Records of the Week (February 20, 2026)

What we're spinning at VF HQ.

Three special releases from The Vinyl Factory, "daytime" dance music and more.

Contributions from VF's Kelly Doherty and Alex Flowers.

Lamisi

Let Us Clap

(Real World Records)

A future-forward Ghanaian sound rooted in the traditional clapping rhythms taught to Lamisi from her time spent with the women of Zebilla in northern Ghana. It sits in a growing space where club music, idiosyncratic electronics, and diasporic traditions blur - music that works just as well in an attentive listening space, as in a collective space to dance.

Synthesising shifts Lamisi's vocals from a person to a presence, the phrasing becoming part of the percussion itself, weaving amongst the other instruments and, in turn, accentuating the humanness of each strike: the snap of a drum, the click of a clave, the sound of hands clapping. Each tonal element is given centre stage when it enters, which gives a feeling of participating in a shared rhythmic space where everything is equal.

There are no big drops or dramatic highs and lows — just a groove you’re invited to stay inside. This is where the record doesn’t so much “draw from” traditional Ghanaian clapping rhythms as sample them, instead inheriting sensibility around what music is for: collective and social. Alex Flowers

Mella Dee

UK Minimal Vol. 1 & 2

(The Vinyl Factory / Nothing Stays The Same)

Doncaster producer and DJ Mella Dee sharpens his focus with UK Minimal Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, twin releases issued through The Vinyl Factory that formalise a sound he's been orbiting for years: stripped-back, pressure-driven club music built from reduction rather than excess. Released on heavyweight vinyl and presented as the first dispatches from his Nothing Stays The Same imprint, the records frame minimalism as precision.

Across both volumes, Mella Dee pares his dance music to its structural essentials. Kick, bass and texture carry the weight, with groove emerging through micro-movement, eschewing obvious peaks and falls. These are tools for the floor but drawing from UK bassline lineage while leaning firmly into hypnotic, tech-house-adjacent repetition.

Music ready-built for packed rooms. Kelly Doherty

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Nathan Fake

Evaporator

(InFiné)

Nathan Fake's Evaporator has an ease that comes from deep familiarity with one's own musical language. Rather than pushing outward, the record turns inward, refining the melodic and textural signatures that have long defined his work into something dependably enjoyable as another Nathan Fake entry.

Across its eleven tracks, synth lines build and dissolve in soft gradients, with rhythmic frameworks gently shifting beneath them rather than driving them forward. Throughout, Fake favours patience over momentum with tracks that settle into themselves and slowly change. It's the musical version of a deeply satisfying TikTok video, ever morphing and always resolving cleanly. There's little here to challenge the listener or to declare a new direction for Fake, but he remains a master of the gentle, shuffling IDM he trades in – a trait he is all to aware of having labeled Evaporator as "daytime dance" music.

Evaporator doesn't re-invent the wheel, but for fans of Fake's consistent, soothing brand of electronic music, it's another solid project. Kelly Doherty

Venna

MALIK

(The Vinyl Factory / Cashmere Thoughts)

South London saxophonist and producer Venna releases his debut album MALIK as a limited edition on The Vinyl Factory.

Pressed on heavyweight vinyl and housed in full-colour packaging, MALIK moves with confidence across jazz, soul, R&B and hip-hop, but its real coherence lies in atmosphere rather than genre. Venna builds environments — spacious, cacophonous, emotional — where breath, tone and rhythm carry equal weight. Collaborations with Jorja Smith, MIKE, Leon Thomas and Smino feel less like features than passing encounters, voices emerging from and dissolving back into the record's wider sultry, improvisatory sonic architecture.

Named after Venna's birth name, meaning "king" or "leader," MALIK is a declaration of personal intent from an artist who has cut his teeth working with names as big as Beyoncé, Burna Boy and Wizkid. Showing that his instrumentation is no mere backdrop, he crafts a cohesive sound where jamming saxophones, moody guitar lines and vocal offerings occupy the same space and play equal roles in drawing the listener in.

A reflective, texturally rich record that showcases how genre lines can be smoothly transgressed when the vision is defined. Kelly Doherty