11. Factory FloorTwo Different Ways
If we’re talking about gateway experiences, this is it. I think this came out a few months before I saw Factory Floor for the first time and that’s where I met John Doran, which changed my life completely. I saw John before they came and gave him a CD and he liked the name of the act and my shirt. So I felt kind of buzzing after that encounter. Factory Floor came on and, fuck me, oh my god, I’d never heard anything like it.
If it was just Dom up there with his modular synth, it wouldn’t have been what it was. You had Nick who looked cool as fuck, she had a guitar she was whacking with a violin bow, which was laid down on the table and then she’d sample bits of her voice. A completely weird harmony of things going on. And then Gabe on drums. Gabe is still to this day the best drummer I’ve ever seen. What really gives the records they did around that period their shape is Gabe. So when you’re watching three people work in this completely brilliant army together, it just absolutely blew my mind. I remember dancing away and making eye contact with John and there was just this nod of recognition that we were watching something brilliant. 12 months after that, I was going on tour with them in Europe. That was an amazing experience. So if we’re talking about gateway things with this list, this has got to be the most gateway drug record of the whole thing. It feels like you can trace everything I’ve done back to that ground zero gig.
