I sat down with Nathan Fake, one of the UK’s most distinctive electronic music producers, to chart his journey from rural Norfolk to the forefront of techno, IDM and experimental electronic music — and to unpack Evaporator, his seventh studio album. The record marks a clear pivot away from drum-heavy habits toward mood, melody and atmosphere, growing out of an intentional “ambient-only” brief.
We dig into the nuts and bolts of music production: why Nathan still sketches ideas in old versions of Cubase, how cassette saturation, cheap gear and sonic imperfections add human friction, and where modern plugins genuinely earn their place. He talks about contrast as a compositional tool — lush pads against tough drums — and traces a lineage from Border Community’s trance-tinged techno through to echoes of Warp-era electronic atmospherics.
There’s also a candid look at playing legacy tracks live, reshaping classics like “The Sky Was Pink” and “Outhouse” through improvisation, memory and feel, rather than carbon-copy recreations.
Beyond sound design, the conversation opens out into bigger questions about electronic music today. Do long-form tracks still survive in a scroll- and swipe-first ecosystem? Nathan answers by doubling down, placing a nine-minute centrepiece at the heart of the new album. We reflect on working with small independent labels versus larger music organisations, and he shares pragmatic advice for staying singular: ignore trends, set your own constraints, and let the idea dictate the tool. We also probe the monoculture of online tutorials and ubiquitous DAWs.
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Nathan Fake on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/nathanpaulfake/?hl=en
Nathan Fake on Bandcamp:
https://nathanfake.bandcamp.com/
Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-Technica
My book Coming To Berlin is a journey through the city’s creative underground, and is available via Velocity Press
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