Fabric 15
Tyrant: Craig Richards

Craig Richards is the best DJ you don’t know. Why? Because he eschews the blurry time zone-treading lifestyle favored by his Tyrant counterpart, Lee Burridge, focusing instead on his weekly residency at Fabric. On the third of the Tyrant mixes, Craig handles both discs, finding the records that leave even the most devoted trainspotters throwing up their arms in frustration. Hint: It’s because Richards really is something special; both as a selector and with his flawless live mixing. Disc one delves deep into Germany’s finest labels, extracting pearls from Sender, Trelik, Multicolor and Perlon. Oddly enough, one of the highlights comes from a tune reminiscent of Green Velvet’s "La La Land" in its utter pisstake of dancefloor hedonism-- John Shananagans “Charlie’s on the Dancefloor” featuring Mu. Disc two starts pitched down and is “much more psychedelic than any of the drugs,” to quote the Villalobos-rivaling vocoder on Jimi Tenor’s “Muchmo.” Dettinger picks up the the pace later in the mix with his off-kilter rudiments on “Totentanz” and Richards ends with the sound of a grimy London basement with The Warlocks’ sped-up two-step synth stabs on “Silence is Defeat.” Being a homebody never sounded so relevant.