Fair(mont) to Middling
I just had a listen to Jake Fairley's new album as Fairmont and I found it quite disappointing. I love 'Gazebo', but 'Coloured in Memory', the new album is like a pale version of the sweet, pastoral sound and glitchy percussion thing that Border Community specialises in. Fairley gets some kudos for using bluesy influences, trying to write some pop songs and for the lovely string soundtrack of 'All Good Things', but I'd prefer if he ditched the project entirely and focused again on making music under his own name. Fairley's work between 2002 and 2005, mainly for Sender, constitutes some of my favourite modern techno, especially the awesome 'Cold World', which Shonky and Cardini 'borrowed' liberally from for 'August in Paris' and the 'Crisis' album. If you're going to do electronic music with evocative melodies counterbalanced by grungy rhythms and clicky, alien percussion, then check out these releases. Come back Jake, all is forgiven...
When is the album released?
Posted by: Sotek | September 23, 2007 at 07:32 PM
It's out in the second week of November as far as I know...
Posted by: Brophy | September 25, 2007 at 04:25 AM
Happened to hear Cardini & Shonky's track yesterday, and you're absolutely right. Hadn't noticed that before...
With you on old Jake vs new Jake btw. He played for us as Fairley about 4 years ago and killed it, proper techno-rock without all the trashy cliches. He still does some nice stuff under his own name now and again - last year's EP on playmade was good, I thought.
Posted by: leeism | September 26, 2007 at 04:35 AM
@ Leeism - yeah, the similarity is 'striking' isn;t it? I think his catalogue from 2000-2004 is one of modern techno's great treasures. Have you heard 'Crisis'?
Posted by: Brophy | October 04, 2007 at 02:42 PM
Yeah, I played three or four tracks off that album to death when it came out. In fact, I think I bought just about everything he did up until 'Touch Not The Cat' on Dumb-Unit (funny to think that DU were releasing that kind of stuff back then). He also did a Fairmont album for Traum around 2003 called 'Paper Stars', which is much more up my street (and yours, I imagine) than his current style. I may have to go and dig all this stuff out now :)
Posted by: leeism | October 05, 2007 at 04:14 AM
Check out his livesets, especially his one at Rote Sonne Munich 07.04.06, it's quite widely available on soulseek and the likes. Can't recommend it enough
Posted by: scrunchy | October 09, 2007 at 06:11 PM