FACT Magazine Listen to SZA’s ‘Babylon’, featuring Kendrick Lamar @ Musique Non Stop

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1. Listen to SZA’s ‘Babylon’, featuring Kendrick Lamar
2. See classic album covers by The Streets, Beastie Boys and more in Google Street View
3. Dancing About Architecture: Bok Bok talks club genomes and a new era of pop music
4. Saul Williams to star as Tupac Shakur in Holler If Ya Hear Me musical
5. P. Morris hits the road with Baths, Young Fathers
6. Stream Pinch’s new label compilation, CO.LD
7. Telefon Tel Aviv’s Josh Eustis opens up about the death of his bandmate and his new album with Sons of Magdalene
8. Cam’ron announces first London show in a decade
9. Hear Perc’s grinding rework of Rekord 61′s ‘Polyus’
10. Stream Eric Holm’s astonishing new Subtext album Andøya
11. Brian Eno and Karl Hyde reveal another collaborative track, ‘Daddy’s Car’
12. Blackest Ever Black unveils Bremen’s cosmic Second Launch
13. Watch Ratking review the week’s singles for FACT TV
14. Ineffable
15. Iconic music photographer Leee Black Childers has died
16. Frankie Knuckles’ ‘Your Love’ reaches #29 in the UK Singles Chart
17. “Piss off and make a record with Chris Martin”: Drake, Strict Face, Nightwave and more reviewed in the FACT Singles Club
18. Solens Arc
19. Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood announce electr*c 4 compilation; stream a track here
20. FACT mix 434: P. Morris
21. Spike Lee is directing the new Eminem video
22. Stream The Afghan Whigs’ first album in 16 years, Do To The Beast

Listen to SZA’s ‘Babylon’, featuring Kendrick Lamar Posted: 07 Apr 2014 01:18 PM PDT The TDE labelmates team-up on a new version of the song. SZA premiered ‘Babylon’ last month, before Kendrick Lamar added a verse to the DJ Dahi-produced track. The new version appears on SZA’s Z EP, which is due out tomorrow. Stream ‘Babylon’ below. Along with Lamar, the EP features Chance the Rapper (on the XXYYXX-produced ‘Childs Play’) and Isiah Rashad, with production by Toro Y Moi, Mac Miller, Emile Haynie and more.

See classic album covers by The Streets, Beastie Boys and more in Google Street View Posted: 07 Apr 2014 10:20 AM PDT Revisiting classic album covers in the places they were shot. The Guardian has continued its Google Street View series (which has included paintings from London and around the world), pasting in iconic images over their corresponding street views. Next up: classic albums. Check out Kestrel House in Islington, London via The Streets’ Original Pirate Material, the site of Paul’s Boutique in the Lower East Side, and Soho’s Berwick Street on (What’s the Story) Morning Glory and more over on The Guardian’s site.

