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“What could have been a mere anthology of the label's uniformly excellent 2004 output is, additionally, a meticulously assembled personal narrative. This is a label that balances its musical and commercial aspirations with an earthy, no-bullshit disposition and-- let's say it-- the world's best fucking handclaps.” - Nick Sylvester, Pitchfork, in the heady days of 2004.

Behold, Compilation #2. A compendium what are arguably the best prime-era DFA cuts, mostly all recorded and/or remixed at the old DFA Studios on W. 13th Street (with some notable exceptions), released as 12-inches and then compiled onto a 3xCD set for convenience because, at the time, people actually bought CDs more than vinyl.

Now, in the spirit of time not really being much of a linear thing anymore, and for our own selfish desire to have this version of Liquid Liquid’s “Bellhead,” produced by the DFA, finally committed to wax, we have reverse engineered this thing back onto vinyl and presented it as a four-record boxed set.

We went back and found the master tapes or files for each song - a not insignificant effort given our habit of disorganization. We then rather painstakingly resequenced and remastered it with the guy we trust with such things: Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service. The lacquers Bob cut were plated and pressed at what we believe to be one of the best pressing plants in the country: QRP in Salina, Kansas.

We tell you all of this to say: we took this shit pretty seriously. Because we felt like it was important and because we felt like some folks would really appreciate it. It sounds remarkable. It looks great. (Rob Carmichael re-did the original packaging, adding a new photo from DFA OG Tim Saccenti from one of the original parties at W. 13th St.) Of course, we somehow can’t stop ourselves from making labeling errors - Pixeltan’s “That’s the Way I Like It” somehow escaped the center labels on the fourth record. It’s kind of the DFA curse. Has to be!

DFA Compilation #2 Vinyl Tracklist

SIDE A

1. Black Leotard Front - Casual Friday

SIDE B

1. J.O.Y. - Sunplus (DFA Remix)
2. The Juan MacLean - I Robot
3. The Juan MacLean - Dance Hall Modulator Dub

SIDE C

1. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Rise (DFA Remix)
2. Black Dice - Wasteder
3. J.O.Y. - Sunplus

SIDE D

1. LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Pretentious Version)
2. The Rapture - Sister Saviour (DFA Dub)

SIDE E

1. Liquid Liquid - Bellhead
2. LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Crass Version)

SIDE F

1. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - El Monte
2. The Rapture - Alabama Sunshine

SIDE G

1. Pixeltan - Get Up / Say What (DFA Remix)
2. LCD Soundsystem - Beat Connection (Extended Disco Dub)

SIDE H

1. Pixeltan - That’s The Way I Like It
2. Black Dice - Endless Happiness (EYE Remix)
3. The Juan MacLean - Less Than Human

DFA2212 / 2009

 A1. I'll Keep On Loving You

B1. Living Without Your Love

B2. Living Without Your Love (Instrumental Workout)

The Weeks Island project began in 2018 when, itching for something during a break from his gig playing guitar for the Grammy-winning Cajun group Lost Bayou Ramblers, Jonny Campos ventured to his bandmate’s house and recorded a series of deep, amoebic, ambient pedal steel passages across two afternoons. It wasn’t all heavy, though: he paid that bandmate, Kirkland Middleton, in Cane’s chicken strips.

The tracks on Droste are named for bodies of water that no longer exist, their names wiped from maps thanks to the disintegrating shorelines of Southern Louisiana. That feeling of impermanence hangs over this record - the tracks don’t so much begin and end as slip in and out of your consciousness. It can be a serene passive listen or a deep one that marinates long after the runout.

Droste originally appeared in 2020 on a local label named Nouveau Electric Records. We heard about it through LCD’s Korey Richey, an erstwhile Lost Bayou member, and began a years-long process to cut the record to vinyl, a task made difficult by the sharp crests of harmonic distortion that dot the record. After more than a few tries and the addition of three brand new tracks, Bob Weston, as he does, sank a beautiful sounding cut, and then passed it to the gentle hands at Furnace Record Pressing in Alexandria, VA. (Always sweat the details.)

Tracklist:
1) Scirocco
2) Automatic (feat. Peaches)
3) Graffiti In Tehran
4) My Love Is For Real (feat. Haddaway) [Dance Mix]
5) What Is It Like (feat. Pamela Anderson)
6) Rein (feat. Yung Hurn & Egyptian Lover) 
7) Put Me In Your Mobile Phone
8) Catalyst
9) My Love Is For Real (feat. Haddaway) [Live At The Cathedral]

Wolfram makes his triumphant return to DFA with Amadeus, a newly refined take on the Euro-disco pop he’s become known for over the past several years. Released by Public Possession overseas, the record takes the spirit of his 2011 debut full-length and focuses it more specifically towards the dance floor, helped as always by a variety of collaborators: Peaches, Haddaway, Egyptian Lover, Yung Hurn, Pamela Anderson, and more. A singular producer and entertainer, but coexisting in many worlds, Wolfram embeds a good sense of humor throughout his music. From the artists he works with, to his distinctively gleaming melodies, as well as his DJ sets at the likes of Robert Johnson, Wilden Renate, and Griessmuehle, Wolfram is a presence like no other. 

On Amadeus, Wolfram zeroes in on the most earworm-y aspects of his past work, concentrating it down until we’re left with succinct, dopamine-inducing bangers. Tracks like “Graffiti in Tehran” and “Rein” recall the hi-octane crunch of artists like Daft Punk, while “Automatic” and “My Love Is For Real” both make use of soaring disco piano, taking the listener on a dance floor odyssey. The world he creates is one of high-gloss and high spirits – low brow, high concept with an Italo tinge, creating a unique brand of anthemic futuristic disco. The album begs one to come along for an irresistible ride in a beat-up vintage Ferrari, faux fur-lined bucket seats not included.

