Nathan Fake is a British electronic musician whose lush, moody recordings range from atmospheric tech-house to vivid, shoegaze-influenced downtempo. The pastoral psychedelia of his 2006 debut album, Drowning in a Sea of Love, struck a chord with both critics and fans, gaining the producer a loyal following. His subsequent releases have generally been more uptempo and maintain a sense of urgency and spontaneity.
Fake (his actual last name) often restricts himself to hardware-based equipment and records tracks in a single take. After releasing his most experimental work, 2017’s Providence, his 2020 full-length Blizzards contained some of his most immediate, club-friendly material, and 2023’s Crystal Vision was a more exploratory set touching on jungle and progressive house.
Fake began his career in the farm country of Norfolk in the U.K., where he learned how to play basic acoustic instruments before finding a love of the electronic genres. He moved to Reading at the age of 19, which gave his recordings significantly more exposure, and his demos found their way to producer/remixer/DJ James Holden. Holden immediately signed Fake to his Border Community imprint and released a set of 12’’s (Outhouse and The Sky Was Pink) that put him on the global dance scale in terms of recognition. Fans from all electronic genres immediately took to Fake’s distinctive sound (including luminaries like François K and Satoshi Tomiie), and his recordings began to be some of the most in demand of 2004.