Dancing About Architecture: Bok Bok talks club genomes and a new era of pop music Posted: 07 Apr 2014 09:44 AM PDT He may have been co-running one of club music’s most influential labels, Night Slugs, since 2010, but it’s taken until 2014 for Bok Bok to release his second solo EP for the label. That’s, obviously, misleading – he’s released a healthy dose of white labels, remixes and collaborative 12″s in that time – but as Bok Bok explained to FACT’s Tom Lea, this latest EP is a major step forward for him. Lead track ‘Melba’s Call’ blends the innovative pop of Kelela’s Cut 4 Me (Kelela provides vocals on the track) with an instrumental varnished with the same glossy finish as Jam City’s Classical Curves and Girl Unit’s Club Rez - two of Night Slugs’ most high-definition releases to date. It’s a sound that Bok Bok refers to as “hyper-real”. Accompanying this interview: first listen of an unheard “deleted” mix of ‘Melba’s Call’. In the last couple of years, the Slugs artwork has gone from a grid system to more high-res images – on Club Rez, Classical Curves, ‘Melba’s Call’. Is that designed to reflect the music, which also seems to have become more high-res?  Yeah, 100%. It’s wider, more high-def. We’ve gone for this hyper-real thing, because the music kind of… it came out of the plastic environment and into the wooden environment, so to speak. It’s thinking about what textures people are working in. With Jam’s album, he was massively involved in his own art direction. The kind of stuff he was telling me he wanted to do was more photographic, which would’ve been a huge departure for us, so I had to think about ways to make that work. I don’t wanna spoil too much of the magic about it, but one thing he wanted to do wasn’t quite possible, so I had to think of a creative solution to work around it. At the same time, I’m a fiend for continuity, and I really wanted that to carry over. The idea struck me to go with a look that’s more than photo-real – so I call it hyper-real. It’s almost disturbing to the eye, because it doesn’t have the fuzz and depth of real life. It’s almost uncomfortable detailed. It was definitely conscious, and definitely driven by the fact that Jam wanted to do something different. But it then just made sense – like this is us growing up, essentially. Stepping into a more detailed realm, a more high-definition realm. We just got better [as producers]. We started to use different equipment – before, it was all in the box. The textures came out of being better producers – more creative sound design, but also a lot of out-of-the-box processing which gives you that more wooden sound. I don’t think any of us planned that, and there were no conversations. It’s always reacting to pieces of audio, like people hearing demos and reacting to that. Specifically? Well I can give you an example. With Club Constructions, a lot of the series heavily took inspiration from Classical Curves… I really would not underplay the influence it had on our crew, on me, on everyone. You can clearly trace some of the genomes – if there’s a metallic crash happening on the two, that probably comes from ‘Hyde Park Pt. 1′. Then there’s taking a Jersey kick, and flipping it a certain way, that comes from Jack doing it on ‘How We Relate to the Body’, and to some extent ‘The Courts’. For instance, the first track on Girl Unit’s Hysterics EP. Phil [Girl Unit] sent me that before Classical Curves came out, but he’d clearly drawn from it. And to me, that’s a positive thing. Even when people from outside our camp borrow things from us, I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing either, as long as they bring something of their own to it and pull it off. If they pull it off then great, because I want more good tracks. And if it is something like flipping a Jersey kick, that’s your camp taking from somewhere else but bringing their own to it anyway. Absolutely, absolutely. We can’t claim ownership to any of these things – it’s about how you implement it, and how you execute it. And inside the camp, it’s to be encouraged, fully. Those are exactly the kind of dialogues I want people to be having, through their demos. Sometimes it happens at such an accelerated pace that before a release will even drop there’s something that’s influenced by it. I’m really interested in the relationship between structure and music with Night Slugs – it’s there in pretty much all the artwork, there’ll be some kind of structure… Usually monolithic in some way. Where do you think it comes from? And in terms of your relationship with structure and music, what comes first? Do you always build music with a structure in mind? It used to be more structural, but it’s become more environment-based; a setting, essentially. Well, even before it was kind of a setting – thinking how this release lives in this temple, or something like that. I guess I’ve always been that way inclined, it’s a big personal interest, stuff like the modernist movement and brutalist architecture. I’ve been interested in that from before I was doing music, so it’s natural for me to bring them together. But I guess it’s just how my brain works, it’s hard to get from, so I end up not fighting it and just embracing it, I suppose. It’s hard to explain why, as it’s kind of an experiential thing – in the past I’ve talked about it as synesthesia, but it’s not quite that as that’s a sensory thing. I guess it’s more conceptual, or more abstract than just a direct response? I suppose to an extent it’s a feeling. See with my new one, ‘Melba’s Call’ and the EP that’s coming out around it, all the tracks sound as if they were built in that space [in the artwork / video] or as if they were played out into that space. So that will affect the way that I program certain reverbs or delays, thinking about how sounds might bounce off concrete and reflect off glass. And there’s a plant in the room – how does it sound different? Like how does it soften it? Yeah, or even just how does it feel? Hearing these reverbs but in the corner of your eye you can see greenery and lushness. It’s got to a point where it’s almost thinking about what real world textures apply to what element, or something. I actually thought about it in parallel, this time. Me and Egyptrixx talked about this in an interview towards the end of his album campaign… he worked with ANF to create an environment, and they were working in parallel – ANF was working on the visual environments, and Egyptrixx was soundtracking that, reacting to each other. I think that’s the way to go, with us, to develop that relationship between the art and the music in tandem. You know that track ‘Wheel’, by [Dizzee] Rascal? I always thought it sounded like it was recorded… well, not recorded, but if elements were playing out into a live space, it sounds like it’s in a lift shaft, or a stairwell, with it all bouncing off and resonating around. Then if you look at something like ‘Goat Stare’ by Loefah, or one of those classic Loefah tracks that are so spacious, that sounds like… again, there’s concrete there, but there’s a vast space between it, so it’s like there’s two buildings, and it’s bouncing between them. I’m sure you can tell from ‘Melba’, there’s quite a solid grime foundation to the new EP. So those kind of tracks, the ones that are quite stripped back and just have a bass and drums, I was thinking about how you’d illustrate that sort of environment. But then, equally, I was thinking about the other elements that I’m introducing that aren’t from grime… I think about it as something organic, but in captivity. Something organic that I’ve taken and made mine, and subdued, if you see what I’m saying. Which could also be greenery within glass.  Exactly. It’s actually really literal – super-literal. It’s funny you talk about grime in that way, because when I first heard those really grandiose, industrial Ruff Sqwad tunes like ‘Lethal Injection’, I always used to think of silos. Then you made ‘Silo Pass’, and I was like ‘oh shit’… I’d love to do it as a project, if I had time. How do you illustrate Ruff Sqwad’s music in the way that I illustrate Night Slugs artwork? So there’d be that industrial side to it, but then a series of automated trumpets, or a horn section that plays itself. It’s really literal, the way I think about things now. I suppose it’s my graphic design background coming through… But equally, when you look a lot of those grime tunes, it’s just six channels or so. It’s quite easy to translate that literally. I did this back in uni, precisely that – I did some work on mapping out how these tracks work. Because they’re so modular, and made of building blocks that are so blatant, you can actually draw them, on a timeline, in blocks or bars. You’ve released a lot of music through Night Slugs, but ‘Melba’s Call’ is only your second ‘proper’ release in those years. Is that just the label getting in the way?  Yeah. It’s a full time job and a half. I wouldn’t say got in the way, as it makes it sound like it’s a burden, but it’s been my focus for a long time. In the last two years I’ve almost had to cut myself off. If you ask my people they’ll tell you that I was away from the world for a while, I wasn’t seeing anyone. It’s almost like that’s what it takes for me to get shit done. I was just in that room, in the video. On my own for a long time. I’ve definitely been drilling down to what it is that I wanna do and what my interests are, and really trying to get down to the core of that. That’s what this record’s all about. It might be challenging to some people, as I’ve been quite brutal. As you know, us guys have always been into a broad range of stuff – especially when it comes to my DJ sets. You won’t hear, for instance, any African house on this EP, even though I play that stuff. It’s a specific set of influences and me figuring out where my head is at, as an artist… taking those influences that I’ve been trying to nail in the last few years, and really, really nailing them, you know? What did you conclude that they were? Remember that track ‘MJT’? It really all came out of that. With that, there was this brutalist foundation – a quite uncompromising set of drums – but it all revolved around a sample that’s quite romantic, and from a song that’s about dedication. It’s love music, but I flipped it into this pneumatic, almost irritating element. Through repetition it becomes almost an industrial weapon. It’s to do with taking certain binaries – like masculinity vs. femininity – and trying to flip them against each other. I’ve been thinking a lot about how males in our world talk about music – all this stuff about ‘destroying the dance’, ‘war dubs’, ‘you got new weapons for the weekend?’. This whole vernacular. It’s not something I’m trying to criticise – I feel it too. Then I’ve also been thinking about how people perceive pop music. I hate this whole thing where people are like ‘oh, he’s doing pop now’ – as if that means the music’s become softer, or nicer. It implies ease, niceness, and something more feminine, perhaps. I kinda wanna break down these things, as I don’t think it’s a good way to go into a new era of pop. Well with the DJing thing – people say destroying the dance, but by definition if you’re making people dance you’re not destroying anything, you’re creating something.  It’s about masculinising your own activity, whereas actually you’re mixing two records together. It’s a funny way to think about it. You’ve talked about Second Life before. Do you still play it? [laughs] No, I never really got that into it. I thought it was really interesting the way you you talked about it, going and finding these mad structures that people have made. There’s a guy who’s doing something in Minecraft at the moment… in theory, the world in Minecraft is infinite, like it re-maps, but this guy’s convinced that at some point that has to stop working and that if you walk far enough, the game will start to eat itself. So he’s endlessly walking, and documenting the whole thing on YouTube. Into the empty horizon? Amazing, I love that. John Rafman did a really good piece, where he became this guy The Kool-Aid Man – that was his avatar in Second Life – and he’d take you on tours of his favourite locations. Anything from sushi spots to sex dungeons, everywhere basically. An experience of digital vibes, I suppose. Tell me more about this ‘new era of pop’ thing you said, earlier. It seems like something you guys have always searched for – Kingdom worked with Naomi Allen and stuff – but with Kelela it’s like you’ve found the right vocalist.  I just think it’s an interesting time. Things are closer than ever, and the boundaries between mainstream and underground… They’re not quite dissolved yet, but they’re dissolving. There’s many examples of it happening, and it feels like there’s a lot of possibilities at the moment. It’s a really interesting time to think about what we want from this new, different pop. We’ve [Night Slugs] always had one eye on the radio, and it doesn’t come from a patronising place – or guilty pleasures, anything like that. In the same way that I’ve always said we don’t see genre, we don’t see those boundaries either. We feel closer than ever. It’s like with grime. When people got involved in grime back in the day, it was almost like there were two schools – you had guys that were making their tracks for their blog, and doing it for the internet, being on the outskirts, and then there were other guys who were from outside of the scene but would get involved and jump straight in. I always respected that so much more – if you love that music, why would you take that influence and bring it to a new audience, rather than engaging with that music’s original audience? I’m an eternal optimist with the stuff I play in the club, and that optimism can be applied to radio too. People don’t need to be patronised, people don’t need to be talked down to by pop music – it can be both challenging and accessible. I want to play around with ideas of what is pop, what is music for love, what is music for progression, and just implode them into each other. ‘Melba’s Call’ is out now, and available to buy here and here.

