Browse by Label: MODERN LOVE (UK)

Artist:	BITSTREAM
Title:	One Third Standard Lux
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 002CD

"Bitstream is the brothers Steve and Dave Conner, born in the mid 70's in a small town in Northamptonshire, England. Compiling some of Bitstream's rarest material to date alongside their best known work, One Third Standard Lux is a perfect starting point from which to establish the importance the brothers Conner have had on the British electro scene over the last few years. Originally championed by the Autechre-related Skam label in Manchester and their pioneering DJ Rob Hall, Bitstream have been releasing innovative and complex electronic music to an ever-growing audience of dedicated followers. Their love of experimental music is also proudly on display, vocal treatments on the harrowing 'Lost Cluster' and 'Madame Resonance' showing this to most devastating effect, while the unadulterated crunchy euphoria of the classic 'Radiotherapy' acts as the perfect album opener. With a formidable catalogue of releases to date for labels like City Centre Offices and their own Pylon Recordings, Bitstream transcend the confines of the electronic dancefloor through to a much broader spectrum of sound. One Third Standard Lux is the definitive retrospective of that particular sound."

Artist:	DEEPCHORD PRESENTS: ECHOSPACE
Title:	The Coldest Season
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 033CD

Echospace is the collaborative venture of DeepChord's Rod Modell and Soultek's Steve Hitchell, and this is their first full-length release on the Modern Love label. Detroit's Rod Modell is one of the most noted producers operating in the dub-infused aftermath of the Basic Channel axis and all its myriad offshoots. His series of 12"s on his own eponymous imprint were released at the tail-end of the '90s and the beginning of the new century, and are considered by many as the natural progression from the effervescent, super-dense techno of Berlin's Chain Reaction. Following an extended hiatus, Rod Modell has re-wired his studio again and is once again receiving great acclaim for his low-end techno variations. Chicago's Steve Hitchell is a longtime DeepChord cohort and a noted producer in his own right -- most notably under the Soultek moniker. The Coldest Season was produced using nothing but vintage analog equipment: Roland Space Echo, Echoplex, Korg tape delay, vintage signal processors, noise generators, Sequential Circuits 8-bit samplers & numerous analog synthesizers. This project goes back to the heady days of Berlin-based proto dub/techno variations, recorded and produced in Detroit and Chicago. Three of the world's most important techno cities colliding to form a whole that perfectly bridges the gap between The Motor City's emotive arrangements, The Windy City's percussive robustness, and Berlin's life-altering Basic Channel continuum.

Artist:	CLARO INTELECTO
Title:	Metanarrative
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 038CD

This is Manchester-based Mark Stewart's second full-length release and first release for the Modern Love label as Claro Intelecto. Following the release of 2004's Neurofibro, Stewart decided to re-direct his attention away from the IDM and electro influences that shaped much of his early work. Mark made use of an astute line in reduction and a love of sonorous bass lines to develop the Warehouse Sessions, a series of EPs that carried the essence of Manchester's infamous club prototypes with a look towards the stripped aesthetic of Berlin and Cologne. With four years gone since the release of his debut, Mark has spent the last year piecing together Metanarrative, built around 8 tracks that provide the backbone and emotive arc for the grand narrative alluded to in the title. Gone are the uncompromising percussive arrangements of the Warehouse Sessions, instead the sound returns to a more melodic, quietly euphoric display of opposites: sweet melodies and heavily padded bass frequencies, introspective conceits and propulsive percussion, and populist arrangements built with a deviant sound palette. The opener "Operation" sums this process up perfectly, the arrangement building around a succession of chord progressions and shuffling percussion that develops sweet tension and momentum without ever breaking into the obvious. "Harsh Reality" tugs more openly at the heartstrings with an intro that gives you every reason to believe that what's to follow might be the most readily commercial material from this artist yet, but the eventual bass line inverts expectations and delivers something both moving and exhilarating. By the time the album ends with "Beautiful Death" a mere 40 minutes later, all that's left is a weathered bass pulse and long-forgotten memories that urge you to press "play" again. Short and perfectly formed, Metanarrative builds bridges between techno and pop, between minimalism and rich songwriting, between the memories of the past and the opening of new horizons.

