(03.01.09) Andy Stott’s second full-length is an assemblage of vinyl-only 12s spanning the 2005-8 period. You wouldn’t know it, though, if you didn’t already know it. For Unknown Exception hangs together as if designed as an album, mapping a gradual evolution towards a signature Stott sound. What might that be? A personalized dub-house and Detroit techno blend, with a tinge of colours from early 90s UK techno (cf. Dave Clarke, LFO) being more pronounced than the spectral Berlin shades that have had some reviewers reaching auto-pilot-style for Basic Channel references. The dub inflections are BC-independent, his palette having lately incorporated more low-end elements from the nu-stepper side, aligning him with the techno end of the currently in-vogue dubstep-techno hybrid (cf. 2562, T++).
Stott’s first demos were apparently inspired by the square-dancing round house of kindred spirit, Claro Intelecto, and the gradual shift to deeper territory seen in his Mancunian mate muse is paralleled here. “Fear of Heights” cruises low-slung with bountiful bottom-end and reverb-drizzled trails of keys, as Stott straight off hits the ground running, minimal phasers on stun, pared back to bass prod, hi-hat’n’kick , echoing chord stabs, mainlining melodica-esque motifs. “Bad Landing” visits an eerie ErstazBerlin wherein swelling chords and muted melody shards waft over waves of woofer-wobble. “Handle With Care” gets a below-the-belt bassline to shack up with echoey percussion to host aqueous pads and melodica mischief, ramping up the dub effects till hi-hats and snareshots bob and weave at the mix-margins. “Long Drive” and “Credit” both hark back to old-school house, the former temporarily sparing the bass-assault – a somewhat stiff light house thumper with mellow chord progressions and snapping snares that finally feels a deeper electro- force; the latter letting warm chord swells seep up and subside again and again over a staccato thrum and bass mass layered with a mesh of cymbals and kicks. On “Massacre” the listener gets lost in Berlin-Kingston-London space, pulling out time-honored metallic minor-chord stabs to clang over dub bass throb and a 4/4 pulse recalling Monolake’s “Cyan” period. Elsewhere “Made Your Point” makes its point, all steely stabs and bass sweat recalling Scuba’s stripped-back ‘step sound, and “Hostile,” a crowd-pleaser from late ’08, takes a single idea from ’88 (cf. Inner City/Kevin Saunderson) and runs with it, making for a quietly storming minimal (not ‘mnml’) stomper.
Overall, then, the dozen tracks on display serve to illustrate the development of Stott’s ear for spatial design and a useful propensity for getting a bit of rough into what would be too smooth. It occurs that Unknown Exception might be one of those contemporary crossover pleasers that come along every so often, updating 90s ‘ELM’ with updates more recent bassbin-quake and floor-thump material.
Unknown Exception is out now on Modern Love. [Purchase
