Continuing our spotlight series called Favourite Finds, we ask some of our favourite DJs, collectors and selectors to tell us the story behind how they came across one of their favourite records.

For the next instalment, we’ve asked revered collector, DJ, producer, label owner and one of the deepest diggers in the game, Andy Votel to tell us the story behind how he came across one of his favourite records.

With a love of hip-hop records from an early age, Andy’s quest to find the samples behind those chopped up beats led him down a rabbithole of dusty originals. That search for those off-the-beaten-track obscurities has lasted a lifetime and led to Andy starting the brilliant reissue label Finders Keepers with Doug Shipton, DJing across the globe, becoming an acclaimed musician and producer in his own right and being involved in countless other musical pursuits.

"I’ve vowed to not let rarity or trophy-showcasing get in the way of a good story here, but I’m not exaggerating when I say my introduction to Egyptian records was genuinely electrifying.

Throughout the “noughties” one of my favourite and most fertile digging pastures was Istanbul which lead to an ever revolving cycle of DJing and detective work in the city for many years. Having first discovered Turkish music years earlier in a Dusseldorf bookshop my growing Anatolian Psych wantlist would eventually magnetise me to the market stalls and underground arcades in Kadıköy where I first met my good friend Mete Avunduk.

Mete’s original “Vintage Records” shop was one of many units in a bric-a-brac arcade where the ground was literally paved with vinyl, and on my first visit I walked through a warren of shop corridors rescuing random unidentified Arabic 45s off the floor and out of the rubbish bins before I was welcomed into the shop the inspect “the good stuff”.

The following hour turned into one of those “Pinch Me… I’m Dreaming” moments where you finally see everything on you wantlist in real-life for the first time, and these Anadolu funk treasures were not yet expensive. For those who remember this era it was common for Turkish records to be estranged from their original flimsy sleeves, so singles were often offered for the equivalent of two quid without the original artwork, or ten quid complete with the sleeve, a ratio which reveals the scarcity of the original packaging.

There had to be a catch, or an intervention. Nothing could slow me down and even when Mete offered me a listening deck I politely declined, I knew exactly what I was looking for and knew how they sounded… all except one particular unidentified mysterious Arabic article."

“How about the records outside on the floor?” I asked, and after Mete told me they were “for the trash” I headed to the record player, wiped the rain off a particularly beguiling 7”, and put the needle on the groove.

Then immediately something struck me from behind which I can still only compare to being hit with and empty truck tyre. It wasn’t the music, I had just been electrocuted! Unwittingly I turned around to my small entourage and said “ Did you feel that?” To which I was met with a slightly worrying wide eyed reaction from Chris Geddes (a fellow intrepid digger who some might know from the band Belle & Sebastian) who said I looked like Dracula! I’d bit my tongue in the jolt, having made contact with an angle-poise lamp and the turntable tone arm.

This wasn’t the intervention I was expecting. The rest is blurry but needless to say, hours later we were out on the town DJing ’til the early morn playing our heavy Turkish Records to Kadıköy people and having a great time, with the occasionally sip of whiskey to numb my tongue before sobering-up in time to board the early morning flight back home.

Within the next few days I played my new finds to death, many of which made their way onto radio shows and mixtapes (some still rarely leave my DJ bag) but there’s one record which emotionally sticks with me the most and it was my first ever unassuming introduction to Egyptian music, the record that almost killed me, and it’s absolutely stunning.

It took me a while to even realise that this record, by the inimitable Nagat El-Sagheera was Egyptian and not Lebanese nor Moroccan as initially assumed. Amongst a candy-store choice of records in our house I can also confidently say that my wife Jane (Weaver, a great songwriter herself) also shares my passion for this record which has made my quest for Egyptian music all-the-more enjoyable and justified."

"There’s no instantly identifiable “funk” within these grooves, nor a pop rhythm-section or a drum-break or fuzz guitar, in fact you could argue that its operating on a much higher plain then Western pop infused music. A particular breed of collector would argue that its most certainly “sample material”, with its eldritch Disney-snake-charmer spookiness, but I’ve already fought that temptation.

It is however one of my prize possessions and it soon became a gateway drug for a further collectors tangent that I’m still submerged in. There are a few quirks that make records on labels like Soutelphan and Sono Cairo so rewarding and enigmatic.

Firstly, many songs last around ten to fifteen minutes so they are pressed over two 7” sides (not unlike James Brown singles) but in contrast to Western pop music the instrumental section is on the A-side, because it’s usually the prologue or overture before the singer steps to the stage. This quirk has caught me out a few times while DJing, and as you might expect, I don’t speak Arabic too well, yet.

The other hugely satisfying thing about these records is something I learned much later, and it pertains to their artwork. Not unlike the aforementioned Turkish sleeves, its often harder to find the original Egyptian sleeves than the actual records, but when you’re lucky a different type of addiction kicks in.

The utterly stunning screen-printed artwork for female Egyptian singers like Nagat, Afaf Rady, Shadia, Sharifa Fidel (and famous Lebanese singers like Fairuz and Sabah) is breathtaking in its muted-multi-coloured execution complete with thick paint-like ink and ultimate tangibility. They smell great too. Nowadays it is not uncommon for me to buy the sleeve and record separately, sometimes months or years apart (Friend and enabler, Fred at Souma Records shares this passion wholeheartedly).

It took me another few years to find an original sleeve for this particular 45 in the wild (which was only used for the French market), but in this rare case the music far surpasses the artwork.

Not unlike Googoosh (in Iran) and Fairuz (In Lebanon), Nagat did eventually record some more pop oriented material with electric bass and drums for the cassette market (subject of a recent reissue reappraisal) but you could argue that her more traditional music ploughs a deeper and more veritable furrow. In the last decade my penchant for these records has gone into hyperdrive but this particular single, Alyadi Elyadi, with awe inspiring arrangements by the master Mohamed Abdel Wahab (who also composed fro Egyptian greats Oum Kalthoum and Farid El Atrache) will always remain top of my pile. Not without this particular copies own unique travelogue, it is a certified “Favourite Find” of mine which never ceases to garner the “What’s This?” request when played in public."

Big thanks to Andy for taking the time out to tell us this incredible story. Be sure to give him a follow on Instagram to keep up-to-date with all his goings on and check out his fantastic NTS show as well.