Artist:	STOTT, ANDY
Title:	Unknown Exception
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 050CD

Subtitled: Selected Tracks Vol. 1. This is the second CD release from Manchester's Andy Stott for the Modern Love label, since his 2005 debut, Merciless. This is the first-ever collection of some of Andy Stott's standout vinyl-only releases, remastered by Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin. Andy Stott has developed a unique sound since his debut on Modern Love -- his first demos for the label were heavily influenced by the square bass line techno variations of Claro Intelecto, a longtime friend, mentor, and eventually label-mate and collaborator. His first release, Replace featured a mixture of disciplines that took in elements of Detroit techno and Chicago house and fast found favor with the likes of Kompakt, De:Bug magazine and DJ Lawrence, who fell for Stott's intuitive, warm melodies and padded percussion. From that point on, Stott has continued to shift and adapt his sound to take in ever disparate influences, from the driving techno of Dave Clarke's Red series through to Basic Channel through to dubstep, garage and the minimalism of classic Sähkö. This chameleon-like quality has set Stott apart from his contemporaries, gaining him interest from all quarters of the electronic music scene, championed by Mary Anne Hobbs (recording two sessions for her show), and playing to increasingly large audiences (including several shows at Berghain's legendary Panorama Bar, the Sonar Festival, Bloc Weekend and countless others). His inspired shifts from traditional techno blueprints through to the bottom-heavy signatures of dubstep and the steppers arrangements of garage have also placed him at the forefront of the dubstep/techno hybrid sounds that have started to dominate the electronic music scene in 2008 alongside the likes of Martyn, Peverelist and T++. This compilation brings together selected tracks dating back to Andy Stott's debut in 2005 and reaches all the way to his most recent material in 2008. Tracks feature here from his most captivating EPs and stream through his fascination with deep, almost uncontainable bass lines and ever-inventive percussive shifts.

Artist:	CLARO INTELECTO
Title:	Warehouse Sessions
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 052CD

Manchester-based Mark Stewart (aka Claro Intelecto) presents all five of his acclaimed Warehouse Sessions series 12"s compiled on CD, including a bonus track. Designed, honed and tweaked for the floor, the Warehouse Sessions began in 2006 and shifted focus to Claro's darker edge: minimally-constructed, full-bodied, deviant 4/4 variations with the headier end of the warehouse in mind. "Thieves" opened the series with a full-bodied assault on midnight -- a dark clunk of deep, padded techno underpinning impossibly widescreen emissions, a relentless attack formation guided by soulful machinery executed through the tightest production imaginable. "New Dawn" rotated on a heavy slug of post-industrial genius, taking the metallic clunk of Monolake slowed right down and married with the faint ghost of Rhythm & Sound. "Trial And Error" opened volume two with a filthy modification of house presets re-wired with a crushed square bass line turned into something positively sleazy. "Signals" applied the same contaminated aesthetic to a more robust techno pattern -- a rolling tumble of kickdrum and snare, mutilated by a metallic screen that squashed the track into a very dark corner, only to be illuminated by patient, distant keys. "X" dominated volume three and is perhaps the best-known track in the series -- a gargantuan blast through a barely-contained 4/4 spasm, underpinned by distorted stabs and thumping kick-drums. A live session of warbling dub stabs are fed through a widescreen echo-chamber, making for a low-end psychosis that's just devastating. "Only Yesterday" was written in homage to Mr Fingers, a slow, deep, pulsating house classic, utilizing a sick, padded bass progression, caressed by pristine hi-hats and very little else. "Instinct" opened volume four with a percussive spine so crisp and spacious, it astounded all who heard it upon first listen. Meanwhile, "Post" pushed it deeper with sparkling keys and an endlessly cavernous bass line, venturing into a classic breakdown that brought those keys back. The fifth and final installment opened with "Hunt You Down," a shocking Maurizio-style dub workout in 4/4 with a relentlessly sharp and deep signature, accompanied by stretched chords and metallic shards. "Momento" ended the series with metallic stabs and an impossibly weighty bass drum, like a classic Chicago warehouse track modified with added low-end pressure -- a slow, slinky, fitting end to the series. The final edit included on the compilation, "W6," is an excerpt from a longer track taken from the same sessions, available only on this format.

