FACT Magazine R. Kelly says he’s working on a house album @ Musique Non Stop |  |
- R. Kelly says he’s working on a house album
- Ex-Cult Music producer Prayer talks anonymity and influences, shares free EP Knowing
- Addison Groove returns to 50Weapons with EP that features late-great DJ Rashad
- Ralph Lawson, Krystal Klear and more to play underground tube station in Shoreditch
- Download a phone alarm clock tone composed by Jon Hopkins
- Erol Alkan to mix Fabriclive 77
- Boom F’Real! club night brings footwork, jungle and garage to Dalston’s Dance Tunnel
- Stream the first of FACT’s Best of the 1970s list mixes
- Stream an hour’s worth of bonus material from Mogwai’s Come On Die Young reissue
- Slowdive announce North American tour dates
- Vatican Shadow makes six-tape box set Death Is Unity With God available digitally
- In My World
- Nina Kraviz, Scuba, Paul Woolford and more gear up for Drumcode Halloween bash
- FACT mix 450: Stacey Pullen
- Police uncover massive illegal pressing plant in Germany
- Rawax plots slew of reissues from Chicago ghetto house original Paul Johnson
- The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s: #100-81
- Lee Gamble to release new album KOCH in September
- RapGenius changes its name, announces $40m investment
- Listen to DJ Sprinkles’ one-off NTS Radio show
- Ital returns with “psychedelic” third album Endgame
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Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:10 AM PDT
 Add it to the list of the R&B star’s forthcoming projects. Earlier this month, R. Kelly told the crowd at Chicago’s 24th Annual Chosen Few DJs Picnic that he’s working on a house album. "I want ya'll to know a secret. I'm working on a house album right now, and I want ya'll to know, it's coming… And ya'll know, I love music and I feel like I can do anything when it comes to music because I am music just like ya'll." No word on how this album will affect his previously announced follow-up to last year’s Black Panties, titled (what else?) White Panties, or the Christmas album he announced last year. Watch the announcement below. And while we’re pretty certain it will sound more like EDM than traditional Chicago house music, we can be sure that the multitude of child sex charges against him will continue to be problematic for fans of his music (to put it lightly).         |
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Ex-Cult Music producer Prayer talks anonymity and influences, shares free EP Knowing
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 10:43 AM PDT
 Prayer is nervous. After a year of anonymity on Zomby's mystique-shrouded label Cult Music, he's going it alone to release a new EP, and this is his first interview. But while there's a masked elephant in the room, Prayer's music speaks for itself. Though he's not keen to reveal his real name (in part because he shares it with a celebrity, so you wouldn't have much luck googling him anyway), he's happy for people to know a little more about him than they have for the past year, during which time he's put out the luxuriant single 'The Two Halves' on a split 12" with another Cult artist, Forever Forever, and remixed Darkstar. Prayer is 23 years old and from the Midlands, where funnily enough, we grew up in the same town; at school, he played classical guitar and piano. He went on to study music at university before moving to London, where he's been quietly building a catalogue of vocal-tinged tracks full of twilight ambience. Which brings us to now: sat in a Dalston coffee shop, Prayer tells me he's sitting on loads of material, both as a solo artist and as one half of the duo Kollaps, and he can't wait to get it out there. The first offering is his Knowing EP, which you can download for free from the Soundcloud player below. Mixing pitch-shifted vocals with a minimalist sensibility derived from his love of Phillip Glass and Michael Nyman, Knowing is unmistakably London and yet has a patience and a spaciousness that forms a peaceful oasis from the city's noise. When I ask Prayer about his time with Cult Music, he smiles apologetically as he delivers the party line ("I think it's great…I just wanted to move in another direction") but the glimpses that make it through paint a picture of an artist so passionate about his music that although the glamour of a hyper-exclusive, fashion-conscious label run by an anonymous figurehead appeals, he'd be happier just sharing his compositions direct. How did you get involved with Cult Music in the first place? It was through a mutual friend; [the other half of Kollaps] was a close friend of Zomby, so I sent him over my music and we started working together. The first single, 'The Two Halves', was premiered on Benji B about a year ago, as a sort of 'unknown producer' type thing. We had a few Radio 1 plays, then the Darkstar/Kollaps thing happened. What's the process been like, being part of that label? It seems like a very close-knit thing. Yeah, it has been. It's all my close friends, to be