European pressing from Public Possession. Limited to 300 copies worldwide.

a1. Automatic (feat. Peaches) [Dub]
b1. Automatic (feat. Peaches) [Rex The Dog Remix Instrumental]
b2. Automatic (feat. Peaches) [Cable Toy Remix]

DFA2433 / 2014 

DFA debut. Vocals by Andrew Butler of Hercules & Love Affair 

A. Talking To You (Feat. Andrew Butler of Hercules & Love Affair)) [Club Mix}

B1. Can't Remember (Jacques Renault & Mark Verbos Remix)

B2. Can't Remember (Secret Circuit Remix)

Tracklist: 
1) High Tide
2) High Tide (Secret Circuit)
3) High Tide (Dr. Dunks) 

Christened High Tide after the sudden rising of the LA River basin during a particularly epic and rare rainfall, this cosmic slop funk jam was born from the minds of Devin Flynn (Pixeltan) and Eddie Ruscha (Secret Circuit), two individuals with a deep connection to Los Angeles tap water sources. While traipsing through the aisles of an Atwater Village bodega, the two mustered up a plan to create a rhythmic piece so delectable as to turn peoples’ heads inside out and pummel the senses with a wobbly Jah Wobble bass sound and a toy drum machine “no toy” style back beat. They figured if they laced it up with enough electronic scuzz, the masses would be sure to want to sip from its nectar. 

When DFA got wind, it was all systems go, and from then on, all relevant parties knew that they should sit on the track for at least five years before it was released, otherwise the world at large would not be ready for it. The remixes are by Eddie himself, as Secret Circuit, and Dr. Dunks, AKA Eric Duncan, a fellow Angeleno (at least at heart). Eric and Devin rolled through the streets as small children, shredding curbs and tagging local ice cream trucks, so it was inevitable they would reconnect and jam on High Tide. 

Devin Flynn is an animator, musician and teacher who has worked on projects like Gary Panter's web series Pink Donkey and the Fly and MTV2’s Wonder Showzen. He has previously released on DFA with Pixeltan, a trio—Flynn, Hisham Bharoocha of Black Dice, and singer Mika Yoneta—that recorded with The DFA at the label’s inception, creating two seminal singles. Eddie Ruscha is another DFA veteran, having remixed artists including Wolfram and Museum of Love. He has been making music for decades, as Secret Circuit and with a myriad of other aliases and collaborators, in addition to recording under his own name. He has released on labels like Beats in Space and Emotional Response, among others.

Tracklist: 
1) (Downtown) Dancing
2) Hey Hey
3) SCATTERHEAD
4) Loud Light
5) Blue On Blue
6) DEATH
7) Sad Money
8) California Dali
9) Stick it to the Station
10) Little Instant 

“We wanted to find a way to interrogate technology more deeply,” explains Claire L. Evans, one-third of the pop group YACHT. “From the ground up,” adds her partner and YACHT founder Jona Bechtolt. The group—rounded out by longtime collaborator Rob Kieswetter—would know: their seventeen-year career has been marked by a series of conceptual stunts, experiments, and attempts to use technology “sideways.” Even the band’s name speaks to this: YACHT is an acronym for Young Americans Challenging High Technology. 

Chain Tripping is their seventh album and third with DFA Records. Recorded between the band’s home in Los Angeles and Marfa, Texas, the ten-song collection marks a shift in the group’s relationship with technology. Rather than trying to comment on existing platforms from within their own filter bubble, the band stripped their process down and rebuilt it using a technology entirely new to them—Artificial Intelligence, and more specifically, machine learning. 

In order to compose Chain Tripping, YACHT invented their own AI songwriting process, a journey of nearly three years. They first tried to discover any existing YACHT formulas by collaborating with engineers and creative technologists to explore their own back catalogue of 82 songs using machine learning tools. Eventually they created their own working method, painstakingly stitching meaningful fragments of plausible nonsense together from extensive, seemingly endless fields of machine-generated music and lyrics, themselves emerging from custom models created with the help of generous experts in neural networks, deep learning, and AI.

The band’s characteristically frenetic pop sound is toned down on songs like “(Downtown) Dancing,” a scotch-tape disco track that marries an anxious, funky bass groove with the lo-fi sound of the NSynth, a neural synthesizer that uses a machine learning process called latent space interpolation to imagine new sounds in between traditional instrumentation. The NSynth appears all over Chain Tripping, notably on the jewel-like “Blue on Blue,” a euphoric love song wound with surprisingly omnidirectional melodies. The generative composition process “broke us out of a mold of concise, formal, four-bar patterns and let us accept longer, meandering riffs,” explains Kieswetter; like most of Chain Tripping’s standout tracks, the song contains lyrical fragments that coalesce, collapse, and reform with fluid ease. The process also surfaced surreal idioms, like “Loud Light’s” anthemic “I’m so in love / I can feel it in my car,” or the lovely phrase “palm of your eye,” which pins the lilting chorus of the driving “SCATTERHEAD” into place, a song that splits the difference between postmodern rock and no-wave dance music with wiggly ease.

“We saw this album as an opportunity to teach the machine our values, our history, our community, and our influences,“ adds Evans. “This record is a product of a technological moment that is rapidly evolving. It taught us everything we wanted to know about ourselves: how we work, what moves us, and which ambiguities are worth leaning into. We didn’t set out to produce algorithmically-generated music that could ‘pass’ as human. We set out to make something meaningful. Something entirely our own.”