Steam Days (album)

Steam Days is the third studio album by English electronic musician Nathan Fake. It was released on 3 September 2012 through Border Community, the label run by James Holden.^[2] The album followed extensive touring in support of his second album Hard Islands (2009), and Fake described the creative process as involving a longer gestation period and a more intuitive, isolated working method.^[3] Steam Days received generally favourable reviews, with a score of 67 out of 100 on Metacritic.^[4]

After touring extensively behind Hard Islands, Fake took a longer creative approach for Steam Days, with many of the album's tracks running substantially longer than those on its predecessor.^[3] He worked in isolation using simple instruments, a process he likened to a folk ethic, and cited his live performances as having made the music less rigid and more fluid.^[3] Fake noted that he avoided listening to other music while composing to prevent outside influences from affecting the work.^[3]

Several track titles reflect Fake's Norfolk roots. "Paean" derives from an anagram of his full name, shortened from the phrase "A Paean Thankful".^[5] "Iceni Strings", released as the album's lead single, references the Iceni, the ancient Celtic tribe from the region; Fake felt the track's melody evoked ancient folk music and had what he described as a tribal, campfire quality.^[5]

Steam Days received generally favourable reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 67, based on 13 reviews.^[4]

Writing for FACT, Alex Macpherson called the album Fake's most dynamic long-form work, praising the integration of organic and electronic sounds, though finding the closing tracks uneven.^[9] Resident Advisor described the album as a return to the melodic, atmospheric sound of Fake's earlier work, noting the influence of British techno and ambient house from the early to mid-1990s.^[1] The Skinny gave the album four out of five stars, highlighting its emotional depth and describing it as a journey through introspective electronic soundscapes.^[7] Exclaim! considered it Fake's strongest release, praising the synthesis of ambient textures with a progressive sound.^[10]

More mixed assessments came from Mark Pytlik of Pitchfork, who gave the album 6.2 out of 10 and characterised it as a synthesis of the melodic approach of Drowning in a Sea of Love and the harder rhythms of Hard Islands, acknowledging it as possibly Fake's most balanced work while questioning the ongoing relevance of the genre.^[6] The Line of Best Fit praised tracks such as "Iceni Strings" and "Paean" as examples of Fake's distinctive style but found the album as a whole lacking in variety.^[8] XLR8R similarly noted that while individual tracks were accomplished, the album struggled to cohere as a unified statement.^[11]

• Nathan Fake – production, all instruments