honest. Are you still working with Kollaps? Yeah, we'll move forward with Kollaps. There's just so much material. I'm not sure what we're going to put out yet, but I've got a rough idea. More original stuff. Same with Prayer, there's tons of material waiting to go, so that's why I'm putting this EP out. What's the other material like? It's all got that overriding orchestral, cinematic feel. There's a lot of solo piano stuff as well. How would you say your music has changed between 'The Two Halves' and now? Mainly it's become less ambient – I'm experimenting within the narrative of verse/chorus form, so I'm moving more towards making actual songs. What do you feel like you've learnt from this process that would be helpful to new artists starting out? I think just explore as many avenues as you can. The good thing about Cult, I liked it so much because it's not just throwing all the tracks onto Soundcloud blindly. Is anonymity something you would have been interested in preserving anyway, or did choices like that arise from being connected to Cult Music? It was a mutual thing, all the decisions were mutual. The point about Cult that I still agree with now is it's all about the music, obviously. So it's something I'll carry on with, but not to an extreme. I won't be completely anonymous, but I don't want to throw everything out there like "hey, here I am." I think from both angles people push it too far in different directions – certain people are all over the place, certain people are completely hidden. But it's of course dependent on what best suits the artist's music. You don't have a Twitter presence or anything – is that a deliberate choice? Yeah, for the moment I'll steer clear of Twitter. I'll keep to the music. I'm quite a reserved person, so I don't feel the need to go on social media – obviously it's kind of a necessary tool, but I just want to see how things develop. You came from a classical guitar and piano background, and you studied music; what's the relationship between your classical brain and your producer brain? Yeah, at university I studied all the classic composers in depth such as Beethoven, Brahms, Stravinsky – and it just sort of developed from there as I got more into composition. I came into electronic music from an avant garde angle, making acousmatic music – I was listening to composers like Denis Smalley and Claude Risset and constructing music with found sound. Once I started hearing people like, obviously Burial, and I guess Clams Casino and Holy Other I started making more beat-based music – I was always drawn to tonality, so that's how I ended up writing the type of music I do now. Do you see it as composition? Yeah, I do. When I'm writing I've got the big 88 keyboard out. When I'm picking synthesizers it's sort of a reflection – because I studied orchestration, the use of classical instruments – it's a reflection of that, but in electronic music. For every part I'm writing down, it's imitating a string, or woodwind or brass part. I treat the drums orchestrally as well. Is composing film soundtracks is something you'd like to go into? Yeah, that was always the thing I thought I'd be doing first, to be honest. And obviously with film music now, it's turned around from acoustic to mainly electronic scores, so that's definitely something I'm interested in for the future.         |
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Posted: 14 Jul 2014 10:21 AM PDT
 The Bristol footwork-jungle fusionist tries something new. Addison Groove featured on DJ Rashad‘s Double Cup, and before his tragic passing, Rashad returned the favor, appearing on a track on his new EP for Modeselektor’s 50Weapons imprint. The poignantly-titled ‘U Been Gone’ appears on Turn Up The Silence and the track is described as “a hommage to one of footworks’ greatest,” where “syncopated kicks shuffle around a motown sample which adds a certain melancholy to the cleverly twisted jungle breaks structuring this track.” The EP, due out on August 8, also features “electro undergone a radical undercut,” “hi NRG” and “minimal D&B.” The full tracklist is below, along with a preview of ‘Push It’. Earlier this year, the producer unveiled his Presents James Grieve LP |
01 Dat Ass
02 U Been Gone (feat. DJ Rashad)
03 Push It
04 Masamune
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 09:20 AM PDT
2020Vision return to Shoreditch’s disused underground station this August Bank Holiday.
This new event follows their sold out show back in May, and this time around they have managed to get permission to run the event in the Shoreditch underground station once again, after being told it was never to be opened again three years ago.
Later in the night the party will moved to an as-yet-undisclosed warehouse location, and they’ve certainly got the lineup to match their ambitions for this one. There’s Ralph Lawson, Krystal Klear, Audiojack, Mario Basanov, Purple Disco Machine and Tristan Da Cuhna which should mean a night of perpetual motion for London’s legion of discerning clubbers.
