Andy Stott’s formula is as potent, intoxicating and unsettling as ever and you just know that a few minutes into any particular track, one of his trademark murky, organ-crushing bass beats is going to kick in, muddying the sonic waters with a torrent of darkly seductive slurry.
[Release page] The promotional blurb from Manchester label Modern Love at one point summarizes Stott’s Luxury Problems as occupying territory somewhere between Theo Parrish and Sade, which turns out to be far more apposite than such a flippantly comical sound bite might suggest. And yes ladies and gentlemen, that hackle-raising, knee-jerk reaction triggering, fan-baiting issue has reared its ugly head once more: vocals, with five out of the eight stunning new tracks on Luxury Problems featuring the dulcet tones of Stott’s old piano teacher Alison Skidmore.
That said, there’s really not too much to get worked up about, and if you’re already familiar with Stott’s critically acclaimed and frequently repressed Passed Me By or We Stay Together then, honestly, you’ll not only be pleasantly surprised by the creative and diverse use of vocals on ‘Luxury Problems’ but also keenly (and correctly) anticipating elements that are becoming a Stott staple. His formula is as potent, intoxicating and unsettling as ever and you just know that a few minutes into any particular track, one of his trademark murky, organ-crushing bass beats is going to kick in, muddying the sonic waters with a torrent of darkly seductive slurry.
If anything, Luxury Problems sees Stott stripping his sound back somewhat. “Numb” opens with Skidmore’s spectral sampled vocals looped and intertwined as the track builds layer upon layer until until the driving bass pulse of the piece kicks in, a lung-scraping whoosh of two enormous spinning mill-stones scraping over one another that positively knocks the wind out of you. It’s a wall of sound built from surprisingly minimal sources, at once recognizably Stott but still refreshingly new. Like many great vocal experiments of this kind, Skidmore’s lyrics and intonations are woven into the very fabric of the music rather than floating above it all, somehow disconnected.
“Lost And Found” slurs and jitters, the grimy drones all cut up and loosely coupled, tribal beats and mud-soaked noise bubbling under spine-tingling vocals, but better still is the amazing “Sleepless” that tracks like smashed and pulverised Liberation Through Hearing Demdike Stare. It has that oddly repellant heft and unsettling use of vocal snippets that characterised the best moments of ‘We Stay Together’ and in particular ‘Passed Me By,’ the bass section constructed of such a heavyweight material that it effortlessly brushes everything in its path aside. This is probably one of the finest tracks released in 2012, period.
Beautifully effective in an entirely different, and undoubtedly more divisive way are the relatively untreated vocals on “Hatch The Plan,” sounding for all the world like a track from Andrea Parker’s Kiss My Arp recorded with David Morley and released on Mo’ Wax way back in 1992. There’s a genuine tension as Skidmore’s oddly blank voice tussles for control with hissing hydraulics, strained, squeaking gears, and rusted, thumping, clattering machinery. The vocals are tightly wound into an overlapping loop that’s every bit as hypnotic and addictive as the best ambient or dub techno around. It seems to go on forever, yet when it ends you can’t help but it want it back.
Such is the consistency of the music across the board on Luxury Problems it feels wrong to leave a single track uncommented upon, and though both “Expecting” and “Up The Box” are vocal-free and adhere more closely to the template of Stott’s last two Modern Love EPs, they are every bit as striking. The former is like an auditory tour around the dark, arched tunnels of a great sewer, the constant howling of water flows ever present, while the latter takes the album briefly uptempo by following a gently building production-line loop with an Amen break that takes it into jungle territory for a tantalizing short few minutes.
Luxury Problems also pulls off something that’s all too rare these days in “Leaving’s” satisfying closure. It’s hard to recall a better closing track to an album of any genre in recent years, and Skidmore’s vocals, especially in the final key-change moments, must surely be enough to pluck a tear from the eye of even the most cynical listener?
Popular enough that the double-vinyl edition is already in its fifth pressing (initial on clear and black vinyl, followed by emerald, transparent blue, transparent peach and now transparent gold) it continues to rapidly sell out, but if you find yourself unable to obtain one, the CD edition is once again housed in a gorgeous, oversized digifile wallet, the first single-disc release from Modern Love to do so, giving you some idea of how important this release is to them.
There isn’t another artist around doing what Stott is doing right now (and if there are, there’s no way they’re anywhere close to this caliber) and frankly, his sound is as fresh now as it was when Passed Me By and We Stay Together were released. Luxury Problems is a wholly realized, consistently brilliant and seamlessly gelling electronic album and one of the finest releases of 2012. Utterly and completely essential.
Luxury Problems is available on Modern Love. [Release page | Boomkat | Experimedia]
