An Hour Of 2025 Dub/ Dance

A follow up to my New Year's Eve mix which was an ambient/ downtempo and largely instrumental hour of music. This one starts out dubby and then heads in Balearic and dance directions, getting increasingly thumpy with a three tune Belfast detour before finishing with the voice of Andrew Weatherall. As maybe all mixes should. 

There were a lot of things that I couldn't find room for here, not least Four Tet's Into Dust (Still Falling)- maybe there's time for one more 2025 mix next Sunday to see that year out. 

An Hour Of 2025 Dub/ Dance

• Adrian Sherwood: Spaghetti Best Western
• Soft Cotton County: The Future's Not What It Used To Be (Justin Robertson's Five Green Moons Remix)
• Rude Audio: No Sleep
• Escape- Ism: Last Of The Sellouts
• Daniel Avery ft. Cecile Believe: Rhapsody In Blue
• Jezebell: Movimento Lento
• Puerto Montt City Orchestra: ...And We'd Be So Happy
• Pandit Pam Pam: The Senator
• Le Carousel: We're All Gonna Hurt
• Factory Floor: Tell Me
• Black Bones: Voodoo
• The Light Brigade: Shuffle The Pack

Adrian Sherwood's The Collapse Of Everything was one of my favourite albums of 025, a solo album that becomes a mystical sonic adventure, Sherwood reaching out from dub into soundtrack territories and beyond. Spaghetti Best Western's guitars are worth the price of entry alone. 

Soft Cotton County's Coward Of The County Fair came out in January 2025, a single backed with a pair of Justin Robertson dubs (wearing his Five Green Moons hat- and the Five Green Moons Moon 2 album should have showed up here too). SCC are an indie/ dreampop/ shoegaze duo from Richmond- upon- Thames. This is lovely, laid back folk/ dub. 

Rude Audio are a South London dub/ dub techno specialists under the leadership of Mark Ratcliff. The Strange Phenomenon EP was a 2025 highlight, premium grade Dulwich dub. 

Escape- Ism's The Charge Of The Love Brigade was one of my 2025 peaks, a ten song trip inside Ian Svenonius' world, the last man in the business to sell out. 

Daniel Avery and Cecile Believe's Rhapsody In Blue was the most 80s teen drama, pop moment on Tremor (and came with a Midnight Version too, dirtier and tougher). It still hits the right spots now, six months after its release.

Jezebell's second album, Jezebellearic Beats Volume 2, pulled together some further remixes and productions together with some new material- this track, Movimento Lento, and the closer Turn It Yes, were a perfect pair of bookends. 

Puerto Montt City Orchestra's ...And We'd Be So Happy came out on Brighton's Higher Love label, the home of many fine modern Balearic releases. A spoken word family trip to the seaside in the pouring rain. 

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo and makes uneasy ambient music. The Senator is the most dancefloor friendly thing in the Pandit Pam Pam back catalogue, dynamic and lively but still a little unpredictable and the horn that floats above the drums is a thing of beauty. 

Le Carousel is Phil Kieran from Belfast. We're All Gonna Hurt is full on, pulsing, electronic dance music, uplifting but shot through with heartbreak, like all the best dance music is. 

Factory Floor's 2025 return saw them come back with more bone shaking beats and face melting synths, on a pair of singles, Tell Me and Between You. Stephen Morris added some drum programming touches to Tell Me. Experimental, machine music with a random human heart. 

Black Bones are also from Belfast. They released an album across a variety of vinyl formats, dark industrial basement music- acidic, technoid, dubbed up Belfast rave. 

The Light Brigade are David Holmes and Keith Tenniswood. Shuffle The Pack is a righteous acid house record, a call to arms and positivity and very much part of Holmes' 'music as an act of resistance' vision that fades out leaving Andrew Weatherall's voice talking about music, smoke, coloured lights and acid house as gnostic ceremony. 

Soundtrack Saturday

We have a recently launched boutique cinema open in the shopping precinct near us, The Northern Light, in what used to be WH Smith. It shows all sorts of films and also puts on some interesting one offs. Chris Massey runs Sprechen, his Manchester based label that has put out records by Psychederek, Causeway and Steve Cobby this year and is celebrating ten years of action with a compilation called Ein Null. That's Chris in the photo above DJing in the cinema in Sale last week. 

