FAC. Dance 2...party like it's 1982

I so, so, so enjoyed this one...

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Fac. Dance 02
(Strut)

The second in Strut's survey of Factory Records' dance-electronic side goes deeper into the well of early 1980s dub-funk-world-punk, revisiting Fac. Dance 01 favorites like A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column, ESG and 52nd Street and branching out into the wilder, southern-hemisphere-sampling hybrids like Fadela and X-O-Dus.

The material comes from the first half of the 1980s, the same period during which most of Joy Division reformed as New Order and established it dark, dance-oriented new sound. Yet at the same time, lots of other loosely aligned bands were attempting the same alchemy, splicing the knotty, twitchy dissonance of post-punk to sinuous, body-moving grooves. Consider the Wake's 1983 "The Host," a knife-edge blend of shudder and sigh, dark blasts of synthesizer flaring up from a sensualist's bedrock of bass and drums (that's Bobby Gillespie, pre-Jesus & Mary Chain, on drums), and Caesar McInulty murmuring alienated phrases over. It is nearly eight minutes long, an endless, hypnotic, hip-centric groove that has just enough punk disaffection to give it bite.

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Totally enamored of FacDance

I mighta got a tiny bit obsessive about FacDance the new compilation of dance-oriented material from Factory Records. It's Sunday and a three-day weekend, so let's not do any heavy lifting. Here's Strut Records, the compilation's issuer, on what we've got, actually, here...

The album traces early experiments from Blurt's avant garde mutant funk to the fertile post-Joy Division period as the label's unique, coruscating post-punk sound took shape through seminal bands like A Certain Ratio and Section 25. The album also expressly documents Factory's strong links and cross-pollination with New York's 1980s club culture, as New Order joined forces with producer Arthur Baker, fresh from his pioneering electro work with Afrika Bambaataa, and acts like Quando Quango and Sweet Sensation's Marcel King enlisted NY remixer Mark Kamins for tough-edged club treatments. Factory bands including Quando Quango would also play live at some of the city's seminal nightspots, including the Paradise Garage.

The compilation also touches on some of the wider directions explored by Factory during its early years – Durutti Column's melancholic beauty, the latin jazz and jazz funk of Swamp Children, Kalima and Tony Henry's 52nd Street and a track from the label's only reggae single, the Dennis Bovell-produced ‘See Them A'Come' by X-O-Dus. This is the music that would provide the blueprint for the Manchester scene of the late ‘80s and Factory's heady later years – the Happy Mondays, James, Northside and the rest.

FAC. DANCE is compiled and annotated by Bill Brewster of djhistory.com and features rare artist photos alongside original label artwork by Peter Saville. The album is produced in association with James Nice at LTM Records.

And then there's this...