If you fancy it, you can grab tickets from London Warehouse Events’ site, and don’t forget to have a look at the last event 2020 ran at the train station in the video below.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 08:55 AM PDT
Jon Hopkins – multiple Mercury nominee, Brian Eno collaborator and, now, phone alarm clock composer.
On Rob Da Bank’s Radio 1 show, he regularly sets musicians the task of creating their own ringtones and phone alerts, and Hopkins’ contribution is a sleepy-eyed alarm clock tone. It’s 52 seconds long and lovely – download it below, and stream Hopkins’ FACT mix here.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 08:35 AM PDT
Phantasy Sound boss helms the latest instalment.
London scene stalwart Erol Alkan has revealed via Facebook that he’s currently mastering the next Fabriclive mix CD.
Fabriclive 77 is due for release in September, and while there’s no further information yet on the tracklist, we can probably expect a few edits from his own archives and an eclectic selection of psychedelically-enhanced disco, electro, house and rare oddities.
Watch Alkan in conversation with dance authority Bill Brewster below, in an interview recorded around the release of his previous mix CD, Another "Bugged Out" Mix / Another "Bugged In" Selection.
Other recent Fabriclive mixes have come from Butterz pair Elijah & Skilliam and nimble-fingered duo Jack Beats.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 08:34 AM PDT
Valve Recordings stalwart K-aze presides over London’s first footwork-focused night.
Launched in April but now settling into a regular fortnightly Sunday slot at Dance Tunnel in Dalston, Boom F’Real has already welcomed the likes of DJ Earl, Om Unit and Addison Groove, and this week it’s the turn of Stray, Krust and El-B to join the dots between footwork, jungle, garage, house and beyond.
The night is the brainchild of drum’n'bass survivor K-aze – formerly Lemon D, one half of Valve Recordings with Dillinja – and is part of his All Roads label/collective, which will release DJ Earl’s Afrika Tek EP on July 28.
Several years since he took a step back from the d’n'b scene, K-aze reckons the popularity of footwork has reignited an interest in 80/160bpm styles, as FACT documented in an in-depth feature last year.
“London has always been a hub for new genres,” K-aze told FACT. “I wanted to do a footwork night and also introduce the history of where all this music comes from – jungle, garage, breakbeat.
“I met Spinn and Rashad last year and they were talking about tunes I made when I was 17 – they were like, it’s like footwork! And I see where they’re coming from, it’s that speed, they’re cousins,” he says. “A lot of the older music stands up now.”
With future guests including Dismantle, Hatcha and Teklife’s Heavee, K-aze also reckons the chilled out Sunday evening atmosphere will encourage DJs to select tracks they wouldn’t play to a big room Saturday night crowd.
“I thought it’d be cool to have a night where producers vibe off each other and there’s no pressure,” he says. “It’s just producers and DJs playing classics as well as new music.”
The next Boom F’Real takes place this Sunday, July 20, at Dalston’s Dance Tunnel from 7pm to 2am – visit the Facebook page for more info and check out DJ Earl’s Afrika Tek EP below.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 08:26 AM PDT
Listen along to Part 1 of our 100 Best Albums of the 1970s list.
When we published our guide to the 100 Best Albums of the 1980s last year, we also put out a supplementary series of mixes introducing the records that made the cut. The experiment proved popular, so we’re giving it another whirl.
Each day this week, we’ll be uploading a twenty track mix, each one selected and stitched together by a member of the FACT team, which should hopefully offer some insight into the breadth, depth and quality of the records we’ve plumped for.
The first instalment has been mixed by Chal Ravens, and offers a survey of the albums in the 100-81 bracket. You can click on the track names below to read more information on the release it came from.
01 Jon Lucien – Would You Believe In Me
02 Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – I Love You, You Big Dummy
03 Bruce Haack – Program Me
04 Can – One More Night
05 Bridget St John – Lazarus
06 Ghédalia Tazartès – Rien Qu’au Soleil
07 Charlemagne Palestine – Strumming Music
08 Anna Lockwood – Wine Glass
09 Kevin Coyne – Marjory Razorblade
10 Magma – Coltrane Sundia
11 Billy Cobham – Searching For The Right Door/Spectrum
12 GAZ – The Force
13 Libra – The Shock (Original)
14 Harmonia – Walky-Talky
15 Gary Wilson – When You Walk Into My Dreams
16 Crass – White Punks On Hope
17 DEVO – Mongoloid
18 Talking Heads – I Zimbra
19 Curtis Mayfield – Mighty Mighty (Spade and Whitey) [Live]
20 Robbie Basho – Night Way
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 08:22 AM PDT
It would be fair to say that Mogwai‘s Come On Die Young is considered to be something of a modern classic.