Artist:	PENDLE COVEN
Title:	Self Assessment
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 053CD

Manchester's Pendle Coven are Miles Whittaker (aka DJ Miles/MLZ) and Gary Howell, and this is their long-awaited debut full-length release. Pendle have been amassing a substantial archive of material since their debut release came out back in 2003. In the intervening years, they have released seven EPs for Modern Love before finally compiling Self Assessment. Within their body of work, Pendle Coven have explored areas of techno and electronic music as diverse as their interests, taking in early '90s-style hardcore, drone, Basic-Channelisms, Drexciyan electro- and warehouse minimalism along the way. This album is compiled from a number of tracks previously released on the £100 A Metre, Marriage Of Convenience, Hex and Iamnoman 12" EPs, and includes 6 previously-unreleased tracks from the archives, spanning the last 5 years. The album opens with the disembodied guitar treatment of "Aged Drone," paving the way for the stripped menace of "Iamnoman." From there, we drop in on the staggered proto-dubstep of "Unit 6," an alternate string-driven version of the airy stepper "Uncivil Engineering," the classic padded bass techno of "Modern Mode" and, finally, the towering chord crescendos of the Berlin-inspired "Exigen."

Artist:	MLZ
Title:	One Cycle EP
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	LOVE 056EP

Every new record from MLZ doesn't quite fit in with the one that preceded it, something that's doubly true for this release. "One Cycle" is probably the most fierce, stripped and relentless thing ever released by Modern Love, a classic reduction that rotates into a frenzied crescendo of panning stabs and a washed-out, chugging backbone that doesn't let up. MLZ's remix of DJ Ghosthunter offers up a dank, obliterated house configuration guided by the spirit of Theo Parrish and KDJ.

Artist:	CLARO INTELECTO
Title:	Chadderton EP
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	LOVE 057EP

Mark Stewart aka Claro Intelecto presents three new tracks recorded in early 2009. "Chadderton" is an astonishing slice of deep and woozy midnight house, complete with sleazy chords and a frayed spine that's primed for peak-time narcosis. "Above" features relentless chords and a shuffling percussive line that never lets up, while "Great Day" closes the EP with a cathartic spell that ends almost as soon as it begins, letting in rays of sunshine through the dense thicket of sound.

Artist:	DEMDIKE STARE
Title:	Symbiosis
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 059CD

Demdike Stare is a long-in-the-making hook-up between two shady characters operating at the fringes of Manchester's fragmented music scene: Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty. Miles has been a long-time affiliate of Modern Love as one half of Pendle Coven and under his own MLZ alias, while Canty is one of the city's most recognizable vinyl collectors, carrying an obsession with everything from obscure Nordic Doom records to Anatolian funk albums, fuelled by his day job helping out at the Finders Keepers label. The project is named after Pendle's most famous witch: Elizabeth Southerns, aka Demdike. The tracks on Symbiosis are drawn from elements of Turkish, Indian, Iranian, African and West Indian film soundtracks alongside Norwegian drone records, classic house templates, punctured dub, modified techno and the Arctic noise perfected by Mika Vainio. Original sources and dense analog experiments weave around each other with little care for convention or stylistic expectation, instead throwing the pair's extensive musical knowledge into a set of tracks that, quite brilliantly, defy categorization. The album opens with "Suspicious Drone," a dense, 6-minute opening that chugs along like a malfunctioning mechanical beast, honing in on Lancashire's dark industrial landscapes before moving onto more exotic, balmy territory. "Haxan Dub" (named after the film narrated by William Burroughs about witchcraft) deploys fragmented dub echoes infused with displaced horns and African signatures, taking its time with one of the jerkiest rhythms you'll have the pleasure of hearing, before "Jannisary" tangles in and out of an Iranian hook and a squashed Congolese rhythm that creates an asymmetric, geniusly-constructed dancefloor killer. By the time the album comes to a close with "Ghostly Hardware" an hour later, the cycle is complete with a return to icy tundras and chugging machinations steeped in the traditions of Scandinavian machine music and pure analog frequencies, expertly handled by those masterful technicians over at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering.

Artist:	DEMDIKE STARE
Title:	Tryptych
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	3CD
Price:	$25.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 067CD

2012 repress; Demdike Stare's Tryptych, a lavish triple CD production that brings together three albums that have previously only been available on vinyl (Forest Of Evil, Liberation Through Hearing, Voices Of Dust), plus an extra 40 minutes of bonus material recorded during the same sessions. Demdike Stare is a project made up of two insatiable vinyl collectors based in the north of England: Sean Canty (who works for the esteemed Finders Keepers label) and Miles Whittaker (a long-time producer and DJ who has released music under the MLZ moniker and as part of Pendle Coven) The music Demdike Stare make is hard to pin down, based largely around archival musical sources ranging from obscure library records to long-forgotten jazz, early electronic, and industrial recordings, alongside an array of Iranian, Pakistani, Turkish and Eastern European material largely unknown in the Western world. Demdike Stare absorb and re-align these found sounds via their ever-expanding array of analog machines, ending with something that is in part plunderphonic, but ultimately completely new. Their music has sometimes been lumped in with the hypnagogic, hauntological and, most recently, "witch house" movements, but ultimately, Demdike Stare should appeal to anyone with an interest in everything from classic KPM Library records through to the music of Basic Channel and all the way to the smudged, altered-realities of James Ferraro and The Caretaker. That is, at least until the next record, when the frames of reference might just change up and take them somewhere completely different. Housed in a beautiful triple gatefold fold-out profile pack. Mastered at Berlin's D&M. Artwork by Andy Votel.