Saul Williams to star as Tupac Shakur in Holler If Ya Hear Me musical Posted: 07 Apr 2014 09:42 AM PDT The multi-hyphenate heads to Broadway. Poet/rapper/actor/writer Saul Williams will star in Holler If Ya Hear Me, the musical inspired by Tupac Shakur’s music that heads to the stage this June. The musical is described by producers as "a non-biographical story about friendship, family, revenge, change and hope." Williams collaborated with Trent Reznor on 2007′s The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!. Previously, he released several volumes of poetry and starred in the 1998 indie film Slam. Holler If Ya Hear Me was written by Todd Kreidler and is directed by Kenny Leon, with choreography by Wayne Cilento. Previews are scheduled to begin May 29 and it open June 19 at the Palace Theater. The play has the support of Shakur’s mother, activist Afeni Shakur. Earlier this year, Boyz in the Hood director John Singleton signed up to rewrite, direct and produce Tupac Shakur's much-speculated biopic, with Ashanti working on the film’s music. [via NYT]

P. Morris hits the road with Baths, Young Fathers Posted: 07 Apr 2014 08:18 AM PDT On the heels of his FACT mix, the LA-based producer announces a tour. Enjoying P. Morris’ entry in the FACT mix series? Catch him at a club near you as he hits the road in support of pop contortionist Baths and Edinburgh iconoclasts Young Fathers The full list of dates are below. We caught up with Morris at SXSW and talked with Baths last year about his affection for nu-metal and more.