In partnership with Richie V, Chris has being doing a series of events where they re- score silent movies from the 1920s with a pair of turntables, a mixer and a laptop, DJing a new soundtrack to German Expressionist films. In the summer they did Metropolis and Nosferatu. I missed both due to other commitments but last week they screened and re- scored The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and I was able to go. 

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 film directed by Robert Wiene and tells the story of a hypnotist, a somnambulist and a murder in a small German town. The film's writers- Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer- were scarred by their experiences with the military in the First World War and deeply distrustful of the authorities. Dr Caligari is not only one of the earliest cinema films, it's also thought to be the first with a twist ending. The film's sets are jagged and surreal, doors and windows at strange angles, and all very claustrophobic. The sleepwalker, Cesare, is played by Conrad Veidt...

Chris and Richie soundtrack the film's eighty minute running time with a variety of instrumental music, cutting, mixing and cross fading as the scenes and action changes. They squeeze a lot in, some of which I recognise (but I wish I'd made some notes immediately afterwards as I can't remember it all now). Michael Rother's unmistakable guitar sound glides in at one point, a neat cultural link between Weimar Germany and '70s krautrock. There is ambient and trip hop and towards the end a huge proggy guitar solo track blasts in. 

This is Fortana di Luna from Michael Rother's 1978 album Sterntaler which I'm sure wasn't what Chris and Richie played but it could easily have fitted in with their new score to The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

Fortana di Luna

It made me more annoyed that I missed both Metropolis and Nosferatu. Chris and Richie are tackling The Passion Of Joan Of Arc next, a 1928 French silent film. 

Back in 2017 Factory Floor re- scored Metropolis and released their version of the soundtrack as a double CD/ four album box set. The project was commissioned by the London Science Museum to mark the 90th anniversary of the film's release and they performed their score live at the musuem's IMAX. Factory Floor are the perfect group to do Fritz Lang's film, their synth futurism the ideal match to the futuristic sci fi/ 20th century machine industrialism of Metropolis. Heart Of Data

Heart Of Data

Back in 1998 I saw Andrew Weatherall DJ live to a screening of Nosferatu at Manchester's Cornerhouse (it seems apt that DJing new scores to films was something that the pioneering Mr Weatherall was doing nearly three decades ago). It wasn't particularly busy. Andrew was set up at the front with two turntables and a box of records. On screen Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror played, black and white vampirism directed by F.W. Murnau with Max Schreck as Count Orlok bringing a plague to a small German town. Andrew's score was all weird ambient and massively pitched down trip hop and illbient and downtempo tracks. At some point many years alter some of us managed to identify that one of the tracks was from Leila's 1998 album Like Weather but I can't now recall which track. Let's have this one...

Space, Love

The screening and Weatherall re- scoring of Nosferatu was memorable for another reason. Lou was fairly heavily pregnant with Isaac and at one crucial point in the film, as the images and music reached a crescendo, it clearly affected the unborn Isaac and one of his limbs, a hand or foot visibly bulged and moved in a wave like a shark's fin across Lou's stomach. 

A Italia

By the time this post is published I shall be in the air, flying to Italy for a week's holiday. The three of us are landing in Napoli later this morning, two days and nights there and then five on a hillside overlooking Maiori and the Amalfi coast. At some point we are going to Pompeii and Herculaneum. At several points we will be enjoying pizza, local produce (wine, tomatoes, lemon pastries) and the odd Negroni. As a result there will be no posts here for a week but don't worry, I'm filling today's post with a load of music for you to enjoy and explore while I'm away.

A week ago Daniel Avery announced the release of a new album in October, Tremor (out on Hallowe'en, the same night he plays New Century Hall in Manchester). In advance of Tremor Daniel gave us Rapture In Blue, a single with Cecile Believe on vocals and guitars from Andy Bell (whose music with Ride, GLOK and solo has been featured here regularly and who is currently treading the boards with Oasis). Rapture In Blue took a few plays to really get under my skin but now it's firmly there. It's a change of direction compared to what came before- slow mo 4AD goth/ techno pop. 

