Phantasy and Factory Floor's celebrated synth molester, Gabe Gurnsey returns with a new album entitled "Diablo". Reveling in the energy surrounding spontaneous connections, the album takes you on myriad twists and turns; all the while nurturing lustful, good time feelings.

Opening with a typically electronic, lyrically strong post-acid-house jerker: "Push", the album quickly deploys giddy echoes, teasing 808 boings and more vocals that are both sexy and menacing and suited to darkly lit areas of large warehouses and industrial spaces; injecting lascivious energies into environments once baron of human feeling.

The album unashamedly makes us of Gurnsey’s girlfriend, Tilly Morris, whose role is that of both muse and collaborator. 'I wanted Tilly to dominate on "Diablo",' Gurnsey explains. Morris (who was also featured on "Physical") sings on most of "Diablo"s tracks as well as contributing to the lyrics, melodies and synths, and her image is the album artwork. An album with such a level of collaboration only feels this good when you can really trust somebody. “This record is formed out of a lot of trust and lust,” Gurnsey says. “And I think it's very honest in a lot of ways, in terms of letting go, in terms of exploring, just in terms of being a bit fucking happy.”

Keeping to a role of 'rhythm section first' - Gabe's previous roll as drummer has led to a very rhythmic-centric way of songwriting. That being said; we find most of the beats across the LP sequenced and programmed rather than played live.

Title track “Diablo” sees Gabe and Tilly deliver a disembodied duet, love-sparring like a postapocalyptic Donny & Marie Osmond - they reprise this routine on “So Sweet” (which is anything but): ‘I’m breaking at the thought of your love, I’m shaking at the thought of your mind.’ “Power Passion” has a touch of wine bar and a hint of Daft Punk and “You Remind Me” is all sharp little squelches, stutters, and swooning sunrise vocals. “Give Me” shifts from demand to begging in the sweetest and sexiest way, really highlighting the subtle but proficient lyrical urgency coursing through the LP. “To The Room” closes the record with a sinister softness, glimpses through a doorway into other possibilities.

You’ll hear all sorts of influences here, from Peaches, Detroit techno, deep house, electro, Suicide and Eurythmics. It’s a generous stew which shows its appreciation for his forebears without ever being overshadowed by them. Let’s face it, most of the best dance music has that minor-key sadness, channeled to perfection by Gurnsey and Morris.

TRACK LISTING

1 Push
2 Hey Diablo
3 Power Passion
4 You Remind Me
5 I Love A Sea On Fire
6 Give Me
7 Blessings
8 Higher Estates
9 So Sweet
10 To The Room

Madding crowds may have found their bounce to the beat of ‘Bad Blood’s post-punk groove but Working Men’s Club will defy all expectation with their eagerly anticipated follow-up. Forcing backs off the wall and deeper onto the dancefloor, electric stomper ‘Teeth’ possesses enough bite to set pearly whites on edge and induce a wildly ecstatic feeling that’s anything but comfortable.

“It is a metaphor,” teases the band’s singer, guitarist and beat-maker, Sydney Minsky-Sargeant. “It could be about going insane or what you see, what you think you feel inside, a lot of things… put through a drum machine… basically we just want to confuse the fuck out of people, in a good way!”

For Syd, alongside fellow Club members Giulia Bonometti, Jake Bogacki, and recently recruited bassist Liam Ogburn, the last 12 months has seen the 4-piece buckle up for a meteoric rise that’s been a hell of a ride; “Signing to Heavenly was a big deal for us,” offers Jake. “We’ve worshiped the label and its bands for a long time so it’s nice to be part of the family. It’s a culture; we’re all running in parallel.”

Like hopping aboard Willy Wonka’s psychedelic boat trip through their own funked-up factory, ‘Teeth’ puts the ‘itch’ into glitch and urges everyone to embrace the rave. Recorded with producer Ross Orton (The Fall, Roots Manuva, M.I.A, Arctic Monkeys) at his Sheffield recording studio, between a brothel and Fat White Family’s base, the vibrations of ‘Teeth’s chatter cut like fork lightning across a fog-filled Hope Valley. As the needle hits the groove, its threatening cowbell and motoric Techno beat buzzsaws Syd’s Mark E mantra, “I see grit in your teeth,” whilst a drum machine and frenetic guitars reinforce the party vibe. “We’re definitely a dance band,” Syd affirms. “If you can make someone move that’s a big thing.” Jake agrees; “When you can convince a person to subconsciously dance without understanding why, it’s a religious feeling and taps into this primal instinct.”

