The Woodleigh Research Facility:The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories)

Happy New Year to you all! We've been lost in a world of seedy parties with Z-list celebrities and fading 90s popstars. Sorry for the lack of posts as a result but Elastica's coke won't sniff itself*

Anyway, moving swiftly on from lawsuit-risking, baseless slurs, let's kick 2016 off with some new music on lovely, lovely vinyl.

The Woodleigh Research Facility:The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories)

Andrew Weatherall is a luminary of the dance music world - primarily known as a techno artist, his musical output has actually been far more eclectic and harder to categorise than that tag suggests... in many ways he's been a driving force behind the emergence of a brand of dance music more etheral and considered than it's tub-thumping peers - a brand of music that has been awkwardly lumbered with the IDM tag, despite that being a shit name for anything. It's even being regularly confused with EDM, which is also a shit name but at least one satisfyingly appropriate.
So fuck calling it IDM, Mr Weatherall has basically taken the principles of techno and house and re-imagined a multi-decade catalogue of tracks using those and influences ranging from ambient to punk to whatever-the-hell-he-feels-like. An auteur, some would say.

For The Woodleigh Research Facility:The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories), he has continued a fruitful relationship with Nina Walsh, a singer he first encountered when remixing the Primal Scream track Original Sin carrying her vocal tones. Since then the pair have run techno labels, collaborated on various AW projects and presumably eaten some food in each other's vicinity. In addition, Nina has worked with vaunted underground artists including The Orb, runs a recording studio and her own label C-pij. 

The Woodleigh Research Facility:The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories) is a woozy, psychedelic affair with driving beats and a cacophony of drifting samples, gurgling, warped synths and analogous SFX that give the record a strangely morbid air, despite ostensibly beat-driven, uptempo arrangements.
It's a sound that captures the imagination - a properly experimental feel pervades and the confluence of styles embroil in a rather intriguing manner. Classic house open hats mix with Radiophonic swirls, new-wave drum machine sounds and minimal, dischordant synth lines to leave the listener in a state of pleasant befuddlement. It's no run-of-the-mill dance record, that's for sure.

There are a few tracks streamable from Rotters Golf Club's Soundcloud page. Release date is Friday 8th Jan.







Buy here

* We have no evidence to suggest Elastica have any coke, or have ever had any coke. Also cocaine is a highly unethical and overrated narcotic. We just like making cheap one-liners. No pun intended.