Also out last week is a new track from the reformed Factory Floor, Tell Me. Tough edged and propulsive, with thumping beats and acid synths, Tell Me is very much after dark music, with New Order's  Stephen Morris adding his expertise to the drum programming. Nic Void's vocal is at the intersection between human and robotic. At Bandcamp there's a short and extended version available . 

Rich Thair and Ali Friend's Number is a post- punk/ disco party outfit, the Red Snapper pair having the freedom to do something outside their main band. Back in 2019 they released an album called Binary. A few days ago they put the first single from a forthcoming album out, the funked up Le Boucle Nouveau. The drums are absolutely on it and the rhythm is irresistible. There are pianos and synth squiggles and a choral vocal. There's a Duncan Grey remix forthcoming and then an album- Pollinate- is due to follow on Ramrock Records. 

Two weeks ago Paisley Dark released an EP by Jay- Son, Tales Of Freedom, an original mix and five remixes- dark cosmic disco with laser beams firing and a gliding bassline. The remixes come from Ian Vale, Hogt I Tak, Viper Patrol, Keith Forrester and this one from Cosmikuro which throbs and thumps deliciously. The whole EP is here. 

Over at Mighty Force there is more acid techno out now courtesy of Byron Carignan and an album called Symmetrical Universe. The ten tracks burst with energy and acid techno, synths overloaded and basslines wiggling, and all manner of interstellar and galactic references in the track titles, tracks such as Nebula Groove, Astral Acid and Spacewave Symphony. Mighty Force don't ever put a foot wrong and this is yet another release that I'll be coming back to in months to come- get it here. 

Finally, something Italian to sign off with. In 2017 a compilation called Welcome To Paradise (Italian Dream House 89- 93) followed by second and third volumes a year later. The albums are chock full of the deep, rich, euphoric, sunrise/ sunset sound of Italo house, Italian producers and DJs making full use of the new technology that was arriving in the late 80s. This one is as good as any, a 1989 12" single by Morenas. Ciao!

Somnambulism

Between You

Factory Floor are back, expanded to a three piece, the core duo of Gabe Gurnsey and Nic Colk Void joined by Joe Ward and recording with New Order's Stephen Morris in Macclesfield. Factory Flor last released new material in 2018, Soundtrack For A Film, a modular synth workout for Metropolis, the 1927 Fritz Lang film that invented science fiction cinema. The new track, Between You, is an FF tour de force, industrial machine drumming, bleak synths, tumbling percussion and Nic Void's emotionless vocal. It's hypnotic and powerful, warehouse bodybeat party music. The video below was filmed at a live performance in Montreal last year, a blur of movement, limbs and percussion. You can get Between You digitally at Bandcamp (the 300 limited vinyl have all long gone). Hopefully there will be an album to follow. 

Back in 2016 Factory Floor released an album called 25 25 on DFA. I loved it, a perfect collision of minimal repetitive machine music, Hacienda beats and stripped back vocals, acid house reduced to its bare bones with absolute precision. 

Dial Me In

Their 2018 re- imagined soundtrack to the silent film Metropolis is a joy, less mechanical than 25 25, the modular synths bringing a human edge to the machine rhythms. They played it live for the film's 90th anniversary at the Science Museum's IMAX in 2017. This track was a highlight...

Heart Of Data

Forty Five Minutes Of Tim Burgess

Tim Burgess is an instantly recognisable figure as frontman, singer and lyricist of The Charlatans, the young man with the pudding bowl haircut of Indian Rope and The Only One I Know who has weathered the fads, phases and storms of the music industry and life and who still looks barely a day older than he did back in 1990. Outside The Charlatans he's written three books (including the brilliantly titled Tim Book Two), all three showing him to be a considered, thoughtful and witty writer. He has made six solo albums, from 2003's countryfied I Believe to the synths and FXed sax of Same Language, Different Worlds with Peter Gordon, with songs written and recorded with Lambchop's Kurt Wagner in between. He has a record label O Genesis which has put out solo albums by members of Factory Floor, by Martin Duffy and by The Membranes, among others. There is, it is fair to say, more to him than met the eye when he first shook his fringe with The Charlatans in January 1989. 

