[Modern Love]

2009 must have flown by in a blur for Miles Whittaker. When he wasn’t invoking the spirits of local witches and making painstakingly pieced together but chilling soundtracks with Sean Canty as Demdike Stare — Symbiosis was a slow burning album highlight of the past 12 months — he was attempting to and largely succeeding in reuniting techno with the analogue grit it so patently lacks together with Gary Howell under his other witchcraft-inspired project, Pendle Coven (the evocative, sometimes menacing swagger of the duo’s Self-Assessment album should also feature prominently in any discerning “best of” list next month). In between all this group activity, Miles found the time to fly solo as MLZ to deliver a storming, spiraling acid take on Peter Van Hoesen’s “Attribute One,” and now “One Cycle.”

Whittaker’s fondness for obscure records and even more off the beaten track sample sources is audible on the title track; in fact, it fuels its main element — a spacey riff that swirls and filters its way throughout the course of the arrangement — but does so in such a droning, repetitive way it could be the creative spirit of Spacemen 3 inhabiting Whittaker’s machines. Having aligned it to a straight beat and subtle slivers of metallic percussion, Miles doesn’t add anything else to the arrangement because, well, he doesn’t really need to — like all the best electronic dance music, if the basic elements sound good and work well together, there is no need to complicate matters. Miles steps out of his comfort zone on the flip with a remix of the mysterious DJ Ghosthunter’s “Experiment 3.” The fact that he’s called it the “Theo Made Me Do It” version provides pointers as to his inspiration, and indeed there are jazzy licks bobbing about, guided by a low-slung jacking groove. Thankfully though, Whittaker doesn’t make the mistake of replicating the Detroit producer’s music, and the raw and noisy bass as well as the broken beats and backdrop of unidentifiable, abstract sound samples, mean once again Miles Whittaker has left his distinctive mark.