Published on
December 13, 2019
Category
Label News
From Icelandic dream pop to Basquiat-inspired jazz.
It has been another prolific year at The Vinyl Factory label, with over thirty releases spanning a range of genres and disciplines.
Alongside new music from London jazz trio Okumu, Herbert, Skinner and multi-instrumentalist Wu-Lu, there were synth-fuelled experiments by AIR’s JB Dunckel and Jonathan Fitoussi and whale song-sampling ambient recordings from Jónsi of Sigur Ros and CM von Hausswolff.
One of the year’s most ambitious projects saw Lonely Table and Anja Ngozi collaborate with VF to release Untitled, a seven-track compilation inspired by the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Elsewhere, African Acid Is The Future continued their 2×12″ Ambiance series bringing music from Niger and Guadeloupe to the dance floor, and Richie Hawtin revisited his classic F.U.S.E. alias for an ambitious new box set.
The Vinyl Factory also worked with several visual artists on soundtracks and collaborations, whether on Theaster Gates and The Black Monks’ jazz improvisations, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s dystopian synth 12″s or Hito Steyerl and Kojey Radical’s experimental AI 12″ Power Plants.
United Visual Artists’ Other Spaces exhibition at The Store X, 180 The Strand heralded two further releases, on Mira Calix’s Our Time and the stunning field recordings of Bernie Krause, in The Great Animal Orchestra, which was the centre-piece of the exhibition.
See a selection of releases below and explore the full VF catalogue here.
Various Artists
Untitled
(Lonely Table / Anja Ngozi / The Vinyl Factory)
Untitled collects seven collaborations inspired by the life and work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, pairing emerging and established musicians to create a genre-defying compilation of new music. Featuring Mala, Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia and Kojey Radical among others, the album spans genres and eras, touching on jazz, experimental electronic, post-punk, dub and ambient influences, painting a diverse picture of the UK’s expanding underground sound.
Find out more here.
Kristín Anna
I Must Be The Devil
(The Vinyl Factory / Bel-Air Glamour Records)
Icelandic singer and composer Kristín Anna’s I Must Be The Devil features music written for piano and voice between 2005 and 2017, which she describes as “a very personal affair, something I did for emotional and spiritual survival.” It was recorded over the last four years with Kjartan Sveinsson (formerly of Sigur Rós) who helped produce the record alongside regular collaborator Ragnar Kjartansson. As Sveinsson says, I Must Be The Devil “a big record full of deep truths, suffering, irony and beauty.”
Find out more here.
Hito Steyerl / Kojey Radical / Susumu Yokota
Power Plants
(The Vinyl Factory)
Artist and theorist Hito Steyerl’s Power Plants accompanied her exhibition of the same name at the Serpentine earlier this year. Exploring the limits of AI in producing and predicting sound and image, the soundtrack features a specially-created algorithm to ‘collaborate’ with UK musician Kojey Radical. The 9-minute composition, which soundtracks one of the show’s central pieces, is featured alongside music from late Japanese electronic musician Susumu Yokota on ‘This is the Future’. It also also available as a signed art edition.
Find out more here.
Okumu, Herbert, Skinner
Undone: Live At The Crypt
(The Vinyl Factory)
Dave Okumu, Tom Herbert and Tom Skinner’s first album as a trio, Undone: Live At The Crypt features performances of twelve tracks from a diverse range of artists that have inspired and shaped their musical journeys, individually and collectively. Placing music by contemporary artists like A.K. Paul, Björk and Factory Floor alongside jazz legends Miles Davis and John Abercrombie, the trio moves effortlessly between genres and eras, distilling their punk, funk, hip-hop and electronic influences through the language of jazz.
Find out more here.
Bernie Krause
The Great Animal Orchestra
(The Vinyl Factory)
Electronic musician and bioacoustician Bernie Krause’s The Great Animal Orchestra is the culmination of Krause’s extensive work field recording some of the world’s richest and most endangered habitats. Created in collaboration with UVA and shown at their Other Spaces exhibition at The Store X, 180 The Strand this year, The Great Animal Orchestra visualises the acoustic frequencies of these habitats.
Find out more here.
Laima
Home
(The Vinyl Factory / DEEWEE)
São Paulo artist Laima’s conceptual debut album Home is designed to be played on two turntables simultaneously. The two sides represent domesticity and creativity and are represented by the split across two discs: Laima’s vocal and synth tracks on the ‘TONAL’ disc alongside Iggor Cavalera’s beats on the ‘RHYTHMICAL’ record. It also features production from the Dewaele brothers.
Find out more here.
Taryn Simon
An Occupation of Loss
(The Vinyl Factory)
Artist Taryn Simon’s An Occupation Of Loss features recitations of grief and mourning recorded at her London performance of the work, and in the studio. Co-commissioned by Artangel and Park Avenue Armory, the work hears professional mourners simultaneously broadcast their lamentations, many of which trace their origins to pre-Islamic and pre-Christian times, enacting rituals of grief. The box set edition includes 2xLP, 20 silk-printed photographic prints taken by the collaborating artists, and an 80-page hard-bound book featuring the laments, their English translations, and Simon’s portraits of the performers. A standard variant featuring the book and 2xLP is also available.
Find out more here.
JB Dunckel & Jonathan Fitoussi
Mirages
(The Vinyl Factory)
Conceived as part of Xavier Veilhan’s Studio Venezia project at the 57th Venice Biennale, Mirages is a sonic exploration of analogue synthesis. Born inside the studio which Xavier Veilhan built in 2017, the album was finished in Dunckel’s Paris-based studio, and features synthesisers amassed over several years, including an Arp 2600, PPG Wave, Synthi A, Buchla, Yamaha CS60, Korg MS20.
Find out more here.
Richie Hawtin presents F.U.S.E.
Dimensions (25th Anniversary Edition)
(The Vinyl Factory / Plus 8 Records)
Richie Hawtin celebrated the 25th anniversary of his F.U.S.E. alias releases with a limited edition box set called Dimensions, which includes expanded versions of Dimension Intrusion (3xLP), Train-Tracs (2xLP), as well as the first ever release of Hawtin’s 1993 album Computer Space (2xLP), which was recorded during the same sessions. The box set features 3 artist-grade prints from the original F.U.S.E. album covers, designed by his brother Matthew Hawtin.
Find out more here.
Theaster Gates & The Black Monks
Amalgam
(Black Madonna Press / The Vinyl Factory)
Amalgam is the soundtrack to Theaster Gates’ film ‘The Dance of Malaga’ (2019) which premiered at his exhibition Amalgam at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Comprised of 11 songs by Theaster Gates and the Black Monks of Mississippi, and produced by James William Blades, the album picks up on the interweaving issues of race, territory, migration and inequality in the United States explored in the work.
Find our more here.
William Kentridge
KABOOM!
(The Vinyl Factory)
KABOOM! features the soundtrack to a new film installation by South African artist William Kentridge, adapted from his critically acclaimed production The Head & The Load. Incorporating a cast of over 30 vocalists and musicians, it is accompanied by two additional compositions by long time musical producer Philip Miller, and is available as both a standard and art edition featuring a signed print.
Find out more here.
Soundwalk Collective & Nan Goldin
The Women’s March, 1789
(The Vinyl Factory)
Nan Goldin and Soundwalk Collective’s collaborative score for her The Women’s March, 1789 exhibition sees Goldin discovering the history behind one of the most pivotal moments of the French Revolution. “Digging up this history resonates so loudly with our times,” Goldin shares. “This brilliant document could have been written today. Nothing has changed. There are women in the world that still don’t have the rights that are articulated in the Declaration.”
Find out more here.
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