The first worldwide vinyl release of Sam Phillips’s critically acclaimed Nonesuch debut album, Fan Dance, is the latest fan-selected title on Run Out Groove. Pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Record Industry in the Netherlands, the remastered LP comes in an old-school tip-on style jacket with booklet, limited and individually numbered.

Each month, Run Out Groove allows fans to vote on the label’s next high-quality vinyl pressing, chosen from selections of unreleased material, reissues of out-of-print titles, titles that have never seen a vinyl release, or brand new collections compiled from the Warner Music vaults.

Released in 2001, Fan Dance was Sam Phillips’s first all-new studio recording since Omnipop in 1996. Unlike her more elaborately produced previous efforts, Fan Dance is unadorned, with the feeling of an intense, look-you-in-the-eye, late-night conversation. The Boston Globe calls it ‘a stunning work of intimacy and emotional range… Phillips digs deeply within to chart romantic yearning and spiritual fulfillment.’

“I wasn’t trying to imitate any style, to be any certain thing,” Phillips said. “I just disconnected, went away from the culture, and tried to create a world I was interested in.”

She and frequent collaborator T Bone Burnett deliberately chose to operate on an intimate scale. As Sam explains, “I feel that when I hear a lot of records, there’s no room for me as a listener. This record is not built like a stadium to present music to the largest audience possible. This record is built more like a bungalow, or a salon to receive guests – hopefully one at a time.”

Along with Burnett as producer and bassist, Phillips was accompanied in the studio by guitarist Marc Ribot and drummer Carla Azar. Gillian Welch lent her voice to a pair tracks and Van Dyke Parks, a frequent guest on Phillips’s records, created the austerely beautiful string arrangement to ‘Wasting My Time’, and played harpsichord on the haunting ‘Taking Pictures’.

‘A breathtakingly original talent.’ – Uncut