Andy Stott - Unknown Exception

Label: Modern Love

Released: 2008

Style: Techno, House, IDM, Tech House, Electro, Dub Techno, Minimal

"Andy Stott has developed a unique sound since his debut for the Modern Love label back in 2005. His first demos were heavily influenced by the square-bassline techno variations of Claro Intelecto, a longtime friend, mentor and eventually labelmate and collaborator. His first release, ‘Replace’ featured a mixture of disciplines that took in elements of Detroit Techno and Chicago House which fast captured peoples imagination with intuitive, warm melodies and fathomless bass weight. From that point on Stott continued to shift and adapt his sound to take in ever disparate influences, from the driving techno of Dave Clarke’s ‘Red’ series through to Basic Channel, Dubstep, Garage and the minimalism of classic Sahko. His restless shift from traditional Techno blueprints through to the bottom-heavy signatures of dubstep and the steppers arrangements of garage have also placed him at the forefront of the dubstepXtechno hybrid sounds that have started to dominate the electronic music scene alongside the likes of Martyn, Peverelist and T++. This compilation brings together selected tracks dating back to Andy Stott’s debut back in 2005 and reaching all the way to his most recent material – with none of them ever available on cd until now. Tracks feature here from the ‘Replace’, ‘Ceramics’, ‘Handle With Care’, ‘Hostile’, "Bad Landing’, "Fear Of Heights’, ‘Massacre’ and ‘Nervous’ EP’s and stream through his fascination with deep, almost uncontainable basslines and ever inventive percussive shifts. The man really is a bit of a hero round these parts, and we consider ‘Unknown Exception’ required listening for any of you interested in the bass progressions and deviations where Techno, House, Dub and Garage collide to shift things to the next level." - Label

Tracklisting:

1 Fear Of Heights (6:20)

2 Bad Landing (6:10)

3 Handle With Care (4:50)

4 Long Drive (5:27)

5 Credit (7:07)

6 Massacre (6:57)

7 See In Me (6:07)

8 Made Your Point (6:04)

9 She’s Gone Wrong (5:31)

10 Fine Metallic Dollar (6:53)

11 Hostile (6:39)

12 Replace (4:43)

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Pendle Coven - Self Assessment

Label: Modern Love

Released: 2009

Style: Techno, Dub Techno

"Since their 2003 debut ‘Trouble At Mill’, Pendle Coven have produced seven exceptional, restless twelves for the Modern Love label, not including work undertaken by one half of the recording duo under the MLZ moniker and a handful of projects produced and delivered under the radar. Typified by an inability to rest on their laurels, Pendle have explored areas of Techno and electronic music as diverse as their interests, taking in early-90’s style ‘ardkore, drone, Basic-Channelisms, Drexciyan electro and warehouse minimalism along the way. This debut album features 7 exclusive and previously unreleased tracks as well as 5 killers from the ’£100 a metre’, ‘marriage of convenience’, ‘hex’ and ‘Iamnoman’ EP’s, spanning the last 5 years. The sound of ‘Self Assessment’ opens with the disembodied guitar treatment of ‘Aged Drone’, paving the way for the stripped menace of ‘Iamnoman’ – the title track of their most recent vinyl-only release. From there we drop in on the staggered proto-dubstep of ‘Unit 6’, an alternate string-driven version of the airy stepper ‘Uncivil Engineering’, the immense stripped reverberance of ’Optimal, pure bass pressure of “MVO Chamber” and, finally, the towering chord crescendos of the Berlin-inspired Exigen. All the tracks here have been lovingly honed and mastered at the hands of Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, for added bass depth and space." - Label

Tracklisting:

1 Aged Drone (1:37)

2 IAMNOMAN (7:39)

3 Unit 6 (4:29)

4 Uncivil Engineering (Calm Mix) (6:28)

5 Optimal (7:45)

6 Modern Mode (5:40)

7 Chord Calculus (7:17)

8 Nice Moves (5:17)

9 MVO Chamber (8:11)

10 Golden Hadron (5:04)

11 Exigen (7:19)

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Demdike Stare - Symbiosis

Label: Modern Love

Released: 2009

Style: Dub, Experimental, Minimal, Ambient

"Demdike Stare is a long-in-the-making hookup between two shady characters operating at the fringes of Manchester’s fragmented music scene: Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty. Miles has been a longtime affiliate of Modern Love as one half of Pendle Coven and under his own MLZ alias, while Canty is one of the city’s most recognisable vinyl collectors, carrying an obsession with everything from obscure Nordic Doom records to Anatolyan funk albums, fuelled by his dayjob helping out at the Finders Keepers label. The project is named after Pendle’s most famous witch: Elizabeth Southerns, aka Demdike. The tracks on ‘Symbiosis’ are drawn from elements of Turkish, Indian, Iranian, African and West Indian film soundtracks alongside Norwegian drone records, classic House templates, punctured dub, modified techno and the arctic noise perfected by Mika Vainio. Original sources and dense analogue experiments weave around eachother with little care for convention or stylistic expectation, instead throwing the pair’s extensive musical knowledge into a set of tracks that, quite brilliantly, defy categorisation. The album opens with ‘Suspicious Drone’, a dense 6 minute opening that chugs along like a malfunctioning mechanical beast, honing in on Lancashire’s dark industrial landscapes before moving onto more exotic, balmy territory. ‘Haxan Dub’ (named after the film narrated by william burroughs about witchcraft) deploys fragmented dub echoes infused with displaced horns and African signatures, taking its time with one of the jerkiest rhythms you’ll have the pleasure of hearing, before ‘Jannisary’ tangles in and out of an Iranian hook and a squashed Congolese rhythm that creates an asymmetric, geniusly constructed dancefloor killer. By the time the album comes to a close with ‘Ghostly Hardware’ an hour later, the cycle is complete with a return to icy tundras and chugging machinations steeped in the traditions of Scandinavian machine music and pure analogue frequencies, expertly handled by those masterful technicians over at Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering." - Boomkat

Tracklisting:

1 Suspicious Drone (6:34)

2 Haxan Dub (5:14)

3 Regressor (5:04)

4 All Hallows Eve (3:54)

5 Jannisary (6:09)

6 Haxan (6:18)

7 Extwistle Hall (3:25)

8 Trapped Dervish (1:12)

9 Nothing But The Night (6:10)

10 Conjoined (4:07)

11 Ghostly Hardware (6:35)

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Thomas Fehlmann - Lowflow

Label: Plug Research
Released: 2004
Style: IDM, Dub, Electro, Downtempo

"After extensive forays into more physical, club-related tracks with his series of releases (on Kompakt) Lowflow, recorded on and off over the last years, now heralds a return to his slower, more experimental side and provides a surprisingly concise description of the album's overall feel.

Both minimal and expansive, Lowflow allows its tracks to float across and into each other, an infinite, gentle mix to which Fehlmann playfully introduces the soft murmur of chimes, pedal steel guitar or his very own trumpet.

From opener "Goldhaar" and the disjointed fascination of the decidedly unslinky "Slinky" with its hypnotic, focused distortion via the briefest of Alice Coltrane homages on "Interstellar" to the almost rocky determination of "Alice Springs" and the classic, minimalist house of "Andrea is Delighted," Lowflow nevertheless retains a distinctly dubby, German flavor, a seamless pleasure that loves to pause and interrupt itself to create its very own, idiosyncratic flow.

Everything on this record was generated by Thomas himself, except the cover supplied by seminal artist Raymond Pettibon (Black Flag, Minutemen) who was his only contact when he first came to LA 15 years ago, as well as three short, connecting interludes growing out of a collaboration with Detroit artist Dabrye (Ghostly International)." - Label

Tracklisting:

1 Goldhaar (3:25)
2 Prefab (5:12)
3 Interstellar (1:31)
4 Lindt (4:34)
5 Slinky (4:26)
6 Intertwine (0:39)
7 Hana (5:11)
8 Alice Springs (5:21)
9 Springer (5:12)
10 Andrea Is Delighted (6:51)
11 Intersect (1:11)
12 Feat (5:33)
13 Fellmaus (6:02)

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Strategy - Drumsolo's Delight

Label: Kranky
Released: 2004
Style: Glitch, Dub, Ambient

"Drumsolo's Delight weds the subtle rhythmic promise of the early work anthologized on Strut with a discreet ambience. The album flirts with the tensions of hyper-modern digital vastness on one hand, and the gritty immediacy of live dub mixing on the other. Drumsolo's Delight moves towards the points of overlap between rhythm and cloudiness- reaching towards the grey area where sounds share active and passive characteristics. Drumsolo's Delight is Strategy's most thematic work to date, and aside from the technical syntheses achieved in the studio, the album is an accurate snapshot of several years' of work creating music concerned with geography/place, people, memory, and weather."

Tracklisting:

1 Cascadian Nights (4:03)
2 Super Shewolf Inna City (5:37)
3 Drumsolo's Delight (5:31)
4 Jazzy's Dilemma (5:40)
5 Super Final Zen (5:54)
6 Walkingtime (5:29)
7 The Jazzy Drumsolo (11:44)

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