Stream Pinch’s new label compilation, CO.LD Posted: 07 Apr 2014 07:54 AM PDT Hear the fruits of Tectonic‘s year-young sister label.  Pinch’s Cold Recordings – dedicated to plotting “new movements in the ever evolving UK hardcore-continuum” – has been operational for the best part of a year, putting out vinyl-only 12″s from greenhorns like Elmono, Ipman and Livity Sound affiliate Batu. This month will see the label enter the digital arena with a new compilation, titled CO.LD. The album collects material from COLDR001-thru-003, plus an assortment of unreleased tracks, two of which come from Pinch himself. CO.LD is currently streaming in full via XLR8R. It’s a varied collection, but most picks are eerie, bass-heavy cuts – reminiscent of the wind-blasted atmospheres conjured up on Keysound’s This Is How We Roll compilation, but beefier and eminently more danceable. CO.LD is due on April 11. Click below to listen.

Telefon Tel Aviv’s Josh Eustis opens up about the death of his bandmate and his new album with Sons of Magdalene Posted: 07 Apr 2014 07:42 AM PDT Josh Eustis is best known for his work in Telefon Tel Aviv, a project that was tragically halted in 2009 when Charlie Cooper, the other half of the group, died. This Summer, Eustis will release his first full-length as Sons of Magdalene, Move to Pain. Eustis started recording as Sons of Magdalene in 2007, when his father was diagnosed with cancer, and much of the material on Move to Pain would have been worked on for Telefon Tel Aviv were it not for Cooper’s death. In a press release for Move to Pain, Eustis – who also spent time as part of Nine Inch Nails’ live band – explains that he “sat on the music for years, against the advice of friends and family, and the record became the elephant in the room. The subject matter of the record is by far the most personal of my musical career.” “I think now, looking back”, Eustis continues, “that this was the reason for my reluctance to release it. With grief like this, though, if it’s sitting on a hard drive in the same room, I can’t stop thinking about it until it’s gone; then and only then does the sweet relief of forgetfulness visit me, finally.” FACT spoke to Eustis to find more about Move to Pain. It will be released on June 24. You say that the album’s the most personal of your career – which is unsurprising, given the events that feed into it. Can you ever imagine another release being as cathartic as you say this one is? In the present, no. I can’t imagine having to go through that kind of bullshit again. I hit a low that was unimaginable. Of course, I can’t see the future and who knows what it holds; life is tremendously sad a lot of the time and there will be more records that are personal and certainly cathartic. But as things are right now, I don’t want to have to purge like this again. You talk about this album becoming an elephant in the room – did you always knew that this music deserved to be released, but were simply reluctant to do so? Or did you have a completely fucked perspective on its quality?  I kind of always think that everything I make is atrocious and that no one will care. I thought this record was kind of stupid. Usually I had Charlie to tell me ‘no, man, we’re on the right track, stay the course.’ My friends were telling me that I had ‘record dysmorphia’ and that it was good, and that I needed to release it. I just wasn’t confident in it. In the end, I just couldn’t keep it around any longer. How did losing Charlie affect how you viewed your career in music? Not just in the obvious sense that you lost the person you were making it with, but it must have made you rethink everything, right? I totally thought I was done. I was doing anything to make time go by. Working on music became a chore and a burden and I couldn’t focus or make anything that I thought was worthwhile. I was going to sell everything off and go back to school and study technical Japanese or something, anything else, but then I realised that I’m too old to do anything else and that sometimes it is, in fact, too late to start over. How the hell was I going to learn how to make a record alone? Or if not, how could I replace Charlie? Both options seemed impossible and truly pointless for a long time. In terms of how the record sounds… you talk about loss, decay and the tremendous emptiness of the physical world as its ‘themes’. Would the music sound that crushed and dark to somebody who didn’t know the context? I doubt it. I think it would mostly just sound really shitty to someone who didn’t really know the context. Things on this record were intentionally done ‘wrong’ in a way that will make producer and engineer types cringe, but fuck it: it’s the sound I was going for. I did my best to use not just the songwriting, but the production as well, to convey a mood or a collection of feelings, sentiments. The whole thing should sort of have the haze of listening to something through a wall, or looking at something through a dusty windowpane, or more specifically trying to recall a memory that at one time seemed sharp and present but that has dulled with age. What is the title a reference to? It’s a reference to the fact that even if one is engaging in daily actions to make life simple and keep perspective on blessings, everything can move around you in such a way as to subvert that entire lifestyle, methodology, or line of thought. Would you describe this as a tribute record to the people you’ve lost? Or is it more complicated than that? It’s more complicated than that. I wouldn’t really say tribute as much as I’d say inner monologue or even soliloquy. I’m addressing other people in my life that factor in somehow, or were affected by the same things: my mother, ex-girlfriends, some others. A lot of it is just me venting or relating a dream. ‘Crows’ is about a dream I had right after my father was diagnosed in which my entire family, myself included, was burned alive in a thatched hut up in the Himalayas – hey I dunno, whatever – and I was being burned alive but could see the whole thing happening from outside. So in that way some of this record is just pure storytelling, I guess. Tracklist: 01. Hold On Hold Still For A Second 02. Bitter Soliloqy 03. The Whip 04. Move To Pain 05. A Strange Sound 06. Unfortunate Phone Call 07. O Death 08. Can't Won't Don't Want To 09. Crows On The Eves Of My Father's House

