Nathan Fake is a Norfolk lad (now living in London [but of course]) who released a shimmery shoegaze-flecked electronic album in 2006. Drowning In A Sea Of Love gained him an appreciative audience, and it would not be erroneous to say that a lot of those fans erred on the side of primarily indie/alt. pop-rock enthusiasts, it all shaped up in such a way that Fake seemed to stand alongside other electronic crossover acts such as Ulrich Schnauss and M83. His second album Hard Islands, however, strikes closer to a harder techhouse and club aesthetic, away from the blurred dreamy headphone haze of his debut. Basically some people might be thrown for a loop here.You’re more likely to find squelchy laser blasts, a thumping percussive roll, phasing synths and euphoric vibes (‘The Turtle’), than hazy granular IDM, and when you do find that, invariably it’s being dominated by at least one of the newer elements (spin ‘Basic Mountain’ to see what I mean). There are a few handholds in some tracks, ‘Castle Rising’ uses ambient pads at the start, ‘Basic Mountain’, retains some haze, ‘Narrier’ has a certain smeared post-nuclear detonation quality, and sometimes these handholds sit well, but more often they stand out in uneasy contrast. Focussing on the newer direction, ‘Fentiger’ is a nasty industrial tinged piece, with jammed repetitious bassy pops and thuds, before an out of tune synth summons some ecstasy, and 'Castle Rising’ is an 8 minute perpetual lope.Besides all that the album structure is a little strange, its 6 tracks and 33minutes long - extremely truncated by techno standards - with 4 tracks 6 mins plus and two short tracks that can’t help but feel like linking material except that they are next to each other and close to the end. So whilst the first three are a pretty good stab at energetic club tracks, it all seems to stumble in the second half, and never really gets going again because the material runs out. Everywhere I’ve read about Hard Islands it’s been described as an album, even by the label Border Community, but I just can’t see why it’s so short, surely a longer album would offer more room to let the ideas presented here grow? I would especially have liked to hear more stuff in the vein of ‘Narrier’, because whilst the percussive dance stuff is pretty good, it’s a whole lot less interesting and individual. 55%Nathan Fake on MySpace