This Friday past at London’s ICA there was a connection of the generations as Factory Floor played a set in support of Chris & Cosey. It was, as ever from one of our favourite groups, a terrific performance that saw a disjointed and curt reworking of early single ‘Lying’. But enough of the past, now into the future: as we told you last week, April will see the release of Factory Floor’s new single ‘~(R E A L L O V E)’ on the excellent Optimo label. The good gents of Optimo being adept at knowing what to do with a prime carcass of heavy electronic music, and have thus carved the track into a sleek euphoric banger, which we have the pleasure of presenting to you below. There’s also the great news that DJ Twitch of Optimo will be playing at Factory Floor’s surround sound warehouse gig on March 25th. You can buy tickets here. We also had a chat with JD Twitch (aka Keith McIvor) about Factory Floor and his remix, which you can read below.
Factory Floor – R E A L L O V E (Optimo remix) by theQuietusHullo Keith. When did you first encounter Factory Floor, and what did they do to you, and why were you inspired to release ‘~(R E A L L O V E)’?
I had heard about but never heard Factory Floor and thought they might be something I’d like when I noticed they were supporting Fuck Buttons in Glasgow early last year. I went along and was completely and utterly blown away. At one point I caught the eye of an old friend and we both just burst out laughing at how amazing they were – it was as if my dream band had been made a reality. I was putting together the line up for a one day festival we were curating and the next day looked into having them come and play, which they did. It turned out that they were managed by Paul Smith who I have known for many years and it was actually his suggestion that perhaps I’d like to remix one of their songs and release it on Optimo Music. How could I possibly refuse?
What were you trying to achieve with the remix? It’s pretty euphoric…
There is so much bland dance music out there. There is also so much dance music out there that is "noisy" but in a really bad way. I wanted to do something that was super intense – a wall of euphoric sound but that wasn’t noise in an inane ear grating way. I also liked the idea of not doing something totally linear that built to a single peak but rather swelled and ebbed with several peaks. Ultimately I was trying to capture how they make me feel when I have seen them live.
Factory Floor have become evangelists for Glasgow, always full of beans about the response they get when they play in the city. What is it about them that Glaswegians respond to, do you reckon?
The energy, the intensity, the hypnotic element, the originality and probably most importantly, the groove.
