7. Nathan Fake‘The Grass’ (ft. Wizard Apprentice)
I ended up becoming friends with Nathan 14 years ago. Whenever he or I finishes [a record], we share everything, and I think I posted this work online as well, just to try and help spread it around a bit. I think he should be more celebrated than he is; I think he’s been consistently brilliant for many years.
We met in 2010 and it was a real struggle to choose which track of his to talk about because there are a great many that I feel equally strongly about. I chose a slightly newer one because it’s so refined. He’s like me in that he repeats his themes, the general things that he loves over the years and then evolves them gradually. If you look right back to my earliest stuff, I’ve always done that, but I credit him and the music of James Holden for my change in direction from Insides into Immunity into what came next. Four Tet and Caribou were starting to move in similar directions, but basically it was like I always had this thing about not liking the four-kick drum. I’d never engaged with club culture, I’d never been clubbing until I started playing in clubs. I just had this real kind of block about it, and then when I started hearing their stuff, I started to hear how actually kick drums and things like that could just be like a canvas – you can do whatever you want with them – but also they can give this extra propulsion and accessibility perhaps to the listeners.
Nathan showed me that you could be very experimental but within a framework that is danceable and accessible. On this particular track, it’s got this hypnotic vocal and increasingly intense bass in what sounds like a simple riff, but it’s not because the chord sequence is actually quite complex. Then this gradually evolving sound emerges that gets more and more distorted. He’s got this huge reverb behind the voice too, where he’s using the reverb almost as an instrument, which is something I love to do as well. So you have a note hanging over, it acts almost like a drone as the bass changes underneath it. He’s very, very sparing with the amount of notes you ever hear at one time. I just love his music.
