[Modern Love]

Modern Love have made a huge impact in 2009; the past few months alone have seen crucial releases by Claro Intelecto, MLZ and Demdike Stare. Now it’s label staple Andy Stott’s turn as he returns with only his second release this year, and it’s one that’s been well worth waiting for. Where Stott’s “Brief Encounter/Drippin” twelve dropped earlier in the year pandered to his late night deep techno and dubstep sides, the single sided “Night Jewel” finds Stott in a much more lively state of mind, ready for some serious sneaker squeaking.

Stott’s productions are founded on keeping things raw and relatively simple. You’ll not find unnecessary clutter filling out any of his tracks or plastic sounding digital effects tweaking them into oblivion; what you get is an analogue feel of uncooked moodiness crafted with absolute precision. “Night Jewel” is no exception to this method, using only a repetitive, building chord pattern and a sickeningly overweight bass to provide the melody for the track, with equally unfussy percussion to compliment it. The chords are filtered down to shards sharp as sharks teeth before rounding out again, creating a cyclic movement throughout the track, a sense of it almost breathing. The bass, when it finally drops, creates a vacuum that almost sucks the very life out of the other elements surrounding it. Simplistic to the end, “Night Jewel” adds and subtracts its components over the course of its duration, fires off subtly changing percussive hits and scores a direct bulls-eye with a track just wants to be re-cued the second it’s over.