Cam’ron announces first London show in a decade Posted: 07 Apr 2014 07:00 AM PDT Bring capes! Last we heard from the Dipset leader, he was collaborating with A-Trak on the Federal Reserve EP and making us wait for not-exactly-seismic mixtapes. This weekend, however, brought some genuinely surprise news from Cam’ron - he’s heading back to British shores. The Harlem rapper has announced a show at London’s The Forum on June 3. The Kentish Town gig will mark Cam’ron’s first solo UK show since 2004, and boasts support from  grime veteran Skepta; head here to grab tickets. Here’s hoping Tim Westwood’s on chauffeur duty again.

Hear Perc’s grinding rework of Rekord 61′s ‘Polyus’ Posted: 07 Apr 2014 06:58 AM PDT Perc follows the stunning The Power and the Glory with this rugged remix for Russian producer Rekord 61. While Alexander Babaev’s original is hardly a slouch in the raw, face-melting power department, Perc typically manages to turn everything to eleven and sweep you right back to a time when men where men and pills still had MDMA in ‘em. Babaev’s acidic squelches are drenched in the kind of distortion usually reserved for lads with beards in Ohio dubbing tapes in their basements, but it never loses sight of the dancefloor – a welcome feature in an era of disposable poseur techno. ‘Polyus’ is out April 28 on Konstruktiv, and you can listen to Perc’s outstanding remix below. Perc was kind enough to rustle together a massive FACT mix for us, welding together Young Male, Forest Swords, Nitzer Ebb and more. Tracklist: 01 Rekord 61 – Polyus 02 Rekord 61 – Polyus (Perc Remix) 03 Rekord 61 – Val

Stream Eric Holm’s astonishing new Subtext album Andøya Posted: 07 Apr 2014 06:37 AM PDT Good vibrations. Responsible for Roly Porter’s gut-churning 2013 highlight Life Cycle of a Massive Star and Emptyset‘s grizzly Material just for starters, Subtext have carved out a respectable niche for themselves in the last few years. Their latest full-length offering is a chilly slab from London-based Yank Eric Holm, and might be conceptually the most interesting record we’ve had pass through the FACT gates this year so far. You see, Holm put Andøya together from recordings he made while camped at the island of Andøya, an outpost 300 kilometers north of the arctic circle. Attaching a single contact mic to remote telegraph pole that connects the island’s array of military listening stations (you know what those are, Conet Project fans), Holm retrieved sounds that captured the island’s empty isolation, and fashioned them into grinding, industrial vignettes. Skating a line between Thomas Köner’s early ambient experiments and the Raster Noton label’s exploration of choppy rhythms and harsh digital sound, Andøya is challenging but deeply rewarding, and you can see for yourself below. Andøya is out now on Subtext.

Brian Eno and Karl Hyde reveal another collaborative track, ‘Daddy’s Car’ Posted: 07 Apr 2014 06:32 AM PDT Another dispatch from Someday World.  Brian Eno and Underworld’s Karl Hyde, you’ll likely have heard by now, are making an album together. The pair’s first collaborative effort, ‘The Satellites’ ,wasn’t exactly heartily received: the saccharine, vocal-led track quickly became something of a Twitter punchline, and got the shoe pie treatment in the FACT Singles Club. Warp have now unveiled a second track from the pair, titled ‘Daddy’s Car’. Carnivalesque and cheery, it’s cut from a similar cloth to ‘The Satellites’ – which means you’ll already know whether you’re going to enjoy this one or not. Click below to listen. Someday World is due on May 5 on Warp.

Blackest Ever Black unveils Bremen’s cosmic Second Launch Posted: 07 Apr 2014 06:06 AM PDT Space is the place. You probably haven’t come across Swedish duo Bremen before, but don’t let that put you off. Guitarist Lanchy Orre's and organist Jonas Tiljander's cut their teeth on Sweden’s underground punk scene before embarking on Bremen, and that was probably a good thing. Any teenage angst is tossed away as Orre and Tiljander explore the kind of sonic structures that you might otherwise expect to find on Popol Vuh’s transcendent Hoisanna Mantra or a rare Amon Düül II bootleg. It’s delirious, hallucinogenic, minimalist space rock, and while it marks something as a departure from Blackest Ever Black‘s regular grim mood, it’s a welcome one. You can hear the magnificent ‘Hollow Wave’ below, and Second Launch - Bremen’s second album – will be released on double LP on June 9.

