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 doing most damage in Phonica that week.
MARQUIS HAWKES
‘Feed the Beast’
(Dixon Avenue Basement Jams)
Marquis Hawkes continues to kill it on the Rubadub-associated Dixon Avenue Basement Jams label. Mostly speaking, it’s slower and more summery than the likes of ‘Sea Lion Woman’ and ‘Higher Forces’ (timely, then), but the ‘House of God’-esque ‘House is my Castle’ ups the ante on side B. Comes packaged with a free tote bag.
HASHMAN DEEJAY
‘Tangerine’
(Future Times)
You get the impression that Future Times knock this sort of gear out in their sleep at this point, but that doesn’t make it any less lovely. Wobbly, analogue house that sounds just like drifting off in a flotation tank. If the creators of Nights Into Dreams had smoked a lot more weed, they might have used something like ‘Tangerine’ to soundtrack it.
SHAN
‘Chord Memories’
(Running Back)
The second – we think – release by Shan, following last year’s ‘How You Want It’. A trio of tools on the B-side, but this one’s all about the A: a larger-than-life house jam that just builds and builds and builds.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Ratlife1
(Ratlife)
Hands up – we don’t know a lot about this one. Credit 00 – who’s previously released on the Uncanny Valley label – features on one track, and the whole thing has a very ‘The Natives Are Restless’ vibe to it, which we’re more than down with. One for the tribal weirdos.
STL
At Disconnected Moments
(Smallville)
Deeper and dubbier than STL’s usual fare, At Disconnected Moments is the enigmatic workhorse’s first album to be released outside his own label. It’s not short, but there’s endless fun to be had, and the vinyl even comes with two locked grooves for you to drift away to.
Phonica turns 10 this year, and will be celebrating with a new compilation, 10 Years of Phonica Records, as well as a party at London’s Fire. For more on that, head here.