Shapeshifting through the band’s collaborative writing process, ‘Teeth’ offers an epic fusion of the band’s broad repertoire of influences from godfathers of early Techno, Stingray to Thelonious Monk’s jazzy piano riffs - not to mention LCD Soundsystem or Delta 5 bounce. “It works because there’s a conflict of what we each want from it,” Jake tells. “It’s like tectonic plates and that friction causes an earthquake. When we meet in the middle, ‘Teeth’ is what comes out.” Reworked from Syd’s electronic-heavy demo, laid-down at his Todmorden home through synthesizers and drum machine, the track’s climactic shakedown ignites a love of Detroit House, Acid House, Afrobeat and Cuban rhythms from his DJ beginnings and stepdad’s influence. “I’ve always been into Nigerian 70s funk, like William Onyeabor,” Syd tells. “It’s happy, jolly, danceable; I don’t think my own lyrics are that happy - but it’s not just about that. It’s about how great music can make people dance.”

Capturing moments to write, whether walking through woods, splitting crisp packets open at the local pubs around their northern hometowns or between chapters of reading Hunter S. Thompson and Sylvia Plath, Working Men’s Club put the groove first, unafraid to rear the wise heads on their younger shoulders. "We’re brought together by the fact we care about being 100% ourselves,” reveals Giulia. “We sing and talk about what needs to be said, to put it out of our minds and bodies. Music is an outlet, a medium to communicate.” Aspiring to the lyrical greats John Cooper Clarke, Lou Reed, Ian Curtis, Glen Campbell and Townes Van Zandt, the band first bonded over back catalogues rather than passing trends. “You should never deny your influences; you do things your own way,” suggests Syd. As for politics? “Bands like Squid, Black Midi, us, Orielles; we’re taken seriously, but aren’t politically adverse for sake of it,” Jake says. “Essentially, the country’s fucked and not enough of us are talking about it. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re a political band, but we’re not gonna, not talk about it.”

TRACK LISTING

A
1 Teeth
2 Teeth (Extended Mix)

B
1 Teeth (Gabe Gurnsey Remix)
2 Teeth (Gabe Gurnsey Dub)

Audiobooks are pleased to share a remix bundle for their latest single, ‘Friends in the Bubble Bath’, out now via Heavenly Recordings. The release features two remixes by Gabe Gurnsey (Factory Floor) and one each from Welsh songstress Gwenno and Audiobooks’ own David Wrench.

“I love audiobooks, and 'Friends in the Bubblebath' is brilliant,” Gwenno says. “I wanted to create a reflective atmosphere around Evangeline and David's lyrics, to try and compliment the story and that feeling of the party still trying to keep going at 3am, as parties tend to do.”

“It was a real pleasure to be asked to remix Audiobooks’ as I’m a big fan of theirs,” Gurnsey adds. “I wanted to take all that energy they exude vocally and musically and bring it onto the dance floor. I ended up working on two remixes which work side by side, reflecting that chemistry David and Evangeline have in their live performances.”

TRACK LISTING

A1 Gwenno Remix
A2 CBD Bath Oil Version
B1 Gabe Gurnsey's Gamma Ray Remix
B2 Gabe Gurnsey's Blubblebath Remix

If you want to know what Gabe Gurnsey’s debut album "Physical" sounds like, the first thing you should do is forget all about Factory Floor, the group he co-founded 13 years ago. Gone are the cold, lengthy, stripped back deconstructions of no wave electronica and industrial techno, abandoned in favour of something altogether warmer, torrid and… well, succinct.

“It’s a real departure from Factory Floor” he explains. “Yeah, that was the intention. There’s only one track over six minutes long! There’s only one crossover point on the song ‘Night Track’, which is 6’33” - that’s probably as close to Factory Floor as it gets. What I wanted to get into with "Physical" had more to do with exploring songwriting and structure. The album is very escapist in one sense even though I don’t want to escape from Factory Floor but what I do on my own has to be separate and it has to explore new avenues.”

Gurnsey started writing tracks in his downtime from the group early 2017 and by the start of that Summer he had 30 demos ready for work. He admits he worked very quickly initially but then gave the tracks 12 months to develop fully into a new sound.

And that new sound - a 21st Century take on muscular electro, Balearic synth pop, EBM, proto-Hacienda militant funk, early Chicago house and minimal, Neptunes-referencing beats - can be experienced in full on //Physical// the album released on Erol Alkan’s Phantasy label.

