FACT mix 561 - M. Geddes Gengras

http://www.factmag.com/2016/07/25/m-geddes-gengras-mix/
https://www.mixcloud.com/FACTMixArchive/fact-mix-561-m-geddes-gengras-jul-16/

With M. Geddes Gengras, it’s all about vibes.

The LA-based producer has been putting out music at an alarming rate for the last decade, both solo (under his own name and using the aliases Personable and Fantastic Ego) and in a plethora of bands, from Britt Brown’s stoner rock troupe Robedoor to dub reggae production outfit Duppy Gun Productions.

In recent years, Gengras has put more focus on his solo work, dropping the gauzy Ishi album for Stones Throw offshoot Leaving Records in 2014, and putting out compilation record Collected Works Vol. 2: New Process Music on Mexican label Umor Rex. This month he’s set to release his latest full-length,Interior Architecture, a blend of modular synthesizer experimentation and digital techniques set to drop on Intercoastal Artists on July 29.

Before then, you can get your teeth stuck into this masterful collection of tracks, wherein Gengras maps out his territory with vintage ambience, hazy psychedelia and fractured electronics. We’ve got tracks from LA synth whizz Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Lorenzo Senni (under his Stargate moniker), Coil, Laurel Halo and of course, Gengras himself. It’s the perfect blend for a humid summer; press play and phase into another dimension.

A DJ set by Bing and Ruth

https://www.mixcloud.com/FACTMixArchive/fact-mix-528-bing-ruth-dec-15/

Bing & Ruth is a minimalist collective based in New York, led by composer and pianist David Moore.

Formed in the mid-2010s, the group has evolved through several changes of personnel and label, recently settling with hometown label RVNG Intl. for the release of 2014’s Tomorrow Was The Golden Age. Bing & Ruth’s highest profile record to date, Joe Muggs described it in FACT as a record that “hints towards life as being full of beauty rather than something to be endured … basically really very gorgeous indeed. One to stick on after a really, really good night and have flying dreams to.”

This year, Bing & Ruth followed Tomorrow Was The Golden Age with a remastered reissue of 2010’s City Lake (also through RVNG) and a tour for Moore’s ensemble which includes a show at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Perfect for December mornings, Bing & Ruth’s FACT mix features frosty sweeps of ambience, moonlit torch songs, oddball jazz and more. Dive in below.

http://www.factmag.com/2015/12/14/fact-mix-528-bing-and-ruth/

Tortoise

http://www.factmag.com/2016/03/14/fact-mix-541-tortoise/

Bands don’t get much more influential than Chicago’s Tortoise.

Founded back in 1990, the band innovated with a studio-touched blend of jazz and rock, lighting the touchpaper for very American take on the post-rock sound that was bubbling up on both sides of the Atlantic. Less indebted to hardcore than Slint and not as esoteric as Bark Psychosis or Talk Talk, Tortoise’s sound was mired in prog rock, but saw the band implement elements from a wide variety of genres – from IDM to avant-psych and beyond – as they tracked through their estimable catalogue of albums, EPs and collaborations.

The band’s guitarist Jeff Parker put together Tortoise’s first FACT mix, and almost expectedly it’s an urgent blend of boundary-pushing jazz, dub, post-punk, rap, ambient and just about everything in between. Where else would you expect to find Giorgio Moroder, J Dilla, Madlib, Brian Eno and Sun Ra sharing a bed?

Mood II Swing

http://www.factmag.com/2016/02/01/fact-mix-mood-ii-swing/

Mood II Swing are basically untouchable. 

Lem Springsteen and John Ciafone released too many great records to count in the 1990s, both originals and remixes for the likes of Kim English and Fonda Rae. Although they were a house duo, their drum programming – skippier and more intricate than most house of the time – was hugely influential to the sound of UK garage, and like Armand Van Helden and Todd Edwards, they’re as respected amongst UK heads as US.

- FACT Magazine

Fatima Yamaha

http://www.factmag.com/2016/02/08/fatima-yamaha-fact-mix/

Fatima Yamaha was the short-lived alias of Dutch producer Bas Bron. He released just the one record under that name, 2004’s A Girl Between Two Worlds on Dublin label D1. It closed on a track called ‘What’s A Girl To Do?’.

As Jackmaster – far from a famous DJ in 2004, and best known for working at Glasgow record store and distributor Rubadub – puts it, when he first heard ‘What’s A Girl To Do?’ he bought 200 copies for the store. Of course, “this was in the days when you could sell a record just by talking it up in a mailout,” as he remembers, and Simon Rigg from London store Phonica Records subsequently bought most of that 200 off him. The track slowly developed into a cult classic, championed not only by Jackmaster and his Numbers comrades but Hudson Mohawke, Midland and other DJs.

Bron quickly ditched the Fatima Yahama name, focusing on other aliases like Bastian, Gifted and, er, Seymour Bits. ‘What’s A Girl To Do?’ continued to grow, however, and it’s now been reissued twice: first through Magnetron and then last year by Dekmantel. Second time was the charm: it was inescapable last summer, closing the year as Resident Advisor’s best track of 2015. Not bad for a single from 2004.

Never one to pass up a good opportunity, the girl between two worlds returned to the circuit following that reissue, releasing his debut album Imaginary Lines late last year and performing a series of acclaimed live shows. He’s also gearing up to steal the show at this year’s Bloc, where he’ll be performing with Thom Yorke, Floating Points and more (tip: there’s also a great-looking FACT stage). Ahead of Bloc, we’re hosting a rare Fatima Yamaha mix that draws from both the melodic sensibility of Bron’s work as Yamaha and the ghetto-house that he’s explored under other aliases. It even features ‘No Type’ – game on.

