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.
EFDEMIN
Decay LP
(Dial Records)
The third full-length from Berlin’s Efdemin seduces from start to finish, with plenty of dreamy, droney highlights woven into a work that flows really smoothly overall. Rigorous and ultra-deep, it goes down just as well on a befogged dancefloor as at home with curtains drawn.
FRIENDLY FIRES & THE ASPHODELLS
Before Your Eyes/Velo 12″
(Telophase)
Coming on like a long-lost krautrock gem just dredged up from the Rhine, this split 12″ from the increasingly wigged-out Friendly Fires and scuzzy, disco-daubed duo The Asphodells (aka Andrew Weatherall and Timothy J. Fairplay) finds both parties reaching beyond their comfort zones to knock up two near-10-minute tracks of riff-powered cosmic sorcery.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
100 Moons (Hindustani Vocal Art, 1930 – 55) LP
(Mississippi Records)
An astonishing, must-hear collection of Hindustani classical vocal music compiled from ancient 78s of Faiyaz Khan, Hirabai Barodekar and the like. The artwork is beautiful and it comes with some very helpful liner notes, too.
MOOD II SWING PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS WALL OF SOUND
Penetration / 8 Ways To Knock Down A Wall / I Need Your Luv (Right Now) 12″
(Eightball Records)
The discography of criminally underrated US house duo Mood II Swing (responsible for Ultra Naté’s massive hit ‘Free’ as well as a stack of underground gems) has been mined for a series of 12″ reissues this year, and this is arguably the finest of them. So much early house sounds pretty dated now, but these four cuts have weathered the years admirably well.
MATTHEW BURTON & KATE RATHOD
Raw Moves 2×12″
(Fear Of Flying)
Deep, moody, almost indulgently laidback house from Berlin-based Brits Matthew Burton and Kate Rathod, who arrive on Fear of Flying with two slabs of atmospheric minimalism and analogue workouts peppered with a handful of ambient excursions.