Fifteen years on, it’s receiving a well-deserved reissue on double CD and quadruple LP with an absolute boatload of extra material. Now, we’re usually pretty cynical when it comes to bonus tracks – nobody really needs a bunch of crap demos and boring remixes do they? But this is Mogwai we’re talking about, and they never do things by halves.
Their bundle is looking a little more substantial than most – excitingly, the CAVA sessions (a series of studio sessions that were scrapped before the album was re-recorded) are included in full here, reworked and remixed by Mogwai so they’re fit for public consumption. Also, we’re treated to a few of the usual b-sides, a couple of demos and the fab Helps Both Ways EP. You really can’t argue with that bounty.
If you’re still eager for more Mogwai rarities, check the FACT list of the Scottish post-rock pioneers’ best deep cuts, and sink into a world of Celtic melancholy.
The boxset is due for release this week on 2CD and 4LP via Chemikal Underground. [via The Guardian]
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 07:34 AM PDT
Reunited shoegaze icons cross the pond.
Following a round of acclaimed comeback shows at UK and European festivals, Slowdive have announced a tour of North America this fall – including a date in Toronto, where they played their final show in 1994.
“North America was good to Slowdive back in the 1990s,” say the band. “The fact that the last Slowdive concert was performed in Toronto (at Lee’s Palace) in 1994 is poignant. It felt like we were playing to people who ‘got it’ and some if our favourite performances were on those tours. We have a special connection to our audience in North America and we can’t wait to return in 2014!”
The band also have a clutch of dates in Asia to take care of, and this week they play Latitude Festival in Suffolk.
Slowdive’s FACT mix is essential, of course – listen to that and watch a clip of the band playing ‘When The Sun Hits’ at their comeback gig in London earlier this year. [via Pitchfork]
Tour dates:
07-16 Padova, Italy – Radar Festival
07-18 Suffolk, England – Latitude Festival
07-20 Chicago, IL – Pitchfork Music Festival
07-23 Taipei, Taiwan – The Wall
07-25 Niigata Prefecture, Japan – Fuji Rock Festival
07-26 Shanghai, China – Qianshuiwan Culture and Arts Center
07-28 Hong Kong – Rotunda 3
07-31 Singapore – The Ground Theatre
08-03 Katowice, Poland – Off Festival
08-07-09 Göteborg, Sweden – Way Out West
08-08-10 Helsinki, Finland – Flow Festival
08-09 Oslo, Norway – Oya
08-14 Hasselt, Belgium – Pukkelpop Festival
08-15 St. Malo, France – La Route du Rock Festival
08-23 Los Angeles, CA – FYF Fest
08-29-31 Stradbally, Ireland – Electric Picnic
09-09 Geneva, Switzerland – La Batie
10-22 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
10-23 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
10-25 New York, NY – Terminal 5
10-26 Boston, MA – Royale
10-27 Montreal, Quebec – Le National
10-28 Toronto, Ontario – Opera House
10-30 Chicago, IL – The Vic
10-31 Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line
11-03 Vancouver, British Columbia – Commodore
11-04 Seattle, WA – Neptune
11-05 Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom
11-07 San Francisco, CA – Warfield
11-08 Los Angeles, CA – The Theatre at Ace Hotel
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 07:15 AM PDT
Bumper cassette bundle from the mind of Dominick Fernow.
Earlier this year Vatican Shadow released a box set of six cassettes taking in damaged techno, deep meditations, Muslimgauze-esque atmospheres and similarly warped and gloomy moods, all apparently inspired by militarism, fundamentalism and terrorism in the US and abroad.
The tapes in the Death Is Unity With God collection include the bleak Elohim City, which makes reference to the Oklahoma City bombing, the gunshot-addled Oklahoma Military Academy, the oppressive drums and drones of Fireball, the rusty techno of Easing Of Our Task, more scorched rhythms on Enduring Mysteries and clouded synths on April Silencer.
