Published on
November 3, 2014
Category
Features
The Vinyl Factory select the 10 most essential vinyl releases of the last 7 days.
This week’s selection has everything you need for the onset of autumn, with brilliant new LPs from Grouper and Dean Blunt too warm your cockles and a stunning collaboration between the original Blaxploitation director Melvin Van Peebles and The Heliocentrics. As for the singles, there’s loads to explore from a bunch of artists we’d never heard of but couldn’t wait to share. Uku Kuut, Tom Noble and a brilliant Fat Cat split series are essential for those of you out for a new thrill.
Scroll down for our definitive across-the-board rundown of the week’s new vinyl releases as selected by The Vinyl Factory’s Chris Summers, Patrick Ryder, James Hammond and Theo Leanse. 5 singles and 5 LP’s every 7 days that are unmissable additions to any collection.
Singles
Tom Noble & Mystic Pleasure
Back Door
(Superior Elevation)
Ooh wee! Boogie hypnotist Tom Noble struts back into the discotheque with the same raucous swagger he brought to ‘Party Together’ on PPU a few years back. Riding the dials side by side with the shadowy digging collective Mystic Pleasure, the LA master fires up the ARP, sharpens the scalpel and unleashes as rough and ready disco-funk goliath on our asses. Passionate vocals and searing horns trade blows over a bumping groove that rattles along at breakneck speed on this single-sided, super limited dance floor stormer.
Katie Gately / Tlaotlon
Split Series #23
(Fat Cat)
This is the penultimate release in Fat Cat’s long running Split Series, and it stands as another highlight for a collection that has been continuously adventurous and well curated. Here we have two decidedly different takes on experimental electronics, with Gately’s 14-minute voyage of fractured song-composition and Tlaotlon’s maximalist psychedelia on the flip side. There’s some shared ground here in a proclivity for sampling (think cartoon sound-banks and YouTube videos) but as with much of the series it’s the contrast of ideas between sides that’s half the fun. Very worthy listens from both.
Family Man & Knotty Roots
Distant Drums
(Fam’s)
Aston “Family Man” Barrett was Lee Perry’s bass player in the Upsetters lineup before joining Bob Marley in the Wailers. This single sees him and at least one other member of The Wailers on top form – Knotty Roots is probably a pseudonym used by Barrett’s band-mates. It is an instrumental version of Love Thy Neighbours by Jesus Dread (aka Yabby You), a classic of Rootsy Reggae re-shaped in Barrett’s arrangement and performed in the nyabinghi style – a spiritual, driving, percussive beauty with leftfield spirit.
Deers
Barn
(Lucky Number)
Deers could possibly be the best all girl band to ever come out of Madrid! This is their second release (the follow up to ‘Demo’ back in July) packed full of jangly guitars, simple melodies and that particular lo-fi beauty that floored us with their first release. It’s perfect indie-pop and doesn’t get better than this.
Uku & Maryn
Suggestive
(PPU)
A real gem here dug out of the tiny Baltic country of Estonia, and a quartet of quietly brilliant boogie cuts from pioneering producers Uku Kuut and his mother Maryn Coote. It may sound obscure, perhaps even a little contrary, but Kuut’s ear for that particular form of proto g-funk could just as well have come straight out of the west coast. With one important difference, forget your palms trees and Pacific boulevards, the wonky charm of ‘Suggestive’ reflects that unique breezy flair you can’t help but sense looking out over the shimmering horizon of the Gulf of Finland.
Click next to see our album picks.
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