We Love This Album: Fabric 13 - Michael Mayer

Fate conspires to make BlackPlastic write about Fabric 13 today.



Having started the usual commute to this most understatedly great Fabric mix it was perhaps sheer coincidence that lead to what occurred when the pages of The Guardian was spread open at lunchtime. Or perhaps it was sheer quality...



The Guardian are currently running a serialised look at 1,000 albums you must hear before you die and guess what lie there today, amongst the Meat Loaf and Cilla Black (BlackPlastic kids you not) albums? Only the very Fabric CD BlackPlastic had been reminiscing over that morning.



Fabric 13 isn't the most obvious choice for an album you must hear before you die. With its subtle yet intricatly composed micro-house it's not even the most obvious choice of Fabric albums you must hear before you die.



What Fabric 13 is however, is truly, truly excellent. The first act boasts the sweeping strings of Richard Davis' needy 'Bring Me Closer' and the plodding yet gorgeously atmospheric Piano Mix of Westbam's 'Oldschool, Baby'.



Later on, whilst there is an underlying pop sensibility behind most of what features here there are also darker moments with Thomas Schaeben & Geiger's seemingly Crash inspired 'Really Real' and Magnet's techno heavy 'Abendstern' for example. At all times the structure and pacing of Fabric 13 is also excellent, and a Jackson mix of M83's 'Run Into Flowers' shakes things up in just the right manner.



Starting and ending with two different mixes of Heiko Voss' 'I Think About You' is a final masterstroke. Most tracks wouldn't be good enough to pull it off... This one is, the Geiger Mix starting the album with a slow building storm of acid rain, spacious drums and wavering vocals whilst the original mix finishes the album off with a sweet, swooning pop song. It's a fitting closure for such a love-able mix CD and a revelation that it actually got the nod from the mainstream press.



BP x



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Album Review: Fabriclive 36 - James Murphy and Pat Mahoney

When the kids all ran up to BlackPlastic last month, excitedly asking "What's the new Fabric album like, the one mixed by James Murphy and Pat Mahoney from LCD Soundsystem?" BP didn't know what to say. Other than "Bloody Royal Mail" that is.

Having digested it several times over it can now be summarised thusly: It is somewhat camp, warm, bubbly in places and fairly unpredictable. Opening and closing with Peter Gordon & the Love of Life Orchestra was a good move, with 'Beginning of the Heartbreak' rapidly evolving from a throbbing, strutting piece of kraut rock to a rocking disco loved-up on pills type 'BlackPlastic, THIS is your life' moment.

No review can do this type of mix justice as, just like The Glimmers' recent Eskimo V, there are too many left hand turns to account for. Still, Baby Oliver's 'Prime Time' is probably about riding on the Back To The Future time-travelling train back to the year 1976 and Donald Byrd offers up warm Dad-friendly hedonistic disco-house to get the feet tapping on 'Love Has Come Around'.

G.Q.'s 'Lies' is like Daft Punk 15 years too early, all twisted basslines and vocal snippets twisting around itself to create a wonderful musical collage. Still Going's 'Still Going Theme' marries lush minimal keyboards to large, echoing bass in one of the (slightly) more modern cuts included.

Fabriclive 36 is very much a product of love... At the times where it doesn't feature an excitedly loved-up vocal or a heart-stopping string riff you can rely on the fact that there'll be some obscure gem no-one you know has ever heard. This is real crate digging stuff and it has all been mixed though the first ever model of DJ mixes, giving the whole outing a very warm and analogue feel as the vinyl crackler and pops its way through the mix.

'I Feel Good Put Your Pants On' instructs the bouncy and damn funky Jackson Jones cut. Fabriclive 36 feels just like that... "Don't, don't... Please don't leave me!" cries closing the track. And you won't want to.

BP x