Encoded into the album is a seductive narrative, which recreates a night out. Gabe explains: “The record is a story. The way the 14 tracks are sequenced mirrors a night out from start to finish. “So even though it’s electronic dance music, it’s a record about clubbing even more than it’s a record to be played in clubs. It’s everything about the clubbing experience reflected in sound. Getting ready to go out, driving into town, arriving at the club, being on the dancefloor, how you get home afterwards early the next morning… even when you step outside to get some air, when you’re outside at 3am having a cigarette… even that is represented here. It’s about the whole experience.” The theme for the record also concerned how we can shed our real selves when going out, how we can almost adopt a new personality. This was an idea that helped him get used to a new part of the process and one he wasn’t initially comfortable with - stepping behind the mic. He didn’t want to be the singer, so in order to do it, he simply became someone else… or, to be precise, he became a number of different people. For all of the multitudes of different sounding male voices on //Physical// are all Gabe thanks to the wonders of vocal processing. (All of the female voices belong to his partner, the Manchester musician Tilly Morris of Grimm Twins, who also helped him co-author some of the lyrics on tracks such as the Miss Nicky Trax and Missy Elliott-referencing clipped electro funk of ‘Heavy Rubber’.) He explains how the theme of changing one’s persona helped him crack the approach to introducing vocals: “It’s similar to how our online selves or avatars differ from our actual selves and that was key to some of the vocal pitching on the record. All of the deeper vocal stuff on there is actually me.”

All dance music is utopian and even when the clubber is lost on the dancefloor there is still a longing for a deeper level of escape. ‘New Kind’, is the track on //Physical// that most clearly references the club music of Manchester, the city where the album was written and recorded. It calls to mind the ecstatic and organic disco not disco of Quando Quango’s ‘Love Tempo’ and the gritty urban post punk grooves of A Certain Ratio, with Gabe playing live guitar, drums and percussion, bolstered with brash synthesized horn stabs. Just as this music was a paean to the imagined American dancefloors of the mid-80s, he recognises the same longing for escape into the American dream. Perhaps pointing to the idea that we’ll never be free from our longings, Gabe sings: “We all think we’re living in L.A.”

Cars and driving feature prominently on //Physical//. Gabe says that he drew on the feeling of being “untouchable” when in the passenger seat of a car on a night out, while making one of the album’s many standout moments, the pulsating and noirish throb of ‘Sweet Heat’. The song references his period living in L.A. where he found himself ill at ease: " I love L.A but I missed the grittiness of England" This sense of discomfort is teased out by a typically blazing and transportative guest spot by New York saxophonist Peter Gordon.

Gurnsey admits that no matter how warm and sensuous he tries to make the music - “I wanted to explore the more celebratory sound of dance music… I didn’t want to make a hostile record” - it was impossible to keep a note of unease from creeping in. “I think you can detect an air of paranoia to it. The synths I’ve used and the sax underline that.”

This sense of paranoia suggests that not everything is as it seems on initial contact. Gurnsey admits that this is because there is a second reading of the album’s theme for those willing to dig for it.

“If you wanted to see it that way”, he says, “the whole album could represent a night out experienced via a virtual reality headset from the safety of your own flat.”

Suddenly the lyrics to opening track ‘Ultra Clear Sound’ - which calls to mind Model 500, early house music from Chicago Trax and glacial European cold wave, balanced out by the human touches of spacious live percussion - make much more sense: “Maybe I just don’t need you anymore.” He isn’t talking to a spurned lover or former friend but instead addressing a retreat from the real world itself.

He explains how the album’s theme revealed itself slowly while he was writing and recording: “I didn’t intend there to be a concept for the record but as I was making it, I started realising that it could be interpreted as if it were about virtual reality. So it ended up having this narrative arc where it wasn’t exactly clear whether it was about a night out or a simulacrum inside the VR world.

“At one point each track was going to be a different room inside a virtual club but in the end, thanks to sequencing, it ended up feeling a lot more like a night out and I thought I’d leave it up to the listener to suss out exactly whether this was real or not.”

Gurnsey praises Phantasy boss Erol Alkan for his “hands-on” approach to the album he mixed and offered additional production to: “I first met Erol when I remixed Daniel Avery’s Drone Logic for the label in 2013 - I was invited down to his studio to mix the track together. His production approach is great in the way he tweaks ideas that I have but doing it in a way that complements the integrity of the track instead of changing it altogether. To have that knowledge and creative energy from Erol during the writing and mixing of the record was integral to its outcome.”

It’s time to take a trip into a fantasy world where nothing is quite as it seems. It’s time to get real.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brilliant new full-length from Factory Floor's Gabe Gurnsey. Edging more towards the synthy themes hinted at in the friendly technoid excursions of FF. With simmering new-beat throbs, robotic vox and the ever present x0x percussion lending the drive and momentum of our comparative benchmark. Brilliant stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1 Ultra Clear Sound
2 You Can
3 Temazzy
4 Harder Rhythm
5 Sweet Heat
6 New Kind
7 Heavy Rubber
8 In States
9 I Get
10 Version
11 Eyes Over
12 AM Crystal
13 Night Track

14 The Last Channel