- Vintage modular synthesis from the Yorkshire moors.
- In May, Craven Faults posted a series of Live Works performances to his YouTube channel. The visuals transition between his main inspirations: his mammoth, Moog Unit modular system, housed in an old textile mill, and shots of the surrounding Yorkshire countryside. While the sea of flashing lights and cables are overtly manmade, the music sounds natural and anachronistic, gently ebbing and flowing while, in the videos, grass sways and cogs turn.
His latest release, Enclosures, houses three epics of electronic minimalism, imagining journeys across post-industrial Northern England. Craven Faults' art is in repetition, automation and tension. He layers organ notes, modulates bottom-heavy chords and gradually unravels drum patterns, holding your gaze without any sudden gestures. The specifics of modular synthesis are largely lost on me, but listening to Enclosures, there’s no doubting that this is music created from a painstaking labour of love.
Fans of Manuel Göttsching's spiralling experiments, like the 1984 holy grail E2-E4, will find plenty to love in "Doubler Stones," the most propellent of the three tracks. "Hard Level Force" is swampy and technoid in comparison, its warm bassline providing a polar force to the icy synth notes circling above. 17-minute closer "Weets Gate" is the emotive climax. Its infinity pool arrangement and euphoric melody might help this record find its way into the bag of some adventurous DJs.
Tracklist01. Doubler Stones
02. Hard Level Force
03. Weets Gate