Often, live music can feel almost as rote an experience as the nine-to-five: queue, beer, whoop and good night. In 2012, however, Factory Floor – then a trio – played a three-hour set at London’s Tate Modern. Members of the audience reportedly became so transported, they started taking their clothes off.
Inspired by early synth music, industrial post-punk and the arty end of the dance music spectrum, Factory Floor acquired a reputation around the turn of the decade as one of the loudest, most exhilarating bands around – a band whose totalitarian-sounding loops required you to dance. An obvious kindred spirit, New Order’s Stephen Morris, produced their self-titled 2013 debut album for the DFA label, co-founded by another obvious kindred spirit, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy. It was rather good.
Since that record, FF have parted ways (amicably, they say) with keyboard player Dominic Butler. Working as a duo, Nik Colk Void and Gabriel Gurnsey have slung out what little fat was on their rig and made a minimal techno record on modular synths and drum machines. It is very good indeed.
Both techno and industrial music make a virtue of repetition and dehumanisation; 25 25 is uncompromisingly machine music, but keeps the body very much in view: everything here bounces, no sound lands dead, no matter how many times they loop it. The sound is palpably analogue, aloof but inviting. You couldn’t hear Chicago house on the first album like you could hear Detroit techno; here, you clock disembodied handclaps; sweat drips down the walls.
Increasingly playing late-night sets, the duo moved clubwards. Void has transferred from guitar to synths; it’s her heavily pitch-shifted, dub-effect vocals that (barely) adorn the tracks; not singing, just intoning the odd word or phrase. “Work,” commands Meet Me at the End, the lubricated opening track, which has something of the percolating wobble and Doppler vocal effects of Underworld to it. Five minutes in, it sounds like a gangmaster is cracking a whip.
“Sad face,” breathes Void on the title track, battered by subtly mounting acid squelches; “awkward”. There’s no obvious joy or release on 25 25 – it’s not that housey – but Factory Floor aren’t just forbidding noiseniks hung up on post-punk any more: you can hear them having a lot of fun.
One of 25 25’s standout tracks, Ya, features that one repeated syllable while a rubbery hook plays out and percussive motifs (stuttering hi-hat, one-finger synth drip) unfurl for seven minutes. It sounds like German for “yes”; mostly comedy bored – “ja, ja, ja” – sometimes more doom-laden. The whole thing makes you want to punch the air – or maybe even strip off.
