Features I by I 12.04.14

The FACT Playlist: our 10 picks of the week

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Every weekend we post a rundown of the music – old and new – we’ve been enjoying in our UK and US offices that week.

No emphasis on the boxfresh or the under-the-radar: just an honest account of what’s spent most time on the respective office stereos, with (where possible) links to the music.

Halvtrak Dust Under Bridges (Appendix i/ii)

Pushed as a supplement to Halvtrak’s recent Dust Under Bridges, this free album of funky, angular synth buzz is actually one of the best things Don’t Be Afraid have put their name to. Got us reet excited about the forthcoming King Britt LP on Hyperdub, too.

Answer Code Request Code 

One of two strong early 2014 Ostgut Ton LPs (Tobias’ A Series Of Shocks being the running mate), Answer Code Request’s set of meticulously sculpted techno tip-toes a fine line between careful and characterful – and, for the most part, keeps its balance. When it’s good, though it’s really good – see ‘Blue Russian”s haptic maschinemusik.

HTRK – Psychic 9-5 Club

It’s hardly instant, but give Psychic 9-5 Club time and it’ll reveal itself of one of the more quietly devastating full-lengths so far this year. Gothy but strangely grounded, it’s full of magickal goodness but never obscures its vulnerable, soft center.

Eric HolmAndøya

Subtext come through with more bouncy boogie house for the lovers…fine, not really. But if you only buy one industrial album of treated telegraph pole recordings in 2014, this is the keeper.

Tink – Winter’s Diary 2

The Chicago prodigy had a big week, dropping a track with Jeremih and hitting the studio with Timbaland. If you haven’t familiarized yourself with her growing catalog, check out her most recent tape — just don’t be fooled by the title: these are tunes for any season.

Various Happy Machine: Standard Music Library 1970-2010

Public Information play cicerone once again through the bloopy an gloopy, presenting a 30-year selection of material from library powerhouse Standard Music. Like their 2012 Parry Music collection, it’s a good few leagues above similar competitors, with particular emphasis on the cosmic and the chrome-plated.

Jeff Greinke  Cities In Fog

Projekt’s forthcoming Structures From Silence reissue has got us rifling through the label’s archives, and it’s a been a pleasure dipping back into Greinke’s 1985 dark ambient classic – sample-based drone, glimpsed through a grubby looking glass, which has barely aged a day.

Frumpy – Frumpy 2

A soupy, vivid and transcendent mushroom bath of an album of German prog rock from 1971? Well you don’t have to tell us twice.

SZA – Z

The Jersey vocalist makes her TDE debut in style: soul-laced alt-pop (one listen will demonstrate why she refuses to be tagged as simply an “R&B singer”) that grounds the dreamy vibes of her early material with rumbling beats by DJ Dahi, Toro y Moi and more. Kendrick and Chance turn up, too, but this is SZA’s show.

Ninos Du Brasil – Novos Mistérios

Flamboyant festival music isn’t exactly a genre that usually springs to mind when you’re nattering about Dominick Fernow’s Hospital Productions imprint, but Ninos Du Brasil do exactly that, and without even a hint of irony. It’s basically Cut Hands with feather boas and vuvuzelas, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.

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