[Modern Love]

The last time we heard from Andy Stott under his given name was via the chord heavy, single-sided, club murderer “Night Jewel.” More recently his solo, bass-wise excursion as Andrea (of Millie & Andrea duo) saw the producer pay homage to old jungle and breakbeat to equally devastating effect. The Mancunian’s latest release gets fathoms deep in the feeling with two horizontal pieces of house for slate gray days and heavy-hearted catharsis. Both sides are ponderous, oblique, deep house versions, filled with so much weighty emotion they threaten to break like looming, darkening clouds. It’s the kind of house music that could only come from the Northern, rain soaked skies and is a natural off-sider to the equally moody techno that the Modern Love label is so good at.

Stott seems to have procured inspiration for “Tell Me Anything” in the lower registers of his keyboards, pitching down the gravity-heavy pads to impossibly slow rates, and matching them with a bass line that is almost subliminal. It’s the shuffling hi-hats and stop motion claps that keep things rooted in a housey vein, along with some lighter, shimmering keys that momentarily appear to hover, weightless over the otherwise dense cloud of the track. “Love Nothing,” for all its nihilistic implications, tugs incessantly at the heart; its brooding, stone-wall chords are somehow buoyed by an icy vocal sample repeating, “drive me crazy.” When the rough-hewn decay of the chords threaten to become too much on their own, Stott unleashes another bass line that hits you way below the belt. These studied, purposeful maneuvers by Stott are typical of the quality we’ve come to expect from the Modern Love label, and add another must-have release to the discography of one of its chief propagators.