The box set is limited to a measly 100 copies available throughout Fernow’s summer tour, but each of the tapes is available digitally in MP3 or FLAC format. Have a listen via Boomkat.
Find out what Fernow picked as his Favourite Record and see what FACT’s Louis Pattison made of the multi-aliased producer’s latest album as Vatican Shadow.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 07:15 AM PDT
Available on: Brainfeeder
Since his debut on Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder label in 2011, Matthew McQueen has been prolifically releasing material on cassette through his own imprint, Leaving Records. It seemed to be the ideal medium for his work: the limitations in quality and length giving some structure to his experiments with ambient and drone. Partly for this reason, McQueen's compositions didn't translate as well on his first album, Outmind. As the title suggests, it was something akin to an out of body experience: a flight through LA's smoggy skyline, tuning in and out of the city's radio channels while cruising above. An unfortunate side-effect of this hallucinatory concept was that the album seemed to wash over you, leaving you without a distinct impression of it.
Where Outmind was an interiorised and individual perspective of urban space, In My World by comparison is an album about shared experience. On the opening title track, McQueen's crooning reverb-heavy vocals entice you to join him in his imagined utopia. 'Cosmic Caller', continues with this idea, transforming the conventional telephone pop song into something much weirder by playing on the spiritualist and supernatural associations to telecommunication. The track itself, with its harmonies panning between channels and sweeping synths, evoking the sense of being lost in transmission.
'Birds in Flight', the album's final track, envisions an even more abstract form of communication: "we can feed of each other's minds tonight," promises McQueen. One of the many moments on the album that raises the question of whether In My World is a parody or pastiche; more often than not feeling closer to the latter than the former. When played for laughs, the fortune cookie mysticism of lines like "We can only dream a dream that's dreamt from the Mind's Eye" works. But on other tracks, like the sickly 'Next To You', the gnostic spoken word becomes an altogether less appealing addition. McQueen might claim "this rap is only a fraction of what I can give", but it's a fraction too much.
Although his beat tapes have flirted with the aesthetics and sounds of New Age in the past, McQueen's transformation on In My World into a half-singing half-rapping New Age guru is nevertheless unexpected. Behind all the references to third eyes and meditations on the power of love, McQueen once again demonstrates his skill in building layer upon layer of mind-bending instrumentals. It's unfortunate, then, that the album's vocal-led tracks are also the least interesting in terms of their production. 'Perpetual Moon Moods' – in which Noah Lennox's (of Animal Collective and Panda Bear) vocals filter through a dense arrangement of bass, snares and a sleazy brass motif – the only exception. Following Outmind, McQueen's cassette releases allowed him space to experiment while checking the excesses of his full-length releases. In My World is a counterpoint to McQueen's recent work: while the introduction of vocals reveals another side to Matthewdavid, the humour – too often overplayed – is its weakness element.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 06:24 AM PDT
It’s Drumcode’s 5th Halloween party this year, and they’ve put together something very special indeed.
Getting help from Dutch promoters Awakenings, the Drumcode crew have managed to rustle up a selection of artists that should have you foaming at the mouth. They’ve got Nina Kraviz, Hotflush head honcho Scuba, Paul Woolford, Max Cooper, Happa, Adam Beyer, Dense & Pika, Joris Voorn, Len Faki and absolutely loads more.
It’s all taking place at London’s massive Tobacco Dock, and will be running from 12:00pm until 10:30pm on November 1, so if you wanna make sure your Halloween is soundtracked by some of the best DJs Europe has to offer, make sure you head over to London Warehouse Events and grab yourself tickets immediately.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 06:13 AM PDT
One of the key figures of Detroit techno’s second wave steps up on this week’s FACT mix.
First under aliases like Bango and Kosmik Messenger then under his birth name, Stacey Pullen spent the 1990s helping to both continue the legacy of his friend and collaborator Derrick May’s generation, while also opening it up to influences like broken beat. Although he was at his most prolific in the ’90s, Pullen still regularly releases music and runs his own label, Blackflag.
Despite being an established producer, Pullen’s reputation as a DJ is just as strong. Unlike some of his peers, he’s not spent his later years developing a ludicrous live show or resting on his morals; rather, he still plays it raw, hard and soulful. His FACT mix comes in the midst of a series of shows at Amnesia’s Music On in Ibiza – if you’re on the island, you can catch Pullen there on Friday July 25, and at the closing party on September 26, with Marco Carola, Joseph Capriati and more.
