A fantastic compilation of the, er, "dancier" records released by the legendary Factory label in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Refreshingly they've bypassed the "big guns" - New Order, Joy Division, Happy Mondays - and gone for some of the more obscure acts such as The Swamp Children, Blurt and X-O-Dus (I'd forgotten how good their "English Black Boys" was). Listening to this compilation - excellently annotated by compiler Bill Brewster - a number of things become clear:
1. New Order's Bernard Sumner and ACR's Donald Johnson were a formidable production team, as the wonderful tracks by Section 25, 52nd Street, Marcel King, Quando Quango etc attest;
2. Marcel King's sublime "Reach for Love" should have been an absolutely enormous hit;
3. "Cool as Ice" by 52nd Street is up there with "Blue Monday" as a crucial 1980s electro-dance record
4. The quality of Factory/Factory Benelux/Factory US's output during the period was unbelievably high
The quality of the pressing and mastering are extremely good.
Overall, I can't recommend this enough to Factory freaks, Manc maniacs or '80s scholars.