***ANDY STOTT's first release since 2016 and first EP since 2011, It Should Be Us is a double EP of slow and raw productions for the club, recorded in 2019 and following a series of EPs that started with Passed Me By and We Stay Together early this decade. Recorded fast and loose over the summer, these eight tracks harness a pure and bare-boned energy, melodies subsumed by drum machines and synths; slow, rugged hedonism. It's all about rhythmic heat and disorientation, pure dance and DJ specials rendered at an unsteady pace, from percolated house and percussive rituals to moody tripped-out burners. There'll be a new Andy Stott album in 2020, but in the meantime... this one's for dancing. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
2X12" $28.95
12/13/2019
MP3 $9.90
11/15/2019
FLAC $11.99
11/15/2019
***Too Many Voices is the fourth album from ANDY STOTT, a follow-up to 2014's Faith in Strangers. It was recorded from 2014-2016 and sees a diverse spectrum of influences bleed into nine tracks that are as searching as they are memorable. The album draws inspiration from the fourth-world pop of Japan's Yellow Magic Orchestra as much as it does Triton-fueled grime made 25 years later. Somewhere between these two points there's an oddly aligned vision of the future that seeps through the pores of each of the tracks. It's a vision of the future as it was once imagined; artificial, strange, and immaculate. Full of possibilities. The album opens with the harmonized, deteriorating pads of "Waiting For You" and arcs through to the synthetic chamber pop of the closing title-track, referencing Sylvian and Sakamoto's "Bamboo Houses" (1982) as much as it does the ethereal landscapes of This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance. In between, the climate and palette constantly shift, taking in the midnight pop of "Butterflies"; the humid, breathless house of "First Night"; and the endlessly cascading "Forgotten." Longtime vocal contributor ALISON SKIDMORE features on half the tracks, sometimes augmented by the same simulated materials as on the dystopian breakdown of "Selfish," and at others surrounded by beautiful synth washes, such as on the mercurial "Over" or the dreamy, neon-lit "New Romantic." It's all far removed from the digital synthesis and the abstracted intricacies that define much of the current electronic landscape. The same cybernetic palette is here...
CD $18.65
04/22/2016
2XLP $28.75
04/22/2016
MP3 $9.90
04/22/2016
FLAC $11.99
04/22/2016
***Faith in Strangers was written and recorded between January 2013 and June 2014, and was edited and sequenced in late July of 2014. Making use of on an array of instruments, field recordings, found sounds and vocal treatments, it's a largely analog variant of hi-tech production styles arcing from the dissonant to the sublime. The first two tracks recorded during these early sessions bookend the release, the opener "Time Away" featuring euphonium played by KIM HOLLY THORPE and last track "Missing," a contribution by ANDY STOTT’s occasional vocal collaborator ALISON SKIDMORE, who also appeared on 2012's Luxury Problems. Between these two points Faith in Strangers heads off from the sparse and infected "Violence" to the broken, downcast pop of "On Oath" and the motorik, driving melancholy of "Science & Industry"—three vocal tracks built around that angular production style that imbues proceedings with both a pioneering spirit and a resonating sense of familiarity. Things take a sharp turn with "No Surrender"—a sparkling analog jam making way for a tough, smudged rhythmic assault, while "How It Was" refracts sweaty warehouse signatures and "Damage" finds the sweet spot between RZA's classic "Ghost Dog" and Terror Danjah at his most brutal. "Faith in Strangers" is next and offers perhaps the most beautiful and open track here, its vocal hook and chiming melody bound to the rest of the album via the almost inaudible hum of Stott's mixing desk. It provides a haze of warmth and nostalgia that ties the nine loose joints that make...
CD $20.50
11/25/2014
2XLP $26.50
12/09/2014
MP3 $9.90
11/17/2014
FLAC $11.99
11/17/2014
***Received an 8.7 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork. Following on from a pair of extended players released in 2011 (Passed Me By / We Stay Together) ANDY STOTT returns to Modern Love with Luxury Problems, an eight-track album of new material recorded over the last 12 months. Five of the tracks on the album feature the voice of ALISON SKIDMORE, Andy's one-time piano teacher whom he hadn't seen since he was a teenager back in 1996. There was no grand gesture in mind, it just sort of happened—but after almost a year of studio work, the result is really quite unlike anything you'll have heard from him before.