Artist:	STOTT, ANDY
Title:	Passed Me By
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	2x12"
Price:	$23.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 069LP

2013 repress. Produced slowly and meticulously, these seven tracks by Manchester's Andy Stott take influence from an array of seemingly incoherent noises, from the indefinable and unforgettable mind-tricks of Arthur Russell to the slow house of Kassem Mosse, from the alternate VHS realities of James Ferraro and Jamal Moss to the LinnDrum classics of the vintage Prince era. These seven tracks create their own pace and agenda, largely shying away from the dancefloor in favor of something more complex and hard to define. Following on from the tribal malfunctions of opening intro "Signature," "New Ground" heads into a chasm of layered loops, creating a decimated and re-wired funk template colored in with frayed percussion and dislodged vocal samples. "North To South" starts off from similar ground but adds a shuffling vibe at a deceptively intoxicated 110 bpm. "Intermittent" is something altogether different, taking perfectly formed boogie templates and screwing with them until nothing quite fits, brittle elements floating in and out of time yet somehow keeping it together, before "Dark Details" delivers the most dancefloor compatible six-minute stretch of the set, all clanging stabs and dense percussion, somewhere between Shackleton and Bam Bam. "Execution" and "Passed Me By" end things off on a slowed-down tip, the former deploying an anaesthetized and padded 4/4 template sunk deeper into the abyss by deformed, time-stretched vocals, the latter ending off proceedings with a more delicate palette, letting go of all that pent-up emotion with nothing but that rumbling low-end and some strings for company. Mastered and cut at Dubpates & Mastering, Berlin.

Artist:	STOTT, ANDY
Title:	Passed Me By/We Stay Together
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	LOVE 070CD

Repressed. Two acclaimed albums from Andy Stott available for the first time on CD format, including four bonus tracks. Produced slowly and meticulously, these two EPs were originally released on vinyl during 2011 and have become the most widely-admired productions yet from Manchester-based Andy Stott. Taking influence from an array of seemingly incoherent noises, from the indefinable and unforgettable mind-tricks of Arthur Russell to the slow house of Kassem Mosse, from the alternate VHS realities of James Ferraro and Jamal Moss to the Linn Drum classics of the vintage Prince-era -- these tracks create their own pace and agenda, largely shying away from the dancefloor in favor of something more complex and hard to define. 2CD edition packaged in a deluxe oversized gatefold digifile. Mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Artist:	STOTT, ANDY
Title:	We Stay Together
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	2x12"
Price:	$23.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 072LP

2013 repress. Recorded in the immediate aftermath of his last EP Passed Me By, this new double pack from Andy Stott features six new productions that are more desolate and exposed than anything on its predecessor. The opening "Submission" tumbles into being with layers of washed-out digital revolutions, creating an artificial landscape that's quite at odds with the analog machinations that follow -- yet somehow rendering the alienated feel of this material perfectly. "Posers" nudges its way into being abruptly and embeds another squashed funk variant that's all low-lit neon and growling textures, awkwardly shuffling into a more robust 4/4 template suffused with sparkling percussion and disembodied vocals. "Bad Wires" is the centerpiece of the EP, a relentless percussive clusterfuck that belies its slow tempo with a fearless, rhythmic attitude. It's as immersive and narcotic as anything ever produced by Stott -- peeling away one layer after another with each repeated listen. "We Stay Together" (Part One) was the first track written for the EP and offers a more spacious narrative and a more sparkling, hazy palette -- culminating in a beautifully frayed central hook that's somehow in keeping with the VHS aesthetic of both Jamal Moss and Ferris Bueller. "Cherry Eye" tumbles deep into a darkened hole before EP closer "Cracked" turns up, fuelled by an odd mixture of adrenalin and sorrow to send you on your way, buzzing and forlorn. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Artist:	DEMDIKE STARE
Title:	Elemental
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$23.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 077CD

It's been almost a year since Demdike Stare finished their Tryptych of releases, and in the intervening months, Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty have been busy touring and gradually piecing together sounds for this new series: Elemental. After four limited edition vinyl installments, Elemental is now released as a 2CD album, including different versions of tracks that have appeared on the vinyl editions, plus extensive additional material -- making for a two-hour trip through dark, post-industrial terrain. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, the packaging features specially-commissioned artwork by Andy Votel and comes as an oversized gatefold/6-page digifile.

