Nathan Fake - Crystal Vision (album)

Out april 7th.

Pre-order: 
https://nathanfake.com/album/crystal-vision

Single:

This is really cool but I have to restrain myself to preorder as the releases after DIASOL where hit and miss.

i really feel this track a lot tho

I thought the first track was promising but not compelling enough to immediately pre-order.  To the Bandcamp wishlist it goes!

Great stuff

Yes! Yes!!!

This new track sounds awesome, subdued madness. I like the vocals added to the song structure in his style.

I linked these videos from hard islands demoing his studio and workflow at that time. I'm always surprised at the contrast between what is painstakingly laid out and the rough takes with parameter sweeps that make his style.

Sweet, this second track is really getting me. Hoping for a rough and personal record, somehow Providence doesn't click at all with me and Blizzards should have ticked all the right boxes, but also feels somewhat hollow. If you have the chance to see him play, you should definitely go, as he is probably one of the best laptop live performers, period.

It does not disappoint 

<...there were removed youtube tracks here: crystal vision, bibled, & amen96...>

solid album

This is great!

On first spin this seemed a bit more club friendly than I was hoping for. Will give it more time.

  On 4/8/2023 at 7:15 AM, kuniklo said:

On first spin this seemed a bit more club friendly than I was hoping for. Will give it more time.

I actually like that it's more club friendly

This is so amazing, best and most adventurous material from Fake since "Hard Islands" for me. "Bibled" is already my track of the year!

The Wizard Apprentice collab is a bit lame though and the collab with Clark disappointing. Come on, my little niece could come up with that lazy chord progression. So best is to skip both tracks and have a very adventurous EP.

Really pretty album, quite a bit different than Blizzards. Feeling pretty spoiled that we’ve gotten new Holden, Fake. Paradinas, and VHS Head albums within the past 2 weeks.

Blizzards was one of my favorite covid lockdown records so I was hoping for something a bit more like that.

We have had a lot of good new music lately.

Flipping great album

Blizzards was the pinnacle fake for me; saw him perform live twice with tracks from that album and it slayed.  Not convinced by this album yet - feels pretty straight cut.  Solid fake, but I like the bombastic adventurous noises of Blizzards.  Ill give it time. 

  On 4/10/2023 at 12:20 PM, Soloman Tump said:

Blizzards was the pinnacle fake for me; saw him perform live twice with tracks from that album and it slayed.  Not convinced by this album yet - feels pretty straight cut.  Solid fake, but I like the bombastic adventurous noises of Blizzards.  Ill give it time. 

thats fair! Blizzards was one of my fave albums of 2020, it knocked me out the first time i heard it.

I never know that people here on WATMM was into Nathan Fake and James Holdens stuff 

They did alot of soft dance music around 2005-2010 

Providence is probably my favourite of his, but I seem to be on my own with that.  Sunder EP as well from that period was great. 

Enjoying the new one though, title track in particular is a banger. 

  On 4/8/2023 at 11:07 AM, tokn said:

The Wizard Apprentice collab is a bit lame though and the collab with Clark disappointing. Come on, my little niece could come up with that lazy chord progression. So best is to skip both tracks and have a very adventurous EP.

Agree with this, was put off by The Grass (Wizard Apprentice track, never heard of them), much more trance than I like. And the Clark track was unfortunately lackluster.

I revisited Blizzards earlier in the week ahead of this and after my first listen on Friday I just felt this was pretty middle of the road. Will play again this week and see if I like it more.

Alright so I played it again today, bit more focused this time and I enjoyed it more. Still don't like the trance vibe of The Grass and Outsider (Clark's feature). Some quite good meaty tracks between those two though, and more varied than I initially thought. Standouts being Vimana and Hawk, but quite liked Boss Core, Crystal Vision, and Amen 96 too.

  On 4/10/2023 at 7:00 PM, danshoebridge said:

Providence is probably my favourite of his, but I seem to be on my own with that. 

you're not alone on that, it's the only one of his i've got. heard some good stuff on Blizzards but never connected with it, not feeling what i heard of this one either.

  On 4/10/2023 at 6:07 PM, cern said:

I never know that people here on WATMM was into Nathan Fake and James Holdens stuff 

They did alot of soft dance music around 2005-2010 

Border Community helped pull me away from euro trance in the late 90s / early 2000s and start getting into more progressive then experimental sounds.  

I think already well documented in another James Holden thread, but his 2002 double-a side on Silver Planet Records, I have put out the light / Solstice, was massive.... 

There were a few labels around then that were trying something different. Including to a lesser extent SAW Recordings (Satoshi Tomiie's label) and FIRE/ERIF which was Lee Burridge and Cass. Great times. 

The title track drum part sounds very similar to BoC's Kid For Today (which IIRC sampled one of Ringo's drum fills in Strawberry Fields Forever). Maybe an homage? Or just a coincidence? Lovely album though!