Modern Love At Juno Download

Review: On Luxury Problems, Mancunian producer Andy Stott builds on the knackered house and techno sound showcased in last year's brace of brilliance, Passed Me By and We Stay Together. The album will contain eight tracks recorded in the last 12 months, with five of the songs featuring vocals from his old piano teacher who Stott hadn't seen since he was a teenager in 1996, with the opening track "Numb" seeing her looped and layered vocals exuding a cinematic quality. The paranoid, dense, slow-moving qualities that Stott has made his signature remain, but they've been toyed with and manipulated, and the vocal elements feel like a calculated gamble - one that has truly paid off. Highly recommended.

Review: British dub-techno producer Andy Stott returns to the production fold with this excellent doublepack entitled Passed Me By. Although strictly a double EP rather than an album, there's enough here to fill the void left since the last Stott long player, Merciless. Stott opens with the disturbed paranoia of "Signature" and the brilliant "New Ground", which utilises a drowned-out vocal snippet that immediately brings to mind the work of Actress. The grumbling dub of "North To South" contrasts neatly with "Intermittent", in which rasping drum hits form the rhythmic pulse, allowing another ethereal vocal to float over the top. The second half of the release takes on an even darker hue; with the raw drum hits of "Dark Details", terrifying drone of "Execution" and ghostly atmospherics of the title track rounding off this most stunning release.

Review: Andy Stott follows up the incredible reinvention that was Passed Me By with another EP of dark, slowed down techno that takes his style further down his bleak rabbithole, concentrating on the micro level detail within its expansive scale. Opening with the beatless "Submission", a Fennesz style wash of recorded waves subjected to crushing compression, he moves into the 100bpm territory of "Posers" which concentrates on a roughly treated, barely there vocal sample, and "Bad Wires", which slowly disorientates the listener with its sludgy bass loop and fizzing atmosphere. Meanwhile "We Stay Together" opts for a cleaner atmosphere with demonic undertones, whilst "Cherry Eye" offers the faintest sceptre of melody in a cavernous backdrop. Finally "Cracked" hypnotises with its metallic textures and undercurrent of acid which gurgles beneath. For anyone who considers themselves even remotely adventurous in their techno tastes, We Stay Together is essential.

Review: Mark Stewart rose to prominence when dub techno enjoyed a resurgence a few years back, but to cast him as merely a by-product of this phenomenon is erroneous. Prior to his Warehouse Session series on Modern Love, Stewart had released an excellent electronic album, "Neurofibro" and the excellent deep techno "Chicago". While the title track sees Stewart deliver an exemplary dubby groove, filled with ponderous chords and a gradually morphing bassline, it's "Round & Round" that's of most interest. Escaping the joys of the echo chamber, the rhythm is stripped back and jacking, with a searing acid line recreating the primal urges of late 80s Chicago producers.

Review: On Vibrational Studies, Deepchord show that what you leave out is important as what stays in. An understated ambient piece of music, it benefits from not being swathed in layers of doomy Gothic references, as is the habit of so many abstract/ambient producers. Instead, Deepchord sketch out a gentle but nonetheless evocative soundscape that crackles and hisses in all the right places. That said, a more effective use of this approach is audible on "Symbolism In Transition". More of the same hissing, evolving textures are present, but this time, a gentle, dubby rhythm underpins their design - and will probably end up getting more attention.

Review: Since first emerging under the name Demdike Stare on Modern Love back in 2009, Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker's project has provided listeners with a series of self-consciously dark and mysterious albums inspired by the occult (Demdike was a notorious 17th century witch). This fifth full-length - a double CD, no less - is as formidably creepy, intense and bloodthirsty as their previous outings and provides alternate takes -along with bonus material - of the tracks that appeared previously on a series of equally collectable twelve inches. While there are moments of fleeting beauty - see the gentle "Shades", bubbling echo-techno of "Metamorphasis" or sleepy ambience of "All This Is Ours (Sunrise)" - these merely serve to highlight the horror-fixated darkness and gothic soundscapes that abound throughout. Genuinely chilling, all told.

Review: This latest release on Modern Love is the work of Miles Whittaker, aka MLZ and one half of both Pendle Coven and Demdike Stare. Despite the fact that he has reverted to his first name, there is no mistaking the UK producer's production style. Leaning more towards Demdike Stare than his other dance floor material Facets teems with life, each track a veritable treasure trove of sounds, ideas and moods. Of course given that it draws inspiration from and in some place directly invokes the spirit of Whittaker and Canty's witch-loving Demdike project, it is no surprise that the prevailing mood is dark, eerie and even sometimes downright menacing. "Flawed" sets the tone with splintered break beats scattered across an ambient soundtrack that flickers in a half-light before darkness envelopes it. Like the Demdike releases, "Lustre" suggests that the mood may be about to change and offers some concessions towards a lighter mood, as a warm bass and more plaintive chords echo and ebb across its spacious arrangement. It's followed by "Primer", where the kind of unquantized tribal drums that underscored Whittaker and partner Canty's ode to the hashassins, "Hashshashin Chant", roll in like thunder. Finally, "On the Fly" sees Whittaker focus on shifting tonal frequencies, underpinned by a rhtyhm that starts at a dead pace and speeds up to infinity. It's a fittingly offbeat finale in this latest compelling release from one of the UK's great techno eccentrics.

Review: Whittaker has played an integral role in Modern Love's rise over the past decade, initially as part of Pendle Coven, Whittaker has moved on to produce solo as MLZ and HATE before working with Andy Stott as Millie & Andrea; in recent years he's been most notable for more experimental fare with his work as one half of hauntological duo Demdike Stare with Sean Canty. His debut solo album, entitled Faint Hearted - released simply under his first name, Miles - looks to be an encapsulation of his wide ranging tastes as a DJ and producer, and is described by the label as "an exposition of Miles' love of electronic music in all its shapes, harnessing his fidgety production style into one expansive, restless set of tracks". "Lebensform" is described as a "looped jungle mutation" while "Sense Data" supposedly comes across like "a lost Move D production from the classic Studio Pankow era"; some decidedly avant-garde material also features in the form of "Archaic Thought Pattern I" which apparently sounds like "Aphex Twin's Donkey Rhubarb EP rebuilt by Mika Vainio". A bracing encapsulation of one the UK's most interesting electronic artists.

Review: Otherwise known as Demdike Stare's Miles Whittaker, Suum Cuique is a moniker in which he has free reign to create warped, noisy analogue shapes. Opening with the searing, white hot metal of "Strohtopf", you'd be forgiven for thinking that the album moves away from the quiet reverence of the Demdike Stare project, but "Kuiper Anomaly", grit-caked as it is, is soothing stuff. Elsewhere, he lets minimal sounds take free reign, exploring the simple pleasures of echo and reverb - "Atlas Levels" and "Core Value" especially are reminiscent of Bristolian radiophonic knob-twiddler Ekoplekz, whilst "Intonation" has echoes of the lumbering soundscapes of labelmate Andy Stott. But despite the parallels that can be drawn with his contemporaries, Ascetic Ideals is a singularly bleak, yet undeniably beautiful record - one that only Miles Whittaker could have made.