Also check Stacey Pullen’s 10 top Detroit techno classics for FACT.
Tracklist:
Roberto Clementi – Lei [Soma]
Werner Niedermeier – Subconscious Emotion [Ayeko]
Joor Ghen – Organic (Original Mix) [Serkal]
Reset Robot – The Birth Of Terry Burrows (Original Mix) [Truesoul]
Matrixxman – The Spell (Phil Kieran Remix) [Kraftwerk]
Melokolektiv – Ascension (David K Remix) [Recovery Tech]
Ellroy – Whatcha Gonna Do (Original Mix) [Expectancy]
Brothers in Progress & Venditti Bros – Scream To Me A Loud (Original Mix) [Blackflag Recordings]
Harry Romero – Gimme The Funk [Ovum]
Sergio Fernandez – Neon Lights (Original Mix) [Agile Records]
Dubspeeka – She Loves (Glimpse Remix) [Recovery Tech]
Markus Homm – You Don’t Know [Cyclic]
Elio Riso – It’s Alirght [Blackflag Recordings]
Brothers in Progress & Veditti Bros – Emotionique (Original Mix) [Blackflag]
Raw Rootz – Beginning (Stacey Pullen Remix) [Kraftek]
Mathew Styles – Gesopik Console [nofitstate]
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 05:36 AM PDT
Vast counterfeit enterprise rumbled by cops.
German police have discovered what they reckon to be one of the largest illegal pressing plants in Europe.
Officials seized “significant” numbers of CDs, DVDs and vinyl records from several properties in Aschaffenburg and the federal state of Hessen last week in a raid that followed a two-year investigation.
If you’re thinking, “wow, who buys CDs anymore?”, you’re not the only one – but it turns out German people still love their shiny discs.
“With a market share of about 70%, there is still a high demand for CDs in Germany – this is evident not only in the legitimate business, but unfortunately also on the illegal market,” said Dr. Florian Drücke, boss of the German Federal Music Industry Association.
Commenting on the investigation, which was conducted on behalf of his organisation, he added: “The equipment found here demonstrates once again that this is not the work of petty criminals, but of professional organisations whose criminal activities inflict massive damage on artists and the recording industry.” [via Billboard, Music Week]
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 04:42 AM PDT
‘Stop Trippin” kicks off a slew of reissues from the vaults of the Chi-town producer.
Berlin label Rawax has turned its attention to Chicago ghetto house veteran Paul Johnson for the next release on its Chiwax Classic Edition offshoot.
The first in the series is a reissue of his 1995 single ‘Stop Trippin”, originally released on Relief Records. Due on August 29, it contains all five tracks from the original vinyl plus an unnamed, previously unreleased track – hear clips below.
Johnson has been DJing since the mid-80s and started producing in 1990, releasing on labels like Dance Mania, Cajual, Relief and Peacefrog over the years. His big moment came in 1999 with ‘Get Get Down’, a bonafide pop hit in the UK and still a cracker of a tune, and his 2004 track ‘Follow This Beat’ landed high on the US Dance chart.
For more Chi-town house, discover the Essential… Dance Mania and read FACT’s interview with ghetto house stalwart Parris Mitchell. [via RA]
Tracklist:
01 Stop Trippin’
02 Speech Impediment
03 Unreleased Bonus Track
04 Aww Shit
05 Who’s Psy Is This
06 Computers Talk
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 04:41 AM PDT
Like this? Check out FACT’s rundowns of the 100 Best Albums of the 1990s and the 100 Best Albums of the 1980s.
"Ah", said a wise old former FACT staffer about this list, "possibly the best decade of them all?"
Looking at the evidence, it's hard to argue: this is the decade that brought us fusion's high noon, ten summers of disco, the rise of the dub cosmonauts, ambient's first stirrings, and the viperous bite of punk. Electronic music left the academies and the novelty charts and started to infect rock and pop wholesale. Prog gazed upwards, New Age looked inwards, metal plumbed the depths – and the Germans released a lot of great records.
More than anything, though, this was popular music's Cambrian period: a melting pot from which vital new forms (hip-hop, house, post-punk) would already be emerging by the end of the decade. It's a decade of strange combinations, of unlikely correspondences and (to reference one album on the rundown) chance meetings – some disastrous, some very auspicious indeed.
