[Daphne]

Popular music has always flirted with the idea of gender ambiguity. David Bowie and indeed much of the glam rock scene supposed flouncy gender-bending alter-egos and it has been a theme employed time and again by many an artist, finding its way into dance music probably first through people like Brian Eno and Throbbing Gristle. Having followed the releases on Modern Love’s offspring imprint Daphne with some fervour, I was surprised however to find out that the Millie & Andrea duo who had been issuing blunt, dreadnought dubs, were in fact not studio-wise ladies with a penchant for bum-worrying bass, but MLZ and Andy Stott. Going it alone for this one, Andrea (Stott) marks the change with two tracks considerably more “feminine” by nature, instilling measured doses of honeyed vocals into both “You Still Got Me” and “Got To Forget.”

The tone of the two tracks are noticeably lighter, too, with garagey elements proliferating throughout. “You Still Got Me” metes out slick, sped up vocal swatches over dreamy, hopeful pads, but balances this with old school, cut out drum loops and a deep-sea mining bass line. “Got To Forget” takes a more ethereal approach, enveloping everything in a hazy golden filter that even makes the granular percussion sound mellowed out, softened by the rays of the sun. Despite the apparent softening of aesthetic on this latest Daphne release, there is still a lot of heavy pressure cooking in these tracks that comes through by the sickening weight of the bass lines used and the familiar breaks reproduced in all their gritty glory. It all adds up to perhaps the finest in the Daphne series thus far and a win for Andy Stott’s skirt-wearing alter ego.