Claro Intelecto: Rise
Modern Love

Andy Stott: Bad Landing EP
Modern Love

Whetting one's appetite for the singles set Unknown Exception scheduled for release later this year, Andy Stott's Bad Landing 12-inch showcases his deft handling of dub and techno. In the A-side's “Fine Metallic Dollar,” a pounding bottom end rolls in, clearing a path for the incessant flicker of an owl-like motif before hi-hats add a swinging house pulse and angular smears and staccato percussive accents take turns streaming atop the gargantuan pulse. The echo-drenched anthem “Bad Landing” weds billowing chords to a humming bass undertow, after which a valve organ shimmies into position with reggae-styled accents helping to push the rhythm along. The tune's aqueous smears and reverberating rim shots should act on Deepchord lovers like catnip. Someone should give Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering a medal for harnessing such a colossal bass presence onto wax.

The ink is still drying on Metanarrative yet Mark Stewart's already got another Claro Intelecto release available for mass consumption. Recorded mere weeks ago, the one-sided 12-inch Rise opens unthreateningly with a kalimba-styled gamelan pattern before a thudding kick drum slams into position accompanied by a bottom-feeding bass attack. Spurred by the emergence of backbeat hi-hats, the gamelan pattern moves into overdrive and sucks the tune along with it. Throughout the eleven-minute track, the focus shifts back and forth between the wood-like gamelan elements and the steamrolling groove, and the effect proves so hypnotic, one almost overlooks entirely the complete absence of snare in this percussion-heavy colossus.

May 2008