Grant

http://www.factmag.com/2016/01/04/grant-fact-mix/

Coming from mysterious producer Grant – whose albumThe Acrobat last year on The Lauren Bacall imprint was a low-key favorite over here – the blend of deep house, abstract electronics and jazz fusion (honestly) should be all you need to wrestle yourself back to normality after the NYE excess. Fans of Moodymann or Galcher Lustwerk should take note immediately.

Grant assures us that the mix was produced in the studio in December after an period of extreme creativity. Desperate to avoid the perfection of modern mixing and get back to the “super naive, exciting feeling” when you first start mixing, Grant has put together a very personal selection of favorites. There’s no tracklist, but we can tell you there’s a little DJ Sprinkles, Floating Points and Nuyorican Soul among other things. Diggers: it’s time to get hunting.

FACT Focus: Stereolab

http://www.factmag.com/2016/01/22/fact-focus-stereolab-2/

FACT Focus is a very special mix series.

Regular FACT readers may have noticed that occasionally, to accompany a large feature or list, the author has provided a mix summarizing the article in handy-to-absorb MP3 format. Well, we’ve decided to flesh this out into a series.

Episodes of FACT Focus focus on a specific artist, label, scene or sound. The mixes aren’t weekly, but they’ll always go the extra mile in terms of highlighting hidden classics and mapping-out specific eras or sounds.

This particular installment comes from regular FACT contributor Jon Dale, who has put together a bumper blend of all things Stereolab. Some of you will no doubt already be familiar with the Gallic neo-kraut troupe, and their influence can be witnessed throughout the musical spectrum.

From the obvious acts that took their cues from Stereolab’s space-age electronic flair, such as Brummie loungers Broadcast, to those you’d never expect, like Tyler the Creator (seriously), Stereolab have made waves since their birth back in 1990. Now you have the opportunity to hear some of their finest moments in one place.

Masters at Work

http://www.factmag.com/2015/07/27/fact-mix-506-masters-at-work/

Quite possibly. Since the end of the 1980s, Kenny Dope and Louie Vega – given the Masters at Work name, so the story goes, by Todd Terry – have been releasing house and garage anthems with unbelievable regularity. There’s ‘The Ha Dance’ – the track that gave ballroom its trademark Ha crash. There’s ‘Work’, one of the most remixed and sampled tracks in dance music history. There’s ‘To Be In Love’, one of the most perfect synergies of dance music and pop music ever made – and these are just the tip of the MAW iceberg, we’ve not even started on solo hits like Kenny Dope’s ‘The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)’ and ‘No Hook’, and side gigs like Kenlou.

You get the picture: these two could play nothing but their own material for two hours and still not even scratch the surface of their vast, influential and – most importantly – ridiculously fun discography. But ahead of a rare London show at Found’s 51st State Festival (where they’ll be joined by fellow vets Derrick Carter, Dennis Ferrer, David Morales and many more), we asked them to try. This is Masters at Work in the mix for FACT – sometimes all you need is what it says on the tin.

- FACT Team

Nmesh, un brutal DJ set de dos horas

https://soundcloud.com/factmag/fact-mix-504-nmesh-july-15

For more information/tracklist head here: www.factmag.com/2015/07/13/fact-mix-504-nmesh/

There isn’t anything quite like getting lost in the foggy, twisting works that Alex Koenig makes as Nmesh.

His albums — 2013’s Nu.Wav Hallucinations and 2014’s Dream Sequins — were sprawling, overwhelmingly dense collage pieces made from commercials, samples from the depths of YouTube, and synth textures that ran from silly elevator Muzak to bad trip psychedelia to moments of startling beauty. As you stumbled through those sonic labyrinths you’d encounter others — disembodied voices, drifting through like ghosts. The chatter could shift from mundane to hilarious, from terrifying to emotionally resonant.

Still, his albums are laser-focused compared to the impossibly huge worlds Koenig builds on his mixes. His 260-minute (that’s 4.20 in hours) Welcome To The Warp Zone mix for TinyMixTapes moved through each of its extended thematic sections like some kind of giant, slow-breathing beast. It was an easy pick for our Bandcamp Release Of The Month — but more importantly, it was a clear sign that we had to get this guy to do FACT mix.

So now at just a single second over two hours, we present this double-wide FACT mix from Nmesh. It’s a hell of a ride, with a generous double-dip of LSD and all the peaks and valley that come with that. Here you’ll find the sonic trickery of iconic plunderphonics originator John Oswald holding court with anonymous vaporwave producers while Hype Williams and James Ferraro nestle in with Raymond Scott. It ties all these voices — young, old, dead, legendary, undiscovered, anonymous — together into a legacy of sonic adventuring with Koenig as a welcome host.

Buen artículo de Fact Magazine sobre el auge de la música ambient, escrito por Joe Muggs

http://www.factmag.com/2014/10/09/ambient-2014-round-up-joe-muggs/

RETURN TO THE CHILL-OUT ROOM: WHEN DID AMBIENT MUSIC LAST HAVE IT SO GOOD?

Vladislav Delay, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Bing & Ruth and timely reissues from the likes of Brian Eno and other early pioneers – ambient music hasn’t felt this in vogue for years. Joe Muggs examines the trend and rounds up some of 2014′s crucial ambient records, asking the big question: is it time for the return of the chill-out room? 

******

Obviously it’s hard to find a context more suited for listening to textural music of vast duration than the prone and, um, well-primed aspect of ’90s wreck-heads. Which meant that as the rave dream dissipated, so did the opportunities to play and get completely immersed in electronic and experimental music that wasn’t tied to the benevolent tyranny of the beat. They were there, but they became a bit more specialist: post-rock, folktronica, post-classical, neo-Balearica, the noise scene, distant corners of trance and industrial, gallery installations and hippie cafes at festivals each had their own versions of abstracted space music.