Dfa Us Vinyl & CDs

Review: Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom have worked together successfully on a number of releases but their most standout work was this album, The Days of Mars. It came on the legendary DFA label and was one of the best of its early era so gets a deserving reissue here, cut at 45rpm no less. The four tracks are fusions of cold wave, ambient, experimental electronic soundscapes and kosmiche. Each one goes long so serves as an escapist and futurist meditation whether dropped into an adventurous DJ set or to get lost in while wearing headphones at home.

Review: Anyone lucky enough to have caught James Murphy and his entourage of highly talented musical friends live will attest that it's here LCD Soundsystem truly excel. And whilst this London Sessions album recorded in the aftermath of such a performance at last year's Glastonbury Festival does not replicate such an elation filled experience, the chance to hear some of the band's best tracks recorded live makes this worth investigating. It's basically a showcase for how tight a group of musicians Gavin Russom, Pat Mahoney and Nancy Whang are, most notably on "Get Innocuous" where Russom really goes to town on the synths and "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" which gets embellished with a liberal dose of tightness, tautness and spikiness. The band has such an all encompassing back catalogue that you could spend all day dissecting which tracks they should have included here, and it's a mark of the aforementioned tightness that even the somewhat risible "Drunk Girls" sounds markedly improved here.

Review: "45:33" was originally recorded by James Murphy (aka LCD Soundsystem) as a continuous album-length disco symphony. It is the result of Murphy's desire to create a piece of music outside the typical commercial constraints. Don't miss this DFA release.

Review: Wearing 1980s synth pop influences on their sleeve, and sounding exactly like they belong on the mighty DFA, Brooklyn's Light Asylum were rightly praised at the time they put out their debut - and, to this date - only studio album, circa 2012. Critics noted that, at a time when dance-punk crossover was everywhere, driven by LCD Soundsystem and many of the acts frontman James Murphy signed to DFA, the New Yorkers manage to differentiate themselves from the pack in several ways.

Taking a hint of Depeche Mode (well, maybe a bit more), a pinch of Nine Inch Nails, and parts of Throbbing Gristle, Gary Numan, and other pioneers, Light Asylum managed to introduce some much-needed light and spatiality into the often claustrophobically dark and oppressive industrial synth world. In doing so, they offer a sound that's somehow both universally accessible and niche, which is never an easy line to tread.

Review: Russian avant-garde sculptor namesakes Naum Gabo, AKA Jonnie Wilkes of Optimo and mastering engineer James Savage, drop their inaugural album, 'F. Lux.' The pair delve deep over eight tracks of cavernous ambiance, pummeling industrial techno and barren, windswept synthscapes, which are perfectly alluded to by Scottish painter Andrew Cranston's surreal artwork. In turns introspective and oppressive, the pair ditch their usual stylistic sensibilities for something altogether more longform and enveloping, allowing for full immersion in the cavernous soundworld. Highlights include opening wormhole 'Aora' and the deeply tense grindhouse resonances of the aptly named 'Hebust Cometh'. Wicked and bad.

Review: In the early explosion of millennial indie-dance, The Rapture were surely one of the best. It helps their roots were in spikier realms on Sub Pop before they connected with James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy. The combination was potent, and Echoes was the dazzling result, with knockout hits like 'House Of Jealous Lovers' and 'Sister Saviour' offset by an album which never misses a beat whichever direction it heads in. 20 years on, it's as brilliantly inventive and downright kick ass as it was upon release, capturing an exciting time when DFA represented a new vanguard in dance music and indie alike.

Review: Marcus Lambkin aka Shit Robot has been closely tied to DFA since forever. His work embodies the label as much as anyone's and it's always nice to hear something new from him, which is what we get here. The diehard Dublin raver turned adopted New Yorker then semi-retried inhabitant of Germany serves up his first new music in some time and it's all perfectly heavy and chubby for those sweaty back rooms. The machines are raw, the vocals dark and the synths strobe-lit, just as they always were.

Review: When DFA Records first released 'Compilation #2' back in 2004, the label was arguably at the peak of its powers, consistently delivering killer cuts that blurred the boundaries between post-punk, early '80s NYC no wave, and more traditional forms of U.S dance music. It remains a brilliant snapshot of James Murphy's label (and, to a lesser degree, NYC's alternative punk-dance scene of the period), as this surprise first vinyl edition proves. Slimmed down to 18 tracks, all of which are presented in full length form (the original CD edition was mixed), and stretched across four weighty slabs of wax, it contains countless highlights from LCD Soundsystem, The Juan MacLean, Black Dice and the Rapture, as well as a handful of classic DFA remixes and a banger from original punk-funk heroes Liquid Liquid.