FOREST RESIDENCY

Faux Pas - Heroic Jam

It's only a matter of days now until Australia's finest working perfectionist releases his latest radness onslaught. Faux Pas, aka Tim Shiel, is a finicky dude: he refuses to play live because, basically, he doesn't want to disappoint (I know it's more complicated than that, Tim, but I'm a blogger so I don't care about details) - a reason that has never stopped any artist making music 1000 times less interesting than his; and he has literally been working on this album for thousands of years. I mean, we were loving track 2, Chasing Waterfalls, off this record (it's called Noiseworks FYI) back in 2008 (which I think was one of the years of the TRIASSIC?). Track 5, Silver Line, made it into my top 20 songs of 2009. Now probably this shit is gonna scoop our best of '10 as well, but anyway. He's a perfectionist.

Of course, Noiseworks fucking slays. Faux Pas's one of the few electronic artists in the world today who's managed to establish a musical identity for himself. Dan Snaith has. Keiran Hebden has. Scott Herren has. There're others too, of course - I'm just listing the ones who are still in the vicinity of their creative peak. The thing that sets Faux Pas apart from (and I'd say ahead of) them is the time short time it's taken him to carve out that identity. While those others have done it over the course of a decade or so, multiple albums and several monikers apiece, Faux Pas's done it in half the time, in two albums and just the one name.

But, y'know, this is an mp3 blog, so enough about Mr Shiel's achievements and shit. This is a beautiful album. Faux Pas's always done a great line in retro-futurism - recreating the 00s as envisioned by the 80s - but that's not to say this record is some kind of nostalgia trip. Totally disparate threads of electronica find their way in together: hip hop soundz, lush folktronica, minimal techno, sparse Anticon-inspired flavours. Importantly, it's an album of songs, rather than ideas or jams or half-formed fuckarounds. Great songs, too - you won't even notice when they creep into your brain and steal your soul (in a good way).

Don't know how to end this gushfest so I guess I'll just make like a Rolling Stone and call it a "seminal" "tour de force" that will be one of the most "important" albums of "2010".

[Faux Pas website]

[Noiseworks out soon through Sensory Projects]