Today's mix is a selection of Tim Burgess solo/ with others/ outside The Charlatans that starts out with some gloriously frazzled, hazy ambient drift and ends with some block rocking beats and industrial thump. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Tim Burgess

• Stoned Alone Again Or (Seahawks Remix)
• Tobacco Fields
• Another Version Of The Truth
• Hours (Tandy Love Remix)
• Begin (Carter Tutti Remix)
• The Economy II (Prince Fatty Remix)
• Life Is Sweet (Album Version)
• White (Factory Floor- Gabe Gurnsey Remix)

Stoned Alone Again Or was a 2012 one off 12" single, remixed by Seahawks as a ten minute ambient epic, indie rock taken as far away from its roots as it can go. Seahawks are ambient/ Balearic duo Jon Tye and Pete Fowler, who have released umpteen albums and singles since 2010- I recommend Escape Hatch, Starways and Paradise Freaks as good starting points. 

Tobacco Fields is from Tim's 2012 solo album Oh No I Love You. It is a beauty, with barroom piano, a frazzled vocal and an ambient backdrop, co- written with Kurt Wagner. 

Another Version Of The Truth was on As I Was Now, a solo album recorded between Christmas and New Year in 2008 but not released until 2018- music that is experimental, krauty and pop. The group for the album consisted of My Bloody Valentine's bassist Debbie Goodge, Josh Haywood from The Horrors, Martin Duffy and Ladyhawke. 

Hours was on Oh No I Love You. Some editions of the CD came with a disc of remixes- the Tandy Love remix is by Andy Votel. Others on the second disc were by Tom Furse of The Horrors and Gabe Gurnsey of Factory Floor, whose remix finishes this mix. At the time Nik Void of Factory Floor was Tim's partner.

Begin is from Same Language, Different Worlds, an album made with New York avant garde composer Peter Gordon, a member of the legendary Love Of Life Orchestra. Begin was remixed by Carter Tutti, Chris Carter and Cosey Tutti of Throbbing Gristle/ Chris and Cosey fame/ infamy. Oh Men, also on the album, was remixed by Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert, Peaking Lights, Grumbling Fur and Carter Tutti- that's quite the line up. 

The Economy II is also from Oh No I Love You, dubbed out in 2013 by the superb Prince Fatty.

In 1995 The Chemical Brothers released their debut album Exit Planet Dust. Tim had been a regular at The Social, the Sunday afternoon/ evening party thrown weekly by Heavenly Records and Tom and Ed at The Albany on Great Portland Street. Tim sang on Life Is Sweet, a song which became the album's second single. On an album not short of bangers, Life Is Sweet still stands out- a furious synth riff, crunching beats, whooshes, sirens and a dirty bassline, and Tim's vocal, a celebration of mid- 90s hedonism. The Chemical Brothers returned the favour by working with The Charlatans on 1997's Tellin' Stories, most notably on One To Another.

Forty Five Minutes Of Factory Floor And Gabe Gurnsey

Friday's Factory Floor single Two Different Ways sent me back into the group's back catalogue. I've also been playing Factory Floorer Gabe Gurnsey's Diablo a lot recently, an album that is up there with this year's best to these ears. Factory Floor, a trio but then slimmed down to Gurnsey (drums, programming, synths, production, vocals) and Nik Colk (vocals, guitar, samples) started out in the mid- 00s, all post punk dread and industrial noise before hitting a Chris and Cosey inspired, acid house/ techno groove. Dystopic dance music. Synth- noir. No wave electronica. 'Unsettling disco' according to New Order's Stephen Morris who has worked with them (like Morris, Gurnsey is a Macclesfield man). 

The idea to sequence a bunch of FF and GG tracks together seemed like a good one but technically has been quite tricky. I use Audacity where it's a matter of drop and drag, lining them up next to each other, slightly overlapping to give the impression of mixing. But without any actual DJ software, getting tracks to segue and mix properly can be difficult and this one took a lot of playing around with. There were a few that didn't make the cut- Two Different Ways and the Factory Floor remix of Grinderman were both vying for inclusion but didn't make it. 

The tracks here won't ease you into Sunday gently but if you want modular synths, acid squiggles, thumping 808 kick drums, slowly building tension and blank/ sexually charged vocals (courtesy of Colk on Factory Floor and Tilly Morris on Gabe's Diablo) to throw yourself around the kitchen to, then give it a whirl.

