Thinking In Textures

iTunes Editors’ Notes

Nicholas James Murphy took the name Chet Faker in homage to ‘50s-era jazz singer/trumpeter Chet Baker, admired by Murphy for his “broken, close-up style.” Murphy shares the same intimate, despair-worn aesthetic, but his tone is imbued with R&B and soul, giving his own music a velvety Bill Withers undercurrent. It’s not jazz; it's mellow, electronic late-night grooviness. “I can barely hold my tongue/To say the least, I’m into you”; Faker slurs the words together like a man struck equally by lust and a bottle of gin on the seductive “I’m Into You.” Lust runs deep in Thinking in Textures. Faker's reworking of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity”—which propelled him to rapid blogosphere stardom in 2011—is as alluring as the original, with his distorted, vintage-flavored keyboards a highlight. Even the instrumental “Cigarettes and Chocolate" reeks of a roiling kettle of emotions, a hallucinogenic exploration of textures and aural vignettes with spare, cracking beats and acoustic guitar that sounds both lost and necessary. An avowed fan of both techno and Van Morrison, Murphy has filtered his musical loves into something undeniably intoxicating and pleasurable.