Watch Ratking review the week’s singles for FACT TV Posted: 07 Apr 2014 06:00 AM PDT Rating and slating for FACT Singles Club this week – XL-approved rap troublemakers Ratking. Last heard channelling cLOUDDEAD and Dälek on 2012′s Wiki93 EP, the Manhattan trio are gearing up to release their debut album, So It Goes. They took some time out to stop by FACT and offer their verdict on new tracks from JME, Millie & Andrea, Katy Perry, Lakker and more.

Ineffable Posted: 07 Apr 2014 04:40 AM PDT Available on: Local Action Perhaps the moment that best encapsulates DJ Q’s much-belated debut artist album Ineffable comes just over a minute into its closer, ‘Be Mine’. “I’m down to give my all,” declares singer Kai Ryder, lightly but with utter certainty – and the song launches into a glorious melodic hook that jerks inwards and outwards, spiralling in dizzying circles. It’s entirely composed of cut-up vocals: Q articulates Ryder’s joy by fragmenting her words. The cut-up vocal is, of course, a UK garage signifier of long standing – and, with nostalgia for turn-of-the-century 2-step in full effect, one that’s been much overused in recent years. Q, though, doesn’t use it as merely an empty signifier or trend-hopping trick; in his hands, it’s a fully integrated means to tell the story of the song. On ‘Be Mine’, it conveys a sense of joy so great that words are insufficient; halfway through ‘Notice Me’, the narrative is handed over to cut-ups with no warning, as if its anonymous singer, having exhausted a strategy of pleading for attention, has abruptly switched tactics to something a bit more show-offy. And Ineffable‘s opener, ‘Get Over You’, is told entirely via cut-ups, a wistful four-note piano motif and a bassline drop. Such intuitive understanding of how sonic tools work is entirely expected: in recent years, Q’s 1Xtra sets have sustained his cult following, and his own material reflects the skillset of a master DJ. And while Ineffable may be DJ Q’s debut album, he’s been a key figure in British dance for over half a decade. The bassline scene burned brightly but briefly in 2007-08, and Q’s contributions – a stellar remix of Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Flex’ and the nearly-hit ‘You Wot!’ – remain among its pinnacles. His wonderfully-named side project with DJ Haus, Trumpet & Badman, provided a rougher take on the British house revival, with ‘Love Keeps Changing’ one of last year’s finest singles. Consequently, Q has slightly more at his disposal than more one-note johnny-come-latelys, the experience to keep things simple when necessary – and the confidence not to shy away from the pop pleasure receptors that so many in the British underground seem terrified of. At its best, Ineffable captures dancefloor joy effortlessly. The ebullient ‘Let The Music Play’ has a title that nods to Latin freestyle and a synth guitar that nods to French house, and spiritually is in the lineage of those anthems by Shannon and Stardust: the blissful relief that sinking into club music provides should be a basic tenet, but reminders of how transcendent it is never go amiss. Regular Q vocal collaborator Louise Williams is the perfect singer for this, a sweetly sincere Everygirl who you could only ever imagine in the centre of the dancefloor, never skulking round the edges. Even when she later declares her loss of faith in humanity forever on ‘Trust Again’, it sounds like a liberation. Williams and Q both peak on Ineffable‘s masterful centrepiece, the emotionally cleansing ‘Through The Night’, on which Williams achieves a breathtaking state of grace. Conventional wisdom tends to hold that the dance album has to involve some sort of trade-off away from the dancefloor for home listening. Ineffable succeeds as an album qua album – not on those terms (why should listening at home preclude dancing?) but simply in terms of being as tight and coherent a set as any of Q’s radio programmes. The garage-pop effervescence of ‘Through The Night’ and ‘Let The Music Play’ is offset by the more languid, Guido-esque ‘Caught Up’; straight 2-step throwback beats are leavened by crisp house and drum’n'bass rhythms, preventing Ineffable from ever seeming like an exercise in nostalgia. Only the token boys of ‘Lassie’ jar: Discarda barrelling in with blokey clumsiness feels like the beery drunk stumbling into your dancing circle: well-intentioned and friendly maybe, but preferable elsewhere. Ineffable’s title derives from a fan thread on a music messageboard – it’s illustrative of Q’s generosity that he blessed that thread with exclusive mixes as a token of appreciation for its support. It’s a word that initially seems oddly high-flown for his music, though not after listening to ‘Through The Night’. In Q’s hands, Ineffable is unfuckwithable. Local Action is a label run independently by FACT staff member Tom Lea.

Iconic music photographer Leee Black Childers has died Posted: 07 Apr 2014 04:25 AM PDT Originally posted on The Vinyl Factory. The man who captured iconic images of Bowie, Iggy Pop and Andy Warhol has passed away in Los Angeles. Described by photographer Chalkie Davis as "the most original of punks", Childers rose to prominence as among the first to document the New York scene of the early ’70s as the glam rock of Bowie and Iggy Pop transformed into the punk scene spearheaded by New York Dolls. Shortly after arriving in new York City from Kentucky in 1968, Childers joined Andy Warhol's Factory where he would be exposed to some of the most important and revolutionary figures of the time. David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, New York Dolls and countless more were captured by Childers wandering lens, often in the most intimate of surroundings. Providing an unprecedented glimpse of a world of drag queens, punks, pick-pockets and self-proclaimed superstars, Childers' collection of images documented a legendary era in the evolution of LGBT rights musical counter-culture. In 2012, he published his book Drag Queens, Rent Boys, Pick Pockets, Junkies, Rockstars & Punks with The Vinyl Factory in which he shared the stories behind these iconic images. Speaking after his death, photographer Chalkie Davies said; "Another sad day in Rock and Roll, Leee Black Childers has passed away. The word legendary is thrown about a lot, but there is no question that Lee truly deserved the title". His photographs documented the ’60s and ’70s, he was one of the most original of punks, he brought us many fabulous images of Bowie, Iggy, Debbie and Lou, he hung with Andy, managed the Heartbreakers, and he really was one of the sweetest of men". Watch The Vinyl Factory’s extended interview with Leee Black Childers on Warhol, Bowie and the summer of love below:

Frankie Knuckles’ ‘Your Love’ reaches #29 in the UK Singles Chart Posted: 07 Apr 2014 03:47 AM PDT After a campaign to get the Godfather of House Music to #1, Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle‘s ‘Your Love’ finished the week at #29 in the UK Singles Chart. To be fair, the campaign wasn’t without confusion, mostly over what version of ‘Your Love’ fans should purchase, due to Knuckles’ relationship with the Trax label. Knuckles died at the start of last week, with both the dance music world and beyond rushing to pay tribute. Watch his 2012 interview with FACT TV.

“Piss off and make a record with Chris Martin”: Drake, Strict Face, Nightwave and more reviewed in the FACT Singles Club Posted: 07 Apr 2014 03:11 AM PDT Each week on the FACT Singles Club, a selection of our writers work their way through the new music of the week gone by. With the way individual tracks are now consumed, the idea of what constitutes a single has shifted dramatically in the last half a decade, and its for this reason that the songs reviewed across the next pages are a combination of 12″ vinyl releases, mixtape cuts, Soundcloud uploads and more. All are treated equally – well, most of the time. On the chopping block this week: Jamie xx, Todd Terje, Jay Z & Jay Electronica and more. Use your keyboard's arrow keys or hit the prev / next arrows on your screen to turn pages (page 1/8)

Solens Arc Posted: 07 Apr 2014 02:55 AM PDT Available on: Raster-Noton As Kangding Ray, David Letellier has steadily grown in stature and accomplishment over the last eight years, and his fourth album, Solens Arc, continues this progress in cinematic style. Half billowing noise, half rolling Germanic techno, it's a dramatic, black and white sound in high contrast. The album particularly develops some of the textures found in more recent EPs, now sharing characteristics with Shelley Parker, Peder Mannerfelt and Emptyset. Snarling, paper-ish noise flutters at tracks’ edges. Long, gritty phrases get thrown out as slow boomerangs. Foggy layers of distortion are almost Drexciyan in the way they spill around. But the half of Solens Arc that thunders behind this is techno of a more familiar European style, and it contains a few of its recognisable anachronisms. One in particular is the soft 'boop boop' melodies washed in delays (see 'Amber Decay', 'History of Obscurity', 'Son'), which I simply can't hear in any production and not think of a phone network advert – there's just something about this technique that sounds ’90s and corporate to me. The album’s best moments are its most ambiguous and surprising, and there are many of them. The synthetic snake pit didgeridoo interlude of 'Apogee'; the Shackleton-meets-T++ tribalism of 'Blank Empire'; or the slow-burning pace and grimacing metallic noise of 'Serendipity March'. Elsewhere, 'Evento' has a flying rhythm with offbeat (dare I say, 'funky') snares for dashes of brighter colour. 'Transitional Ballistics' carries an anguished, crumpled synth horn melody like something from Burning Star Core's Challenger. 'Crystal' is a tense cut of Carpenter-esque synth anxiety that, as one of the album's highlights, works far better than its starry counterparts. There's a lot going on at any one point. And while the record's trajectory is smooth, working much like an archetypal Euro techno DJ session, the experience is broken up by alternating between longer potboilers and shorter reflective pieces. It therefore feels more like a live set, and longer than its 51 minutes. Overall though, Solens Arc is a painstakingly crafted record that manages to both defy expectations yet retain the familiarities of techno, Raster Noton as a label and Letellier's own music as Kangding Ray. That's no mean feat.

Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood announce electr*c 4 compilation; stream a track here Posted: 07 Apr 2014 02:18 AM PDT It would be a very silly electronic music fan who ignores what Gilles Peterson plays.  From the beginning, through acid house, jungle and onwards to his support of Silkie & Quest, Hessle Audio, Lone, Flying Lotus and the like, the things he’s backed have a) consistently kept him from being just another retro-facing jazzer, and b) in his words, "joined the dots": revealed connections between sounds and scenes that other narratives might miss or ignore. Getting Alex "Patchwork" Stevenson on the team for his Brownswood label has been a continuation of this, and Stevenson’s electr*c series has been pretty much great since 2010, including early work from Shlohmo, Rockwell, 16bit, George Fitzgerald, Mosca, Mount Kimbie, Synkro & Indigo, Dubphizix, Koreless and so on, and on. The new electr*c – Volume 4 – is now ready. It continues the dot-joining, with some of buzzing neon sounds of the type Plastician has recently been playing (with co-signs for two Terrorhythm sigings in Louis Futon and Ganz), some sluggish house, some ecstatic trap, some ambient ballads and some suffocated R&B – and some extremely classy Autonomic / Metalheadz / Om Unit flavoured d’n'b from Deft which we have an exclusive stream of here. The album’s out on May 5.

