This morning, I am listening to Nathan Fake‘s upcoming album, and I’m happy to share one of my favourite tracks with you. Nathan is an English electronic musician from Norfolk, widely recognised for his particular fusion of ambient, IDM, and techno. I will not slot his music into a specific genre, but if you’re into the sounds of Jon Hopkins, Rival Consoles, John Tejada, Max Cooper, and Chris Clark, you will know where this fits. In fact, the latter even appears on this album, offering his microtonal 18EDO piano chords for one of the tracks. Besides releasing on James Holden’s Border Community, Nathan also appeared on Ninja Tune and on his own Cambria Instruments imprint. The French InFiné is a great home for his next release, where he already shared a two-track single back in 2025. The upcoming Evaporator is not a real departure from his sound, but rather a slight shift into what he describes as “airy daytime music”, balancing the above-mentioned stylistic elements into texturally rich soundscapes which are punctuated by a beat. Fans of Tycho’s open-air car rides will appreciate the feeling of “big skies, endless landscapes and fresh air rushing against your face” as they play through the eleven tracks.
In this quote, Nathan reflects on how long he’s been making music, since his debut in 2006:
It makes me realise how long; twenty years is ages! It’s weird to see how much the world has changed. Release day back then you did fuck all, now you spend all day on socials. When I grew up the people who made the electronic music I was into were quite mysterious, and the artwork was very abstract. There was a massive distance between you and that music, and that was a key part of it, really. Now it helps to be an extrovert, and I’m just not, but the album marks the first time my face has graced the cover art. I’ve never wanted to do this before, I’m very shy, and generally I don’t like being seen. But, twenty years in, I supposed I could try something new. I’m very lucky that I’m somehow surviving in this world, where the media world favours extroverts and interesting looking people. It’s not my world but somehow I’m still in it.
— Nathan Fake
With the release of his album this Friday, February 20th, Nathan will tour with a brand-new A/V live show created in collaboration with Berlin-based visual artist Infinite Vibes. The Paris show already took place on January 15th, but you can still catch him in Milan and Rome in March. The album is available on a double-gatefold CD, bio-vinyl, and digital formats (there is also a hat, a t-shirt, and a keychain, if you’re into merchandise). This is a sunny afternoon excursion into uplifting electronic moods, as we skip and hop from February darkness into a very welcome early blooming Spring…
