit... The production is just so plastic and dry and thin I just think, 'Oh man!' you know, 'it's completely mono!' (laughs).

Haha! So when you think back to your other past releases, are there any records that still stand out as special to you?

Yeah, the first album 'Drowning In A Sea Of Love', which I haven't listened to all the way through since it came out I think, but that album, especially the first track is just super nostalgic. I actually wrote it two or three years before the album came out so the tunes on there are over ten years old now.

Tunes like 'Long Sunny' (above) were written when I was a student, so they remind me of staying up all night making these nice fluffy tunes (laughs) so I have these nice memories of being this naive kid making naive sounding, twinkly music.

Do any of those older tracks make it into your sets nowadays?

Er... Well I haven't played anything off that album for years, I used to play 'You Are Here', well a live remix of that anyway which a bit more techno, and I used to play a different version of 'Stops' but to be honest I've not played anything off that album for years...

Actually I tell a lie, I've just started playing out 'The Sky Was Pink' again, I've sort of reclaimed it. I mean obviously there is the album version which is the original, but then when James' remix came out (below) the track got a life of its own, I kind of feel like it went out of my hands in a way.

It became this kind of club monster which not even James had planned! I mean he did this club friendly remix with a big breakdown but neither of us thought it would become as big as it was.

I remember James sending it me when he first made I just thought 'this sounds cool', I didn't think 'this is a banger' - it became this massive thing where every gig I played around that time people would be screaming at me "Play 'The Sky Is Pink'!" 

For a lot of people it was the only track they knew, and they'd only ever heard James' remix so they didn't even realise it was his remix. I'd get pissed off with people coming up to me after my set and going 'Why the fuck didn't you play 'The Sky Is Pink'!? I just thought, I'm not going to play someone else's remix in my live set. I got really aggressive people sometimes, fucking weird!

It's that kind of attitude - 'I've paid to see you, so you'd better play that song I know or I'll kick off!'

Ha yeah so I didn't play it for years but I just recently started playing it again because its been ten years since it came out. I've done a new version for the live set. Same with 'Outhouse' my first record, I've done a weird remix of that.

Now we know if you're working on material you tend to avoid listening to work from other artists, but have their been any artists or bands you've enjoyed of late? You've spoken before about Actress and Lukid being outstanding producers.

Well yeah at the moment because I'm working on stuff I trend to distance myself form other music. I'm still not massively on the pulse with new stuff but over the past couple of years I've been really into stuff by Kassem Mosse.

I never tend to really check out these names I see floating about but when I heard his stuff I thought 'Wow, this is amazing!'. It's quite subtle, and the production on it is super amazing, really good headphone music. The music itself isn't that heavy but the production definitely is, and its really deep, really nice to listen to.

And, I'm into Vessel on Triangle records - I think he's from Bristol. His first album was a very post dubstep but this new one is quite weird, its kind of electro acoustic music. He'd made a lot of instruments that I think were home made and just quite weird and metallic, whilst being organic at the same time.

We've spoken purely about music, so in between the writing, the producing, and listening, what do you do to unwind?

Haha, I kind of don't. I mean I'm not always writing tunes but I am always in that frame of mind. I actually live out in the countryside at the moment so that's a nice distraction.

You lived in London for a time didn't you?

Yeah I was there for seven or eight years and now I'm back in Norwich, out in the sticks which is quite nice. I won't be here forever though.

Has that had an effect on your work, living in a quieter, more remote area?

Yeah well I do miss London, I'm not sticking my middle finger up at London or anything because I love the place but it is nice to come back somewhere different, I find it nice to change my surroundings every so often.

On a slightly different topic, if you hadn't heard that Orbital album back in 1996, and you'd completely missed electronic music altogether, where do you think you'd be now? What would you be doing?

Oh man I've no idea. The place I grew up in England is pretty dead so I dread to think actually! But I think I'd still have pursued music on some level. I'd have definitely left Norfolk anyway because I get quite fidgety and want to uproot quite often.

So one last question - you are asked to curate your ultimate rave. You can have on the bill any DJ from history, alive or dead. Who would join you, and what track would you play to define the evening?

I'd have Autechre, because they're the best live act I've ever seen. And then I'd probably have someone like Jeff Mills because he's the best techno DJ I'd say. For the track I'd play, I'm going to have to say 'Impact' by Orbital because that's the tune that started it all for me. 

Nathan Fake heads to Canal Mills in December. Head here for all Nathan Fake listings.