Forty Five Minutes Of Factory Floor And Gabe Gurnsey

• Factory Floor: Heart Of Data
• Daniel Avery: Drone Logic (Factory Floor Remix)
• Gabe Gurnsey: Eyes Over
• Gabe Gurnsey: Push
• Gabe Gurnsey: You Remind Me
• Factory Floor: ~(REALLOVE) (An Optimo (Espacio) Remix)
• Factory Floor: Ya

Heart Of Data came out in 2018, a pulsing modular synth score to Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, commissioned by London's Science Museum). Highly recommended. 

The remix of Daniel Avery's Drone Logic came out in 2013 along with a multitude of other remixes from Avery's first album. 

Eyes Over is from Gabe Gurnsey's first solo album, Physical, released in 2018. Eyes Over was a single and came with a very good extended dub mix on the 12".

Push and You Remind Me are two of the standouts from this year's Diablo, both with vocals from Tilly Morris. 'This is the kind of feeling I could ride forever/ Let's push together', Tilly sing speaks on Push, sounding like you're there for her amusement solely. 'You remind me of a sunrise/ You remind me of a good time', she sings on the latter, again sounding like she's pretty much done with your shit. 

Real Love (or ~(REALLOVE) came out in 2011 on DFA and was remixed by Scottish legends Optimo. A track that really goes for it brackets- wise and produced by Stephen Morris. 

Ya was on Factory Floor's 2016 album 2525, a juddering, minimal, floor filling electronic dance record with one foot in the Hacienda. 

Two Different Ways

The weekly Bagging Area/ Spencer collaboration continues here today. The previous posts in this series have featured songs from Jon Spencer Blues Explosion remixed by DFA, La Funk Mob, I-f and Model 500, a run of gritty, innovative floor shaking body movers. This week's song flying in from Spencer over the internet is this from Factory Floor in 2011...

Two Different Ways

Last weekend there was a documentary celebrating forty years since the Hacienda opened its doors, an hour of stories, contributions from familiar faces/ survivors and from punters and employees, and some archive footage of the club in its heyday. It was OK but very much entry level Hacienda, there wasn't much new to be learned if you know your Hacienda and Factory history or ever attended the club. At one point one of the interviewees (talking about the acid house glory years when the Hot and Nude nights, Mike Pickering, house music and ecstasy combined in a perfect way) said that the thing with the music was that it was repetitive and the more and longer the parts repeated, the more it seemed to get inside you and the more you wanted to dance- I paraphrase but that was the gist- and it was possibly the most astute comment of the programme. In house music/ dance music, repetition is key. 

In 2011 Factory Floor released a single for DFA. Prior to this they'd made music which was more industrial, more noise/ industrial based, infused with the chill of post- punk. On Two Different Ways they beamed themselves into the Hacienda or any number of British clubs from the '88- '93 period and set the drum machine, the synths and the arpegiator up, running in circular patterns, wheels within wheels. Thumping kick drum, squiggles, hi hats opening and closing like synapse connections between the music and your nervous system, distant woodblocks, snares rattling- meanwhile the synths continue ever on, round and round, in circles as Nic Colk's voice drops in and out over the top, half sung/ half spoken. Eight minutes of gloriously repetitive house/ techno. 

Dial Me In

Back in 2016 Factory Floor, then recently reduced to a duo, put out an album called 25 25, an eight track monster full of huge springy, squidgy basslines, modular synth noises, 303s and 808s, simple repeated vocal snatches- minimal but big. Precise, endlessly energetic, the sound of the night taking off and you just staying there in the exact centre of the floor and the sounds.

Dial Me In

Monday's Long Song

This came out back in 2013 and I posted it back then and again in 2014 but it was among the piles of records that I was sorting through when the big sort out/Kallax construction took place recently and I thought it would fit this series perfectly. Beachcombing is a fifteen minute collaboration between New York composer Peter Gordon, a man who worked with Arthur Russell and Laurie Anderson, and Nik Void and Gabe Gurnsey of Factory Floor. Beachcombing sounds a bit like a 45 rpm record slowed down to 33, the pitter-patter of a drum machine, slow and warped tones, woozy almost inaudible vocals from Nik and waves and surges of analogue, modular synths and sweet bursts of saxophone. It  builds and holds a trance-like state that is easy to get lost in and if it doesn't improve your Monday morning, I don't know what will.

