The Fauns

The epithet ‘shoegaze’ began as a critical sneer, a pejorative slur, a dig at the propensity for practitioners to stare at their respective footwear, averting the glare of the audience’s stare.

However, like pretty much anything in the latte capitalist culture cocoon we are submerged within in 2024 it has become a consumer branding label, both a sonic salute and saleable shorthand to bygone times, the pre-glut days of the smothering snare of the net-web. It’s also a sound that harks back to simpler, less psychically congested times, almost bucolic, pastoral and folkish.

After a ten year gap Bristol-based The Fauns return with their third album ‘How Lost’ on Invada Records. The group, comprised of Michael Savage (bass), Alison Garner (vocals) and Guy Rhys Davies (drums), were joined in 2019 by soundtrack composer Will Slater (guitars) whose singular visions serve to enhance and expand the experience.

Self –described as a ‘spectrum of styles, ranging from intricate, guitar-driven sci-fi fantasies to industrial-tinged new wave compositions’ throbbing electrobeats course through backdrops of shimmering effects. Whispered discourses permeate the glimmering affects.

The components are all here: gauzy, woozy, hazy etherealities. Washed-out waves of ‘other’ realties. Lyricism and mysticism laced with surrealities.

Opener ‘Mixtape Days’ is an ode to the cultural artefact that was the cassette. A memorial device of carefully curated choices designed to exist as a sonic time-capsule or as a vehicle to charm and woo the attentions of another. Heartfelt communiques in the guise of tastemaking at odds with today’s sterile harvesting. Soundwise the song is an uplifting trance-dance, brushing, pushing and rushing its way into the earwaves.

Both ‘Afterburner’ and ‘Spacewreck’ take you on interstellar trips, subconsciously drifting freely through time and space, low-ducking and slow-diving.

‘How Lost’ as an album exudes the elemental majesties of Goldfrapp (the epic ‘Dark Discotheque’), alludes to the transcendental tragedies of the Cocteau Twins (‘Doot Doot’) and broods with the experimental tapestries of Virginia Astley (‘Modified’).

The Fauns request you look down, up, in, out, within and without. Head to toe, back to front. Do it, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.