It’s one thing being a fan and supporter of a record label over a long period of time; it’s quite another being entrusted with putting together a compilation to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
That’s the honour that was bestowed upon LA DJ and radio presenter Travis Holcombe (pictured above), whose weekly Freaks Only show on KCRW has often been the first place that fans around the world have been able to hear the latest releases from Belgian label Eskimo Recordings.
The result of that collaboration is FREAKS ONLY Eskimo Selects (2014-2026), a mammoth 25-track collection of the second half of the label’s existence, featuring some of the most revered names in the world of indie dance (for want of a better term), including Moscoman, Terr, Man Power, Aeroplane, Red Axes, Mind Enterprises, NTEIBINT and Curses.
‘Indie dance’ hardly does justice to Eskimo or the new comp; touching on nu disco, post-punk, Italo, EBM, oddball house and more, it’s more a case of knowing the Eskimo sound when you hear it – something that Holcombe says is key to the label’s appeal and longevity.
“History is littered with labels that did one sound really well, then beat the sound to death and disappeared,” he says. “The beauty of Eskimo is how they have always been full of surprises and exciting curveballs to keep you on your toes.”
As well as the stellar catalogue of singles, EPs and full length albums that the label has released since 2001, it’s known for putting out some of the most essential comps in the game – the Next Wave Acid Punx series compiled by Curses, Mr Norris Changes Brains by Richard Norris (Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, The Grid) and Bill Brewster’s Tribal Rites to name just three examples.
So for Holcombe, being asked to add to the legacy was no small matter: “It was a great honour to have been asked,” he said. “Eskimo is a label that I’ve been a fan of for a long time, and they have such a tremendous legacy of releasing some of my favorite compilations of all-time, so it’s pretty cool to have one with the FREAKS ONLY name as part of their discography now. As a music fanatic, that’s like getting called on stage by one of your favorite bands to play tambourine on a song or something.
“Eskimo has been incredibly important to me and the development of FREAKS ONLY. For one thing, the releases have expanded my musical vocabulary immeasurably. Curses’ Next Wave Acid Punx series is the clearest recent example. I came up on punk and post-punk, so I knew a lot of those records individually, but Curses draws a straight line from Suicide and Front 242 through EBM and new beat and acid house to what people like Boy Harsher and Nuovo Testamento are doing right now. It reframed a bunch of music I already knew and sent me looking for a lot more that I didn’t.
“That’s what the best Eskimo compilations do – they’re not just a collection of great tracks, they’re an argument about how the tracks are related. In my own way, I try to draw those sonic connections with my sets on FREAKS ONLY as well.”
It’s a measure of Holcombe’s level of Eskimo fandom that the bulk of the track list happened in practically no time at all, as if he had been waiting for years for the opportunity to come along.
“When [label boss] Nadiem first brought up the possibility of putting together a compilation of my Eskimo favorites spanning the years I was on the radio, I think I spent about an hour going through my collection to come up with an 18 song compilation that I sent him,” Holcombe said.
“Nadiem suggested that maybe I should beef it up to 25 tracks to reflect the 25th anniversary of the label. At that point, I did a deep dive and went through everything the label had ever released. That took a couple of days to listen to everything, but I found some gems that I had overlooked when they were initially released. From there, it was just a matter of sequencing the tracks in an order that flowed well. All told, it took a couple of days.”
Holcombe singles out the opening track, Dansu by Aili & Transistorcake, as his favourite of the tracks that made the final cut – “it’s the litmus test for if you’ll like the rest of the compilation” – as well as tunes by Matured Sinners (aka NTEIBINT and Blende) and PPJ.
“Their remix of You Man’s Birdcage is exquisite,” he adds. “What I didn’t know until Nadiem mentioned it in passing is that he approached them about doing the remix after hearing their guest mix on FREAKS ONLY. So a mix on the show led to a remix that ended up on a FREAKS ONLY compilation. Everything’s a circle.”
Then there are the tracks that he dug up by doing his research, painstakingly listening to every single Eskimo release in order to complete the track list.
“When I did the big deep dive into the Eskimo discography after the initial round, I discovered Solitaire by Hermigervill for the first time. I think I’ve gone back and listened to it no fewer than 30 times since then. It’s a track that you can have on a loop and never tire of hearing.
“I’ve been all about Mind Enterprises’ Negroni Love record this year and I’ve been playing cuts from the album all over FREAKS ONLY FM and my live DJ sets, so I was pleasantly surprised to see they did a remix in 2018 for Aeroplane’s “Body” that was new to me and holds up against their current work.
“There’s also a cut called Wanderland by Hermanos Inglesos and Lara Chedraoui that was released in 2010 – a little outside the years this compilation covers (2014-2026) – but luckily Nadiem wasn’t too strict about that and let me include it. It’s a poppy earworm that’s so good I almost feel guilty for having overlooked it when it first came out. Hopefully, including it on this compilation can begin to make amends for my oversight.”
As well as being a satisfying, carefully sequenced 25-track journey through modern leftfield club music, Holcombe hopes that the compilation will prompt listeners to find some new favourites and “go down the rabbit hole” of Eskimo Recordings, feeling that rush of discovering amazing music that you never knew existed, as he has done so often over the last decade and change.
He added: “This compilation is 25 tracks I love, and Nadiem and the Eskimo team got to every single one of them before I did. In that sense, the record is as much a document of their taste as mine.
“25 years of that is an incredible run. As a DJ, there’s an impossible amount of music to sift through; I’ve likened it to drinking out of a fire hose, and having a label whose ear you can trust that consistently is a huge asset.”
FREAKS ONLY Eskimo Selects (2014-2026) is out now on Eskimo Recordings.
Follow Eskimo and FREAKS ONLY.