Faith

#8. ‘Faith In Strangers’ by Andy Stott

2014’s been a good year for Andy Stott, who has managed to not only put out a great album with his ‘Millie and Andrea’ partner in crime Miles Whittaker but also to follow up his acclaimed 2012 solo album ‘Luxury Problems’ with an even more assured and cohesive album of his own dubsteppy minimal techno mutations. In a sense this is my doom choice for this year (that whole darkwave revival thing that seemed to be a feature of 2013 apparently being a bit more in abeyance just now), a couple of tracks having a Kirbyesque sense of ambient disquiet, whilst elsewhere there’s grimy Burial-like dub textures, snatches of menacing techno, haunting and beautiful  Trickyish vocals (courtesy of Stott’s old piano teacher apparently – she was on ‘Luxury Problems’ too but her role here is expanded and is central to the tracks she appears on)  and evocative (mis)treatments of various ‘real’ acoustic musical instruments. All in all, a pretty tasty package.

Violence