Julian Fane: Special Forces

The marriage of falsetto vocals, strings and pulsing drumbeats often comes from the source of a pop musician approaching electronic music as a way of stepping off-base a bit, trying something alien. Vancouver musician Julian Fane’s first foray, Special Forces, shows the twenty-one year old pushing through the surface of this hybrid sound, creating stirring pieces of mood music with variations on the them of war and strife. Kid A is an obvious parallel, but only if you use the strictly programmed cuts without all the guitar rock overtones. Fane creates an isolated world, where the feel of winter and desolate surroundings takes hold. In a fuzzy metaphor for war, apocalypse, and a frightening modern world, he presents a place somewhere between a warning of things to come in the immediate future, and the cyber world of Blade Runner.

Julian Fane was part of the band Waikiki, made experimental electronic music as Aardvark Interface and Taoist Blockade (also a track title on Special Forces) and is a former trader on the NASDAQ. The music won out over his stock options. This, his full-length debut, works as a proper introduction to his compositions for most listeners. Special Forces is an atypical release for Planet Mu, known for break-beats and the neo drill-and-bass sounds of artists like Venetian Snares and label founder µ-Ziq. On the label’s website, Mike Paradinas, nee µ-Ziq, points out the pop sensibilities that wooed him, and its accessibility: “People who hate Planet Mu will like it. He will probably sign to some other big label . . .” This electronic musician takes things “pop” with his soaring, bittersweet vocals, turning the tables of the “rock gone techno” school of thought.

Special Forces grips the listener with icy fingers. Fane’s voice floats eerily over several tracks, like the gray dirge of “Safety Man”. The instrumental opener, “Disaster Location” feels like it’s setting the scene for the rest of the record — a tweaked symphony creaks and bends notes into a blur, as if being heard by a crash survivor. Other song titles throughout hint not-so-subtly at ongoing themes of watery death, lonely obsessions and the battlefield: “Freezing in Haunted Water”, “Sea Island”, the 4/4 break-beat rouser “Darknet”, “Book Repository” and “Taoist Blockade.” Fane’s cinematic vision works through much of the record, with pieces that evoke strong visual images. In “The Birthday Boy”, a single mid-range drone moves over swells of instrumentation, a tone poem of the disenchanted.

Fane never fully realizes his mysterious landscape, and its amorphous general themes remain hard to grasp. The tone is rock solid. The despair and the cold, harsh feelings are tangible and lasting. The meaning, if there is a specific definition of Fane’s intention here, never rises to the top. Maybe that is part of the point, with lyrics just out of the reach of full comprehension. Nevertheless, Fane has created a world worth revisiting.