Few people are onto great records as quickly as a great record store.
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, staff from the Soho institution pick out the five vinyl records you should grab this week.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
‘Workshop 21’ 12″
(Workshop)
The always on-point Workshop presents four artists new to the label on an unusually diverse EP, wandering to the edge of the dancefloor on Willow’s skeletal ‘Feel Me’ and Herron’s ‘Lost Track’ and out of the club entirely on the heat-warped pop of Tapes. Closing the EP in a flutter of funk synths and heavy feels is The Horn’s ‘Villager’, a 1996 track originally released on Universal Language and fully deserving of a resurrection.
GAVIN RUSSOM
‘LIES025.5 (Mantle of the Stars)’ 12″
(L.I.E.S.)
Many-monikered New York artist and DFA affiliate Gavin Russom boards the good ship L.I.E.S. for a nasty analogue throwdown, blending horror synths and clanging percussion on the menacing ‘Mantle of the Stars’ while ‘Brood Queen’ cranks up the tempo for the kind of nerve-rattling club banger you’d play at an End Of The World party. Closer ‘The Telstar File’ is more alarming still, like a K-holed vision of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So recommended.
NDAGGA RHYTHM FORCE
‘Yermande’ 12″
(Ndagga)
Basic Channel’s Mark Ernestus has been drawing more lines across his spider diagram of global bass frequencies with his Ndagga project, introducing a strain of Senegalese Mbalax to the heady blend of Jamaican dub and German minimal techno already perfected by Rhythm & Sound. ‘Yermande’ features the seductive vocals of Mbene Diatta Seck and comes in punchy ‘Kick and Bass’ or hypnotic ‘Prophet 5’ mixes.
CARL & CAROL JACOBS
‘Robot Jam’ 12″
(Emotional Rescue)
Emotional boss and record nerd Stuart Leath spent two years tracking down Trinidadian husband-and-wife team Carl and Carol Jacobs to reissue their two-part 1986 obscurity ‘Robot Jam’, an unexpectedly divine electro-calypso jam that’s as cold as an android’s heart. The B-side has an echo-laden “re-rub” from Nick The Record and Dan Tyler of the Idjut Boys.
VARIOUS ARTISTs
‘Mogul 3’ 12″
(Themes For Great Cities)
Düsseldorf’s Themes For Great Cities label kicked off its slow-moving Mogul series way back in 2009 as a platform to show off the assortment of musicians affiliated with the city’s Salon Des Amateurs venue. Mogul 3 features Harmonious Thelonious of The Durian Brothers on the supremely weird, accordion-assisted ‘Cheap Thrills’, Lucas Croon & Carsten Dämbkes with some smacking acid, Tim Schumacher doing hazy house and Al going back to the city’s roots with a kraut-jazz epic.
