Fairmont- Coloured In Memory

I'll admit that I haven't listened to enough Border Community releases to make a blanket statement like "the label has a signature sound which Fairmont fit to a tee and in fact excel at," but I want to. Fairmont sound like a less gauzy version of labelmate Nathan Fake, or perhaps a more synth-obsessed version of Boards of Canada.

Coloured In Memory falls comfortably between those two artists, to my ears- it's more ambientesque and icy than Fake's cotton-candy electronic shoegaze, but conveys less of a sense of menace or campfire IDM than BoC's catalog. Songs take time to develop, but it's more of a studied build based on minimalist discipline, rather than the all-too-easy "make one loop, modulate, repeat" formula that modern software promotes.*

Mid-album highlight "I Need Medicine" is the album's first real ear-grabber for me, rising above the clicks-and-beeps ambience of the first half of the record to deliver what is almost a traditionally danceable track. The weirdly pitch-shifted vocals I could do without, but that's just personal preference. At least they're not as bad as on "Calm Before The Storm," whose vocals are honestly crap, and highlight's the album's one glaring flaw. Dear electronic artists- if you can't actually sing, at least do what Matthew Dear did on Asa Breed and weird things up a little! I'd much rather listen to freaky full-range multitracked mutterings and yelps than some awful wandery French-accented pseudo-croon with a hideous slapback echo applied.

"Flight of the Albatross" is just bloody weird. 3/4 beats and goofy space-noises? Okay! "All Good Things" continues this theme, leading into album closer "Time's Fool" which starts off really pretty with some nice strummed electric guitar and then augh the vocals are back nooooo get them off get them off

[screaming, gunshots, French zombie noises, static]

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