Five on Friday with Mark Collings

There are some names that don’t shout about themselves but carry weight all the same, the kind of operator whose CV reads like a love letter to the capital’s underground. Mark Collings is one of them.

His story starts in the 1990s, cutting his teeth at TAG Records when the shop counter was still where the scene’s real conversations happened. From there came the bookings every London selector chases at some point in their life: Fabric, Plastic People, Turnmills. Three rooms, three philosophies, all of them schools in their own right.

Alongside the booth work, Mark co-founded the legendary Records of the Fortnight at Sun & 13 Cantons, the sort of Soho meeting point where the music industry actually was the industry. Carl Cox, DJ Sneak, Marco Carola and a roll call of other heavyweights all passed through, drawn by a residency that understood the assignment.

Then came the hiatus. The noughties pulled plenty of ’90s players away from the booth, and Mark was one of them. But the good ones tend to find their way back, and his return brought him to Alfresco Festival, Wiggle, and an early residency with the Infamous Tryouts for the Human Race, where he quietly built a reputation as a last set specialist. There is no harder job in dance music than holding a room that has already given you everything, and Mark, by all accounts, does it for fun.

These days you’ll find him on the Kent coast, with The Red Telephone in Margate as his home base and a diary that keeps pulling him further afield. Here are his five for this Friday.

A shimmering trip of a track leaning into a psychedelic Fuck ck Buttons territory. A late hours beauty.

An absolute barnstormer of a track with amazing production and a throbbing bassline to keep the crowd totally locked in.

A rerub of a cover version! Baldelli dials down the BPMs and turns Marco Fratty’s galloping,Hi NRG cover of Spencer Davis Group’s 60s classic “I’m a Man” into a superb ‘ bridging’ track when you want to slide effortlessly from warm up duties into something more intense.

Great, filthy dancefloor bomb remixed by the inimitable Peaches featuring her unmistakeable,sassy commentary.

This album has been out for a while but remains a down tempo,genre busting gem of a release by Dublin’s Mike Wilson with this wonderful track being the standout for me. Acid tinged, Gospel inflected, rousing, end-of-nighter perfection. 

by Damo Red Telephone

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