This year, we’ve brought in several new weekly features to FACT’s schedule.
Joining My Favourite Record and Forgotten Classics is The Week’s Best Vinyl Releases, a Saturday column by our friends at Soho record shop Phonica. It sounds obvious, but few people are onto great records as quickly as a great record store, and after years spent discovering gems in Phonica’s end of year lists, it made sense to give them a regular space on FACT. Every Saturday morning, they’ll run down the five vinyl records that you should grab this week.
SKATEBARD & LOVE NATION
Telephones Versions 12″
(Pleasure Unit)
Pleasure Unit is a new label from Keyboard Masher, and its first release is a series of remakes by Telephones. Doe-eyed piano house is the order of the day, and although it’s nothing new, it’s perfect for the sunny cruise you’re inevitably not having right now.
DONATO DOZZY & NUEL
The Aquaplano Sessions CD
(Spectrum Spools)
Compiling a short series of singles released by Dozzy through Hardwax, The Aquaplano Sessions both marks another chance to grab these lop-sided techno tracks (the original 12″s, inevitably, go for silly money on Discogs) and further cements Dozzy’s reputation as one of the more interesting techno acts operating today.
AFRICAINE 808
Lagos, New York / Zombie Jamboree 12″
(Golf Channel)
A pair of Berliners “laying polyrhythms over multicultural drum and percussion tracks” with a Roland 808, this could have gone horribly, horribly wrong, but it’s actually pretty special. ‘Zombie Jamboree”s the pick for us – a soundtrack for Jonny Trunk’s Halloween party if every there was one.
ART CRIME
Never Look Back 12″
(WT Records)
Willie Burns’ label step out with the debut – we think, though it could be an alias – single by Art Crime. Four drum machine ‘n’ keys symphonies straight from the top pocket – it’s the EP’s title track and its opener, ‘Release’, that really take the biscuit though.
CLOUDFACE
Wyre Drive 12″
(Going Good)
Going Good continues its hot streak with a 12″ of luscious miniatures by Cloudface – something like the cloud city from the Little Nemo NES game obscured by Actress’s thick fog. As enjoyable as the record’s housier tracks – ‘Secret Sister’, for instance – the further it floats from the dancefloor the better it gets.
Phonica turns 10 this year and have celebrated with a new compilation, 10 Years of Phonica Records. For more on that, head here.