Beachcombing

Wahre Liebe

Factory Floor's live soundtrack to Fritz Lang's 1929 Weimar sci-fi masterpeice Metropolis comes out today. I've been looking forward to this since the Heart Of Data/Babel 12" came out back in February. Their score is film length, an hour and fifty minutes long, and is out on double cd or quadruple vinyl (and you can imagine how much that costs).



In 2011 Factory Floor's Real Love single was remixed by Glasgow clubbing veteran JD Twitch, a controlled collision of analogue synths and digital drum machines.

Real Love (An Optimo Espacio Mix)

I was showing some young people (16-17 year olds) some clips from Metropolis earlier this week as part of their studies of Weimar Germany and its culture. I don't think the jawdropping special effects or the look of the film or its technical genius of the film was lost on them although some of the acting is very hammy 90 years later. They were equally if not more impressed with Nosferatu which they found genuinely freaky. And then one of them mentioned they already knew Nosferatu from this...

Heart Of Data

The first time I played Factory Floor's new single, Heart Of Data, I wasn't too struck on it. I must not have been paying attention because it is 6 minutes of sleek modern techno brilliance. Pulsing bass, waves of synths, crashing cymbals, kick drum and a sense of rushing to meet the future. It and the B-side are from their score for Fritz Lang's 1920s sci fi classic Metropolis, which they produced last year for the Science Museum. More please.

Ya

Factory Floor- messy decorators, don't ask them to do your front room. You could ask them to provide you with some good music though. They've slimmed down to a two piece and on their new album 25 25 they've moved away from the industrial noise of their earlier records to an acid house sound- stripped back with bouncing basslines, analogue synths, acid squiggles and squelches, the tsk tsk tsk of high hats, an 808 snare, a thumping kick drum and some very minimal vocals ('Ya', 'work work work'). Much of this album sounds like it could have been made and played in any dance club anywhere between 1988 and 2003 but it more than gets away with it- retro but forward thinking. I suspect I shall be playing this for some time.

How You Say

I was in the pub on Boxing Day with my friend H. We were talking about music (having done work, football etc) and were agreeing on how we love drones. Drones, repetition, tension and release. This Daniel Avery remix of Factory Floor is perfect and ticks all those boxes. The original is jerky and noisy. The remix is more subtle, still with noise but a more peaceful noise. The electronic drones are at times calming and at times intense. The build up of tension is superb. The whole thing is driven by a bassline and a kickdrum that pulse. It shifts in places, slightly but dramatically. Remix perfection.

How You Say (Daniel Avery Remix)

Beachcombing

This 12" came out last year, from the combined talents of Peter Gordon and Factory Floor. Listening to it on the bus back from Belgium late on Monday night, through headphones, was close to a religious experience especially round the nine minute mark- and not entirely due to sleep deprivation. Ebbing and flowing of sounds, pulsing waves and oscillations and discordant saxophone (an instrument often I can't abide). Full on.

Beachcombing

Drone Logic

This is a twenty minute preview megamix of Daniel Avery's album Drone Logic, out at the start of this week. If you like dark, bass heavy, weird noise-led, synth-string, underground electronic music, this should be right up your alley.



Drone Logic (Factory Floor/Gabe Gurnsey Remix)

Two Different Ways

I just discovered this belter of a track by Factory Floor. It sounds a bit like a vocal from a lost Factory Records song circa 1983 played over something you could have danced to circa 1989.

Beachcomber

I found this recently at Just Press Play blog, an always reliable source of good leftfield electronic stuff, and it is a cosmic belter- Beachcomber is fourteen minutes of New York veteran Peter Gordon and Factory Floor making some beautiful links between stellar bass, wonky synths and post-punk sax. Out soon on Optimo.

On The Factory Floor

This is that Factory Floor remix of Tim Burgess' White I mentioned a couple of weeks ago- Gabe Gurnsey strips all of the country-soul out of it and re-positions the song firmly on the dancefloor, a dancefloor in the Hacienda circa 1983 at some kind of Latin/post-punk/funk night. Gets away with it too.

White (Factory Floor Gabe Gurnsey Remix)