This track begins and continues like a séance: a plaintive hollow synth faltering and calling out, later layered and turned into something spooky organ-like—the beat thumping like the thudding heartbeat of a cynical believer, overdriven with simple fills that remain this constant biological function of the track as different percussion comes in and out of view: sharp hi-hats, sshhing shakers like panting pitchshifted, rattling metallics and eventually this garage-flavoured snare but decayed clacks into earshot.
Contact is eventually made. The dearly departed dismal diction at 3:27 the the synths grow ever more intense, the inexpressible emotiveness of Norfolk native Nathan Fake's live, raw approach to sound getting the better of our consciousnesses—"There are no post-edits - they are left completely as they were recorded - so they're quite messy but I love that energy," he says, explaining the sound.
The hi-hat keeps scathing time and the beat falls away and the synth warm and shaking and screaming out for something, for a connection: still that plaintive sadness, human closeness across the digital void or the vaults of time. It calms, recedes, ends ominous and exhausted and alien with twiddling synths and this one final note of dissatisfaction and regret and joy all at the same time. Intangible ghosts, old friends, ebbing memory.
- 🔔 This track is taken from Nathan Fake's exactly-the-samely titled Sunder EP which will arrive via Ninja Tune on 23rd February. You may stream and pre-order this track and the EP itself respectively in various ways on this page here.
- 🔔 The artwork for the EP (above) was created by Hubert Solczyńsk. It echoes the sadness, the new-and-old-ness of this track, and presumably the four-track EP itself; the desire to reach out and touch something that is not and never has been really there: both the past, and our ephemeral online worlds.
