Album of the Week: Fabric ‘Elevator Music’

Album of the Week: Fabric ‘Elevator Music’

22 January, 2010 | 6.53AM

• Written by: Zack Rico
• Filed under: Music News: album of the week, fabric

Is any club more committed to maintaining the virtue of dance music than London’s Fabric? For 10 years the Farringdon venue has proven that it is possible to become a worldwide recognised brand, have queues stretch around the block every weekend, and maintain a status as one of the globe’s best dancefloors, without ever selling out.

From its astute line-ups, to its groundbreaking mix compilations, artwork, and continual refinement of the modern club experience, Fabric stands for quality at every turn.

“We’re lucky enough to have a certain following - a standing in global dance music,” says Graham Best, the club’s A&R Synchronisation Manager.

“If we can use that to shine a light on artists that we’re passionate about, that we feel deserve more spotlight, than that’s great.”

That’s exactly what Fabric’s new unmixed compilation, ‘Elevator Music’, is all about. It’s our Album of the Week.

“I had the idea a while ago for us to offer a cross section of artists that we were into,” explains Best, the brains behind the club’s new compilation series. “I pitched the idea, and it grew from there.

“We were sitting on quite a few unreleased tracks from artists that we’d worked with before, people like Hackman, Julio Bashmore, Untold, and Martyn, plus there were all these amazing new artists out there that were doing some great work, so it made sense for us to launch a new compilation series.”

‘Elevator Music’ is the first unmixed compilation that Fabric has released.

“There was never any question of it being mixed,” says Best. “From the minute we came up with the idea, we wanted to showcase individual artists and give them their own spotlight.

“We wanted to present a collection of artists, and of course give DJs the opportunity to play the tracks. That was really important for us, as the whole point of the compilation is to spread the music and the artists.

“Whether it’s big name DJ or a bedroom DJ, I don’t think anything can replace genuine word of mouth.”

As expected from Fabric, the artists and tracks on ‘Elevator Music’ share no allegiances stylistically, with anything from UK house, to Portuguese garage, Bristol dubstep, and Boston electronica among the 16 tracks, although it could be said that they represent the very cutting-edge of electronic music.

A lot of the artists on ‘Elevator Music’ share similar roots, but they each have unique sounds with easily audible characteristics. They don’t sound like anyone else. I suppose, that is one of the common themes of the compilation

“It doesn’t really fit into any existing genre bracket,” says Best. “ It’s not one particular sound. Musically it’s quite different, and there are a lot of tracks in there that can be used for a lot of different types of DJ set.

“For example, the track by Hot City - that could fit into anything from a mainroom electro house set, to a underground dubstep set.”

There are however, a number of UK bass artists featured on the compilation. Is that where the most innovative electronic music is being made today?

“Not necessarily,” replies Best. “The great thing about dubstep, is that there are no pre-conceptions about what it’s supposed to sound like.

“A lot of the artists on ‘Elevator Music’ share similar roots, but they each have unique sounds with easily audible characteristics. They don’t sound like anyone else. I suppose, that is one of the common themes of the compilation.”

For the launch party, a number of the artists featured on ‘Elevator Music’ took over Room 3 of Fabric for an eclectic DJ session.

“We were a little apprehensive as the launch party was scheduled for the Friday after New Year’s Eve, and we had a pretty left-of-centre line-up, but by midnight it was rammed,” says Best.

“Considering that we had Todd Edwards in Room 1, and 2562 and D-Bridge in Room 2, we were pleasantly surprised by the turnout for our mainly unproven artists.”

The track selection process involved contacting some of Fabric’s regular artists for unreleased tracks, as well as a number of unknown producers that Best discovered online.

“At the start we had the Vista track, the Caspa and Rusko track, and an unreleased Martyn track,” says Graham.

“I then had a list of artists that I’d been following through Myspace, pirate radio mixes, and other radio shows, which became my shopping list.

“I got in touch with all of them and surprisingly we had no knock backs. It sounds like hyperbole, but I’m really really pleased with every single track on there. There isn’t any a single one that I would take off.”

Fabric currently has no immediate plans for a volume two in the series as they’re “waiting to see how well the first one does”, but if anyone is going to document the bleeding edge of electronic music, it surely must be them.

In the ‘Elevator’

Because Fabric’s new compilation is all about exposing new electronic music talent, we asked Graham Best, the brains behind the series, to talk about some of the artists on ‘Elevator Music’.

Octa Push

Octa Push are two brothers from Lisbon. They’ve had 12-inches on Steakhouse Recordings and Iberian Records. They have a huge passion for early grime, dancehall, and old 2-step.

They played live in Room 3 six months ago, and it was amazing. They have a hard, raw energy, a kind of heavy-duty momentum thing, going on.

Om Unit

Om Unit has been around a while. He’s a leftfield scratch DJ, and I heard one of his tunes on Plastician’s Rinse FM show. I was blown away. It was this kind of heavy psychedelic music.

I have a lot of respect for Plastician, and this one track stood out by a mile. It reminded me of Boards Of Canada’s early stuff, when they were focused on the dancefloor.

I’d describe it as post hip hop electronic music, if that doesn’t sound too wanky.

Mosca

Mosca is one of the newest artists on there. I heard one of his tracks on a Shortstuff mix for the Crazylegs club night in Bristol, and I was completely blown away, so I contacted him.

I assumed he had a huge body of work, but he didn’t even have a Myspace, or email contact.

Originally we wanted his track ‘Square One’ but he signed it to another label, so we asked him for a new tune. It actually delayed the compilation by a couple of weeks whilst we waited for him to send it over. It was a bit of a gamble, as we didn’t really know anything about him. But then he turned up with ‘Gold Bricks, I See You’ and it was amazing.

With old garage, house, techno, dancehall, and grime influences in the track, it sounds like nothing else. And it plods along for three or four minutes, before a really spectacular drop in the 4th minute. Nobody else but Mosca could make a track like this.

Hot City

I think it’s safe to say that no one is making house music like these guys at the minute. Entirely original.

Julio Bashmore

Julio was one of the first guys we signed up for the project. I found out about him through the Bassmusic blog.

They put up a mix from him mid summer, and it was great - a combination of really nice post-Dirtybird house, and his own productions were something else.

His music is quite hard to characterize. It’s accessible house, but with a dubstep feeling. He sent me a ton of tracks and all of them were amazing, so we narrowed it down to three or four that we really liked.

Whilst I tried to make up my mind, I sent the whole batch to Claude VonStroke, and recommended them to him. I didn’t hear back from Barclay for a while, and then, just as we had decided which track we wanted for the CD, Barclay came back and said he wanted the same track for Dirtybird!

So in the end, we had to go with ‘The Moth’ which has this really nice brooding psychedelic thing going on. Mark my words, Julio Bashmore will be a massive name by the end of 2010. And to be able to hook him up with Dirtybird is fantastic.

Skinnz

Skinnz is an alias for a producer that I’m not allowed to reveal. He’s a guy from Manchester originally, who recently relocated to Bristol.

He’s a bit all over the shop as far as influences go, but his early productions were in the breaks vein, but much more interesting than the standard rank and file breakbeat tracks.

His approach to bass and rhythm is amazing, and ‘Ukraine’ is a bit of a banger. I don’t understand why he didn’t put it out sooner!

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