CD $20.15
11/13/2012
2XLP $28.35
11/06/2012
MP3 $9.90
10/29/2012
Recorded in the immediate aftermath of his last EP "Passed Me By", this new doublepack from Andy Stott features six new productions that are more desolate and exposed than anything on its predecessor. The opening "Submission" tumbles into being with layers of washed-out digital revolutions, creating an artificial landscape that's quite at odds with the analogue machinations that follow - yet somehow rendering the alienated feel of this material perfectly. "Posers" nudges its way into being abruptly and embeds another squashed funk variant that's all low-lit neon and growling textures, awkwardly shuffling into a more robust 4/4 template suffused with sparkling percussion and disembodied vocals. "Bad Wires" is the centrepiece of the EP, a relentless percussive cluster*ck that belies it's slow tempo with a fearless rhythmic attitude. It's as immersive and narcotic as anything ever produced by Stott - peeling away one layer after another with each repeated listen. "We Stay Together" (Part One) was the first track written for the EP and offers a more spacious narrative and a more sparkling, hazy palette - culminating in a beautifully frayed central hook that's somehow in keeping with the VHS aesthetic of both Jamal Moss and Ferris Bueller. "Cherry Eye" tumbles deep into a darkened hole before EP closer "Cracked" turns up, fuelled by an odd mixture of adrenalin and sorrow to send you on your way.... buzzing and forlorn.
2X12" $22.15
10/24/2011
MP3 $5.94
10/24/2011
Produced slowly and meticulously, these seven tracks are the closet thing we've had to a new album by Manchester's Andy Stott since the release of his debut full-length Merciless in 2005. Taking influence from an array of seemingly incoherent noises, from the indefinable and unforgettable mind-tricks of Arthur Russell to the slow house of Kassem Mosse, from the alternate VHS realities of James Ferraro and Jamal Moss to the LinnDrum classics of the vintage Prince era -- these seven tracks create their own pace and agenda, largely shying away from the dancefloor in favor of something more complex and hard to define. Following on from the tribal malfunctions of opening intro "Signature," "New Ground" heads into a chasm of layered loops, creating a decimated and re-wired funk template colored in with frayed percussion and dislodged vocal samples. "North To South" starts off from similar ground but adds a shuffling vibe at a deceptively intoxicated 110 bpm. "Intermittent" is something altogether different, taking perfectly formed boogie templates and screwing with them until nothing quite fits, brittle elements floating in and out of time yet somehow keeping it together, before "Dark Details" delivers the most dancefloor compatible six-minute stretch of the set, all clanging stabs and dense percussion, somewhere between Shackleton and Bam Bam. "Execution" and "Passed Me By" end things off on a slowed-down tip, the former deploying an anaesthetized and padded 4/4 template sunk deeper into the abyss by deformed, time-stretched vocals, the latter ending off proceedings with a more...
MP3 $5.99
05/23/2011
"Andy Stott has had a very good year, imbuing his effortlessly cool productions with the kind of restless attention deficit that is rarely associated with Techno's typically icy reserve. And so we went from the deep string-laden padded 4/4 of his debut 'Replace' EP to the fierce, driving Basic-Channelisms of the mighty "Ceramics" 12", the warehouse mangle of "Demon in the Attic" and the squashed broken sublow of "Choke". Whilst all this was going on, an album was being very slowly assembled from over 100 tracks eating up valuable space on the reliable Modern Love hard drive. "Merciless" bears the fruit of almost a year's worth of relentless compiling, at one point or another this album could have taken any number of possible shapes and flavours, though the spacious narrative and emotive pulse of the final selection seems destined to have occupied the tracklisting that's infront of us now. Bar "choke" every track here is totally exclusive and previously unreleased, ranging from the suggestive 4/4 romance of album-opener "Florence" to the crushing percussive flutter of Detroit anthem Hi-Rise, to the harrowing simplicity of the title track itself. The end-note comes with a cover-version of Claro Intelecto's classic "Peace of Mind" - a version so wildly inventive and unexpected that it has caused what can only be described as an email frenzy from those lucky enough to have had promo copies of this album in recent weeks. As the track slowly slips "Merciless" into its final, cinematic crescendo, the promise of...
MP3 $9.90
03/21/2011
"Been working ourselves up into a sweat with this one, the first one-sided twelve on Modern Love for over a year and Andy Stott's biggest club destroyer since the release of his overnight sellout 'Hostile' 12" a couple of years back. "Night Jewel" is a classic dancefloor builder, amassing deadly ingredients on shuffling keys, a heaving square bassline and the kind of reverberating chords reminiscent of Move D at his most mesmerising. In between his darker bass experiments, it's nice to see Stott getting peaktime moves out of his system and onto the floor, channelling a heaving mass of feelgood vibes, honed and primed for the early hours."--Boomkat
MP3 $0.99
03/21/2011
"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 in 2008 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 in 2008 - 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...
MP3 $9.90
03/21/2011