Providence is the fourth studio album by English electronic musician Nathan Fake. It was released on 10 March 2017 through Ninja Tune, his first release on the label.[4] The album was recorded during the first half of 2016 following a period of writer's block, and features Fake's first vocal collaborations.[5]Providence received generally favourable reviews, with a score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic.[6]
After extensive touring in support of his third album Steam Days (2012), Fake experienced a two-year creative drought, describing it as a cycle of being unable or unwilling to make music.[5] He broke through the block after purchasing a Korg Prophecy synthesiser from the 1990s, whose limitations as a monophonic instrument forced him to approach composition more intuitively, playing melodies in real time rather than programming sequences in a digital audio workstation.[5] The album's title references the Prophecy's name.[5]
Fake recorded the album through jam sessions, with synthesiser parts captured on cassette tape before being transferred to computer, a workflow that added organic texture to the sound.[5] The album features vocal contributions from Dominic Fernow on "DEGREELESSNESS" and Raphaelle Standell-Preston of Braids on "RVK", marking Fake's first collaborations with vocalists.[4][7] Fake's move to Ninja Tune came through prior remix work and rapport with the label.[5]
Providence received generally favourable reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 73, based on 10 reviews.[6]Resident Advisor praised the album as a reinvention, noting that Fake's confidence seemed renewed and that the record marked a more urgent and aggressive direction while retaining his distinctive identity.[1]The Skinny highlighted the layered sound resulting from the Korg Prophecy's constraints and praised Fake's first vocal collaborations.[7] Writing for The Irish Times, Chris Jones noted the album's move away from the dancefloor, describing it as intense and disorienting.[8]The Line of Best Fit gave a more mixed assessment, praising the collaborative tracks but finding some of the album's compositions directionless.[9]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
