Numbers Vinyl & CDs

Review: Ephemera is the debut album from Fergus Jones, formerly known as Perko, an Edinburgh-born, Copenhagen-based producer, DJ and founder of the FELT label. The nine-track album was created through collaborative efforts with musicians like Huerco S, James K and Koreless and explores Jones' personal and sonic journey while blending instinctive production with emotional depth. Tracks like 'Heima,' co-produced with Huerco S and James K, and 'Tight Knit' featuring Birthmark and ELDON, are perfect examples of the album's blend of raw emotion, intricate sound design and evocative vocals, all of which head into bold new territory stylistically.

Review: Here's something of a pleasant surprise: Studio Barnhus co-founder Kornel Kovacs turning up on Glasgow's masters of all things dancefloor-friendly, Numbers. While there's a little more of a garage swing to opener "Lighthouse" - think darting string samples, booming sub-bass and energetic deep house drums - the Swede doesn't seem to have wandered that far off-piste. So, we get some undeniably classy, jazz-flecked deep house (the rubbery and flexible "Gangsta"), a surging, saucer-eyed dose of piano revivalism ("Malon", featuring Marcus Price, and some suitably jumpy drums), and, best of all, the late '80s Paradise Garage Latin house brilliance of "Pantalon". Stellar stuff, all told.

Review: 'Done Me Wrong' is one of trailblazing Glasgow label Numbers' essential cash cows. The track is etched into the brains of most clubbers still out today, owing to that short but sweet, mid-2010s interregnum that somehow bridged the gap between UK funky, post-dubstep, future bass and Night Slugs adjacent 'wave'. As is the case with the Hyph Mngos and the Midnight Request Lines of the era, producer Mosca seems to have touched a collective nerve with this one, one that lent the 'Done Me Wrong' a self-starting energy that served to promote itself; or perhaps that's an illusion, as it was, of course, rinsed to death on Rinse FM, and included in many a post dubstep DJ set too. Whatever the case, 'Done Me Wrong' and its inverse 'Bax' reflect the playfulness of a transitory era in bass music, being two of those tunes that, despite all our genre namedrops, never quite fit into any neat box.

Review: Perko is one of those newer-school experimental artists whose fingers straddle many pies, but who nevertheless refuses to allow this inner tendency towards versatility to hold him back. The FELT label owner has welcomed artists as far-flung as Civilistjavel! to Moxie into his inner circle; and the fruits of this open-mindedness are more than translated into his latest EP for Glaswegian dance legends Numbers. 'Prang' errs on the side of playfulness, giving some hot seconds of pure danceable flavour. Huerco S lends his usually-texturally-rich addprod to the nominal A-sider, a rather impressive future-garage-acid cut that recalls some of Objekt's earlier stuff, while regular collaborator and mournful vocalist-producer Cucina Povera crops up on the ambient dub plunger-into-the-sound that is 'Sisu'.

Review: True to the time, Sophie's first ever album was in fact a compilation album or "playlist", restitched from previous single releases launched in an ironic hype cycle between 2013 and 2015. All were released online and paired with white-backgrounded, fantasy toy imagery. Product would go on to baptise the hyperpop name, though at the time of its release, her music was still being called "bubblegum bass", though this did owe to its firm footings in post-dubstep and sound-design. Recorded over four years in London and Glasgow, Product distilled her hyper-digital aesthetic into eight cuts that feel as slick and artificial as the (ahem) "silicon product" and shapewear line released alongside it. This tenth anniversary reissue - first out digitally, and now with a physical pressing - brings three lemme-at-em extras: 'Unisil', originally only on the Japanese CD, the early live favourite 'Ooh', and 'Get Higher', once a bonus track, now upgraded to full release.

Review: First released in relative anonymity - at the time, we could only guess that the name Sophie was the posh voice heard melismating over each track, when in fact it was later revealed that this was the dramatically inflected voice of collaborator Cecile Believe - Product compiled Sophie's first run of singles, all of which had been heard before but which had never been lent the sublimity of togetherness. As if to mock the generously marked-up, plasticated, loss-leader manufacturing culture from which we all suffer today, Product was an obvious satire; the warped flirtation of 'Bipp', the jagged bounce of 'Lemonade' and the trance-inflected euphoria of 'Just Like We Never Said Goodbye' all left the question open as to whether tears could be jerked through a pneumatic seal. The London producer folded such sensualities through hyper-glossed sonics, laying early foundations for what would later be dubbed hyperpop. With this deluxe anniversary edition adding the long-mythologised 'Ooh' (first aired live in 2011), and the fluttering 'Get Higher' (once exclusive to the Japanese CD), take eager note here of the posters and MP3 download code included in this bundle.

Review: Back in 2012, Glasgow operation put their reissue hats on to present a new edition of Multi Ordinal Tracking Unit, "a secret weapon and personal favourite" from late 90s UK techno types Unspecified Enemies that the label's founders all experienced in their formative years at Club 69. Some two years on and with Numbers now a globally recognised label, unreleased material from Unspecified Enemies pair Louis Digital and CiM features as the label's final release of 2014. Lead cuts "Ms.45" and "Chip Mode" have been sourced from a tape CiM and Digital sent to Rubadub back in '99 with DJ Chip's Dancemania classic Imported Booty Music the apparent influence here. It's quite evident too in the frenzied and furious tempo Unspecified Enemies implement throughout the record with the final superbly titled "Lifestyles Of The MiniDisc Era" a real fckn highlight.

Review: Unspecified Enemies were much-loved electro-techno innovators back at the turn of the millennium. Some quarter of a century on, they finally get around to putting out a debut album, but it is one that reworks a bunch of earlier material into new forms of machine funk. Originally a duo, Louis Moreno and Simon Walley crafted a cult following inter heyday and this album blends the optimism of the millennium's dawn with caution about technology's future. The music here captures the energetic spirit of the era while reflecting on urban decay and power systems with tracks like 'Glass Skin' and 'Bonaventure Effect' colliding upbeat, glitchy electro with a gritty yet nostalgic edge. It's potent stuff.