Nathan Fake has spent the best part of fifteen years as one of Border Community’s most dependable sources of melodic wonder, from The Sky Was Pink through seven albums of fizzy, wide-screen electronics. Sanxenxo is his first release since 2020’s acclaimed Blizzards, and the second outing on his own Cambria Instruments label—a five-track EP that gathers the title track from those Blizzards jam sessions, two pre-album cuts and a 2021 reworking of an archive recording dating back to 1983.
The title track leads, and it’s a joy. Sanxenxo (7:26) began life in the same sessions that produced Blizzards, and it shares that record’s sunlit confidence: a four-to-the-floor pulse locked to a gently rolling bassline, chords that bloom and recede in slow waves, and the occasional squelch of off-kilter synth detail to keep the ears honest. It’s the kind of track that sounds simple until you try to unpick it, every layer landing with the inevitability of a good memory.
The two long-form centrepieces predate Blizzards and feel like its sanded-off edges. Kanyon (9:14) lives up to its name, cathedral reverb swallowing the drums while a patient, melodic arp climbs over nine minutes of slow-burn build. Vanavond (9:14)—Dutch for “tonight”—is the more restless of the pair, its skittering percussion and dusk-hued chord sequence restless where its sibling is expansive. Both are patient, progressive structures that reward headphones.
Memory Hole (2:02) is a brief, formless interlude of tape hiss and dusted chords, a palate-cleaner before the closing 1983 (5:43), the record’s most intriguing proposition. Reworked from an archive recording made nearly forty years earlier, it drapes aged synth tones and brittle, dated drum sounds in contemporary production, so past and present sit side by side rather than one overwriting the other. It’s a strange, touching artefact, and exactly the sort of curatorial gesture that makes the self-released Cambria project feel personal.
Self-released records can often feel like looser, less considered statements, but Sanxenxo is anything but. Not every moment lands with the immediacy of Blizzards, yet the EP’s range—from its wide-eyed title track to the buried history of 1983—shows Nathan Fake tidying his own drawers, finding keepsakes and presenting them with real care. Long may the Cambria era continue.
