Albums of the Year # 3 Craven Faults - Standers

 

First of all, Craven Faults is a very good artistic name to go out under. It's unusual sounding, and makes you wonder, or at least it made me wonder, why they were called that. So I looked it up. The craven fault system apparently is 'the name applied by geologists to the group of the group of crustal faults in the Pennines that form the southern edge of the Askrigg Block.' Oh. So far so unclear.

.What about the music? New album Standers has some rock formations on the cover. Presumably from the Pennines. It's a pulsing, electronic piece, that if it reminds me of anything vaguely conventional, it's probably the first Suicide record, and that's not very conventional at all

Anyhow, it doesn't have Alan Vega shrieking fit to raise the living dead all the way through it. Or indeed at all. .In fact tt's a calming listening soundtrack, and strikes me as if it would be the perfect soundtrack for a drive across the Oennines as I saud, or else The Yorkshire Moors. with a good friend. 

 If The Craven Faults themselves are something of a mystery.a man made phenomenon, then the anonymous musical artist who takes their name, and Standers, their second album is pure enigma. Seventy minutes long, and entirely instrumental, its six tracks, some of them as long as eighteen minutes, surge and pulse with incredible confidence and authority

I don't feel particularly qualified to write about musical ventures like this, except to say I find Standers incredibly haunting and enchanting. If there's another musical artist that comes to mind apart from Suicide it's probably Vangelis, given that this is primarily synth driven, and he's one of the masters of that form of electrical expression.

Anyway, once I start listening to this record I feel the need to continue until it's finished its journey. It feels somehow that it would be rude not to. I think this is going to be something of an early morning and late night listening fixture for me over the coming days and weeks. An aid and support for me to help me complete the other journeys I need to navigate during the upcoming or following day. .