A year on from first being told to down tools and go home en masse, people in the UK find themselves in the perverse situation of comparing lockdowns. Despite the nearing possibility of being able to do things like go to the pub or dance in a club, there’s a creeping nostalgia for the not-so-distant days of sourdough starters and DIY haircuts. London-based producer Facta, aka Oscar Henson, will remember those early days of the new strangeness with an acute affection. Working reduced hours at his day job (the magazine he works for had paused its monthly print runs) meant he was able to focus for a while on something else. Namely: sitting on his balcony, drinking coffee, and writing an album. The result, Blush, sounds exactly like that blissful setting.
Facta launched his Wisdom Teeth label (co-founded with his friend K-Lone, whose own debut LP was one of last year’s highlights) in 2014. It served as an outpost not just for his own productions, but also those of a nebulous cast of acquaintances with a shared interest in the unexplored creases between soundsystem staples like dubstep, grime, UK funky, garage, and jungle. This brief, nameless, yet productive movement was always more about trying new things than being restrained by tempo or technical prowess. Wisdom Teeth’s output has embodied this same considered omnivorousness, and the soundsystem influences are all present on Blush too (in the Silkie-esque pulse of “Verge,” the joyous funky lurch of “On Deck,” or the almost autonomic weave of “Blush”).
More significant, though, is Facta’s own newfound devotion to melody and, for want of a better word, feeling. Tracks like “Iso Stream” and “Blush” are almost generative in the way each element swirls in and out of the dance, led by nothing more than melodic curiosity. There’s a tendency to be a little noodly at times—opener “Sistine (Plucks)” risks veering into video-game loading-screen territory—but this matters less than it otherwise might in the album’s broader, exploratory context. A select palette hems the thing in, and he shows a conscious effort to thread each track together, maintaining a kind of reverence for the album format in the process. Vibraphone, delicate but expansive pads, and intermittent fizzes of white noise appear throughout. “Iso Stream” and “Diving Birds” (a collaboration with Parris) are both visited by the same cooing vocal sample: chopped like a garage hook, but soft and folksy in its timbre. The drums are delicate and organic, rather than being engineered to exacting club-system specs, and the songs themselves cast off the structural expectations of DJs dependent on neat intros, drops, and breakdowns.
Blush unfurls slowly, like the first spring blooms. And just like those buds poking up through the soil, it’s guided by its own small sense of daring exploration. This is most typified by “Brushes.” The track glides on an exquisite groove, building and building like a maximalist trance record, but with all the bluster stripped out—leaving, instead, wire-brush synths and gorgeous, gloopy kick drums. Just like snowdrops in March, the result is something modest in its own beauty—and all the more charming for it.
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