Various Artists
FAC. Dance - Factory Records 12" Mixes & Rarities 1980-1987

An essential new retrospective covering the dance output of Factory Records, the seminal Manchester record label founded by Tony Wilson, Alan Erasmus and designer Peter Saville.

The album turns the spotlight on some of the label’s early dancefloor-based work across key 12” mixes and rarities, from the unmistakeable production style of Martin Hannett to pioneering studio work by New Order’s Bernard Sumner and A Certain Ratio drummer Donald Johnson, under their BeMusic and DoJo monikers.

Early Factory experiments like Blurt’s avant garde mutant funk blast ‘Puppeteer’ rub shoulders with the fertile post-Joy Division period as the label’s unique, coruscating post-punk sound took shape on extended 12” cuts from A Certain Ratio, Section 25 and more. The album also expressly documents Factory’s strong links and cross-pollination with New York’s 1980s club culture, as Quando Quango and Marcel King enlisted NY remixer Mark Kamins for tough-edged club treatments. Factory artists including Quando Quango and A Certain Ratio would also perform at some of the city’s seminal nightspots, including Danceteria and the Paradise Garage.

The compilation also touches on some of the wider dancefloor directions explored by Factory during its early years – the latin jazz funk of Swamp Children and Kalima, the cool British soul of Tony Henry’s 52nd Street and a track from Factory’s only overtly reggae single, the Dennis Bovell-produced ‘See Them A’Come’ by X-O-Dus. Within FAC. DANCE are contained the grooves that would provide the blueprint for the Manchester scene of the late ‘80s and Factory’s heady later years – Happy Mondays, James, Northside and the rest.