FACT mix 434: P. Morris Posted: 07 Apr 2014 02:06 AM PDT This week’s FACT mix comes from P. Morris.  Formerly known as just Morri$, the Kansas producer has spent the last few years building hype with a string of tracks and remixes – most notably ‘White Hood’, which appeared on Night Slugs’ Night Slugs Allstars Vol. 2 compilation, and ‘Go All Night’, from Kelela’s Cut 4 Me mixtape. This year, he released his first mixtape, Debut, through the Bear Club Music Group label that he co-founded – it also came available to hear in a virtual environment of sorts, sourced from Google street view. Fans of Debut will find familiar territory in Morris’s FACT mix – hip-hop drums clouded by twinkling keys, field recordings and JRPG-style melodies, paired with vocals from Omarion, Jeremih, Drake and more – but as it progresses, it leans more towards the club end of things, with cuts from Moleskin, Neana, Jubilee and more. There’s even an airing for ‘Red Hot Car’. Tracklist: Justin Timberlake – Set The Mood Prelude (P. Morris edit) P. Morris – Ladyboy [Bear Club Music Group] Jon B – They Don’t Know Justin Bieber – Recovery Craig David – Fill Me in Axel Boman – Barcelona P. Morris – Rashida Jones [forthcoming Bear Club Music Group] Drake – Come Thru Tom Richman – Dro Montana (Sweater Beats Remix) [Bear Club Music Group] R. Kelly – Remind Me of Something Jeremih – Rosa Acosta Tom Richman – Your Body [forthcoming Bear Club Music Group] Dat Oven – Icy Lake (L- Vis 1990 Refix) P. Morris – Wunderlust [forthcoming Bear Club Music Group] Katy Perry – Walking On Air (Hundreds & Thousands edit) [forthcoming Bear Club Music Group] Zedd – Stay the Night (Schwarz Remix) P. Morris – White Hood (Neana Chop) Omarion – Ice Box Foxy – ICE RINK WHERE MY HEART USED TO RIP GIRRL XX [Tom Crew] Mssingno – PART 2 XE2 VIP BIELDUB REMIX PART 2 (Goon Club Allstars) Drake – We Made It (featuring Soulja Boy) P. Morris – Crying for No Reason VIP Cam’ron – Oh Boy Katy B – Crying for No Reason (P. Morris Remix) Young Thug – Stoner Missy Elliott – Take Away (ft Ginuwine) (P. Morris Edit) P. Morris – Hold Tight (VIP) [Bear Club Music Group] Beyonce – Drunk In Love Squarepusher – Red Hot Car Rai – The Game of Rat and Dragon (Vivisect) [forthcoming Bear Club Music Group] Roni Size – Heroes [Kruder & Dorfmeister Remix] Dane Chadwick – Vowels [Astronautico] 112 – Anywhere Jubilee & Burt Fox – Keys Wallet Phone Wale – Bad [Mike Gip Remix] 2 Chainz – Where You Been Moleskin – Turnt On Alexander O’ Neal – What’s Missing *NSync – Gone (P. Morris Exit edit)

Spike Lee is directing the new Eminem video Posted: 07 Apr 2014 01:37 AM PDT Em Got Game. Although best known as a feature director, Spike Lee has a fairly long history working in music video, having helmed clips for Prince, Arrested Development, Naughty By Nature, Public Enemy and Grandmaster Flash. Five years after his clip for Michael Jackson’s standalone release ‘This Is It’, Lee is returning to the music game The Do The Right Thing director will take charge on the clip for Eminem‘s ’Headlights’, the fifth single to be taken from his 2013 album The Marshall Mathers LP2. The news arrived through an Instagram photo of the rapper with Lee, with the following Twitter caption: “Headlights” video. . . . Coming soon.” Lee followed up with a message of his own: “Detroit’s Finest EMINEM And Me Working Together On His Short a Film.Historic. Who Woulda Thunk It.” Earlier this year, Eminem was rumoured to be recording new music with his old posse, D12.

Stream The Afghan Whigs’ first album in 16 years, Do To The Beast Posted: 07 Apr 2014 12:00 AM PDT Greg Dulli and friends return to Sub Pop. Emerging out of Cincinatti in the late 1980s, The Afghan Whigs never quite managed to secure a first-class seat on the grunge gravy train, but they remained one of the more singular acts associated with the movement. As exemplified on 1993 breakout Gentlemen, the band struck upon an idiosyncratic combination of grunge skronk and soul-indebted melodrama, and minded that seam to fairly consistent critical acclaim. Their last album was 1998′s warmly received 1965, since when they’ve split (in 2001) and reunited (in 2012). Do To The Beast is the group’s first album in 16 years, and sees them return to erstwhile home Sub Pop. According to Dulli, "a lot of records I've done stemmed from epochal experiences in my life – and this time I've used them all.” Head over to NPR to do to the proverbial beast.