As with previous lists, we've sought to represent the period in all its diversity. As ever, this is not some hoary retelling of The Canon™, nor is it a beardier-than-thou list for contrarians and Discogs gollums. Rather, these are 100 records we simply couldn't live without – records that have shaped our collections, our favourite artists' collections and, in ways big and small, the development of popular music in the late 20th century.
We’ll be counting down the list all this week – twenty per day, finishing up on Friday.
Use your keyboard's arrow keys or hit the prev / next arrows on your screen to turn pages (page 1/21)
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:57 AM PDT
Lee Gamble will release a new album on PAN this September.
Titled KOCH, it will be preceded in August by an EP titled Kuang, also on PAN. A member of London’s Cyrk collective, Gamble’s profile soared with a pair of releases on PAN in 2012, Dutch Tvashar Plumes and Diversions 1994-1996. The two were collectively named as FACT’s #2 album of the year.
The Wire are streaming a track from KOCH, titled ‘Untitled Reversion’. Stream that here, and stream Lee Gamble’s 2012 FACT mix below.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:53 AM PDT
Lyrics archive scraps the Rap.
Online rap annotation site RapGenius has been in a state of transition for almost two years now: in 2012, it was pumped with cash by venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz, and has made efforts to expand its services into "poetry, literature, the Bible, political speeches, legal text, science papers…"
As Tech Crunch report, the site has managed to rustle up $40m in private funding, and has correspondingly announced a substantial expansion in the services it provides. The money, which takes the company's pot up to $56.8m, has largely come from Rock Ventures founder Dan Gilbert, and will apparently go towards new designers, engineers and "community leaders".
The site’s aim is to expand the service out of the lyric realm into a range of different sectors, including educational and community projects. According to co-founders Ilan Zechory and Tom Lehman, “any text can be as layered, as allusive and cryptic, as worthy of careful exegesis as rap lyrics.” The site has correspondingly now changed its name to the more generic Genius.
Interestingly, Genius will now offer embeddable annotations, meaning that any site will have the capacity to reveal glosses and footnotes when the cursor hovers over select parts of the text. You can see an example below, courtesy of Business Insider.
The rebrand may also have something to do with some recent bad behaviour by the company: it was reprimanded by Google for trying to sneakily inflate its SEO ratings, and co-founder Mahbod Moghadam resigned after he used the site to leave facetious annotations on Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodger's manifesto.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:14 AM PDT
Hear the house theorist’s radio session from Friday last.
Last Friday, Terre ‘DJ Sprinkles’ Thaemlitz played a four-hour set at Dalston's teeny-weeny Dance Tunnel – tickets for which sold out in under three minutes. No matter: during her stop-off, Thaemlitz spent the afternoon at the London-based digital radio station NTS Radio, where she span records, talked about her early influences, dropped anecdotes, and generally chewed the fat for two hours.
The show, broadcast from 4pm-6pm, is now available to stream in its entirety. Click below to catch the set.
This year, FACT's Alex Macpherson sat down with Thaemlitz for one of her most thorough-ever interviews. Should you need to scrub up on your Sprinkles, take our look at our guide to The Essential…Terre Thaemlitz.
Posted: 14 Jul 2014 02:06 AM PDT
Daniel Martin-McCormick returns to Planet Mu.
Following a smattering of EPs and singles on Workshop and Lovers Rock over the past year, New York producer Ital has announced his third album is due out on September 8.
The hardware-centred Endgame is inspired by “recent excursions into psychedelics, ‘apocalyptic’ strains of minimalist composition, and his sense of ‘eerily ubiquitous post-globalization culture-leveling’, as the label notes. Mixed with help from LA synth artist M. Geddes Gangras, Endgame shoots for “deeper, more penetrating emotional melodic clarity” than his previous albums as Ital, 2012′s double whammy of Dream On and Hive Mind.
Watch Ital and his visual collaborator Aurora Halal on FACT TV discussing recording with Hieroglyphic Being and how to make an electronic live show work. [via RA]
Tracklist:
01 Relaxer
02 Endgame
03 Whispers in the Dark
04 Coagulate
05 Dancing
06 Concussion
07 Beacon
08 White II
09 Black Dust
10 Oche
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