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.
DAPHNI/OWEN PALLETT
‘Julia/Tiberius’ 12″
(Jiaolong)
Affable nerd Dan Snaith ploughs on with his club-focused Daphni project, this time recruiting the violin chops of composer Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy, recently Oscar-nominated) for a truly wobbly 12″. B-side ‘Tiberius’ is billed as “the world’s first microtonal electroacoustic violin techno track”, which gives you a more cerebral overview of the madness within.
LUV JAM/PROSUMER
‘Quip22’ (Prosumer Remix) 12″
(Phonica White)
Luv Jam returns to the shop’s in-house white label series with a back-to-front 12″ which places Prosumer’s remix on the A-side – seven minutes of sweat-beaded, roughly-handled Panorama Bar house. The deeper, dreamier original can be found on the flip, paired with downtempo chugger ‘Synth68’. Limited vinyl pressing!
LARRY HEARD
Alien 2XLP
(Alleviated Records)
Here’s a treat – the first vinyl issue for Larry Heard’s 1996 sci-fi adventure Alien. The Chicago originator ventures beyond the deep house template to explore terrain by turns murky and blissful, resulting in a mad fusion of spacey soundtracks, new age grooves, hip-hop breaks and lounge-y jazz. It could’ve all gone terribly wrong – but relax, you’re in Mr Fingers’ safe hands.
FLUXION
Broadwalk Tales 2XLP
(Echocord)
No need to reinvent the wheel when you’re producing dub techno as accomplished as this, but Greek producer K. Soublis offers something unexpected on his third album with the introduction of Jamaican vocalist Teddy Selassie and a smattering of carefully engineered reggae offbeats. Save this one for fragile Sunday morning sessions.
FENNESZ
Bécs LP
(Editions Mego)
The dearth of releases in the week after Record Store Day ensures that Fennesz’s latest gets a free pass to the round-up, but it’s wholly justified – Bécs is an unexpectedly breezy work from the Austrian avant-gardist, marrying melodic blooms with grainy blasts of drone and distortion.
