CRAVEN FAULTS – Sidings – ambient industrial synth review

CRAVEN FAULTS – Sidings – review
independent

After some spooky, post-industrial synth twiddlings and ambient noises? Then Craven Faults is your man.

He’s released several EPs and an album but what made he have a listen was the industrial concepts behind this release. As someone who grew up surrounded by the 24 hour noise of breweries, distilleries, rubber mills and railways, I still sometimes distrust silence. My family worked down coal mines and in iron foundries, and I’m no stranger to hanging about the Prestongrange Industrial Heritage Museum, looking suspicious.

It’s still set in Yorkshire, mind, but with the dead history of tunnels and viaducts hanging heavily over it. Now I’m not going to lie. I’m a simple lad, and a lot of This Sort of Thing goes right over my head. Where’s the melody? But we’re not in that world so I have to adjust my ears to a constant low drone, with headphones firmly in place. Because there’s a lot of nuance which you won’t hear without them.

There’s three big tracks here, and by big I mean BIG. ‘Ganger’, ‘Stoneyman’ and ‘Far Closes’ all kick in about the 15 minute mark. But that’s where the meat of the record is. The first one didn’t really work for me but I’m in a different world, so persevered. ‘Stoneyman’ did work, largely because it sounds like the sort of thing you’d have heard in a low budget 1974 Italian horror film. That’s a good thing, by the way. It’s also a piece of music I’ve listened to more than once. ‘Far Closes’ is a more meditative listen, one that fans of yer actual Tangerine Dream should pay attention to. You can see the bleak video for it down below.

I was also rather taken with ‘Incline Huttes’, possibly because I often hear chimes when there are no bells around. There’s probably medication for that but I’m past caring. The record is always interesting, sometimes challenging, but ambient synth twiddlers should definitely be paying this a visit.

As befits something post industrial revolution, it is available for you to purchase on the internet.