Artist:	SUUM CUIQUE
Title:	Ascetic Ideals
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	LOVE 078LP

For their first release of 2012, Modern Love delivers the second album from Suum Cuique, the analog noise/experimental project from Miles Whittaker, one-half of Demdike Stare. The first Suum Cuique album Midden (YOUNGAM 002LP) was released on Modern Love sub-label Young Americans back in 2010, with these new recordings made in the intervening years and in between sessions for the Demdike Stare album, Elemental. What differentiates this project from all the others Whittaker is involved with is that the material recorded under Suum Cuique was made using analog hardware only, often recorded straight from the mixing desk with no overdubs or edits. The sound veers from the intense shards of noise that make up album opener "Strohtopf" to the padded techno malfunctions of "Kuiper Anomaly," the found sound/shortwave radio signals of "Atlas Levels" to the mystical rotations of "Intonation" and the electrified drones of album closer "Dionysus Decay." Although there are obvious sonic threads running between Suum Cuique and Demdike Stare, the material on Ascetic Ideals is much more stark, at turns recalling the work of Mika Vainio, Eleh, Maurizio Bianchi and even John Carpenter, whose nightmare visions lurk somewhere deep in the mix. Mastered and cut by Lupo at Dubplates & Mastering, limited to 700 copies.

Artist:	STOTT, ANDY
Title:	Luxury Problems
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	LOVE 079CD

Repressed! Following on from a pair of extended players released in 2011 (Passed Me By/We Stay Together) Andy Stott returns to Modern Love with Luxury Problems, an eight-track album of new material recorded over the last 12 months. Five of the tracks on the album feature the voice of Alison Skidmore, Andy's one-time piano teacher whom he hadn't seen since he was a teenager back in 1996. There was no grand gesture in mind, it just sort of happened -- but after almost a year of studio work, the result is really quite unlike anything you'll have heard from him before. "Numb" opens the album with Alison's voice; layered and looped, but essentially left bare and exposed, tumbling into a dense shuffle, sort of somewhere between Theo Parrish and Sade, but more fucked. "Lost and Found" follows and deploys a growling rave bass line and a disturbed vocal, the beat assembling itself around a squashed Linndrum like a submerged Prince/Cameo production, haunted and impenetrable, but full of funk. "Sleepless" started life as an African drum edit that sooner or later succumbed to Stott's intense rhythmic shifts. It's a sound that's been imitated countless times since the release of Passed Me By, here re-tooled and re-built for its next evolutionary phase. "Hatch the Plan" ends the first half of the album with some heavily treated location recordings and a low-end grind that probably doesn't quite prepare you for the vocal arrangements that follow -- it's just a beautifully inverted pop song. The second half opens with "Expecting," the most recognizably "Stott" moment on the album: a wrecked, deliriously knocked-out 4/4 shuffle deployed at half-speed; those heavy kick drums sucking in everything around them. "Luxury Problems" offers up the album's most quietly euphoric moment; conventional arrangements and drum loops are disrupted by sharp disco bursts that mess with what you know: it's straight and beautiful and unbalanced and damaged, somehow all at once. "Up the Box" fucks with the narrative and goes somewhere else entirely, an extended intro that seems to build continuously for 3 minutes before breaking off into a slowed-down amen edit, creating a kind of narcotic jungle variant that fragments everything and ends just at the point you think it's going to go off, before "Leaving" finishes the album with an almost unbearably-beautiful arrangement of voice and synth and a final key-change that takes you from joyful to forlorn in an instant. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Air Studios. Deluxe 6-panel digifile CD.

Artist:	STOTT, ANDY
Title:	Luxury Problems
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$25.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 079LP

2013 repress; gatefold double LP version. Following on from a pair of extended players released in 2011 (Passed Me By/We Stay Together) Andy Stott returns to Modern Love with Luxury Problems, an eight-track album of new material recorded over the last 12 months. Five of the tracks on the album feature the voice of Alison Skidmore, Andy's one-time piano teacher whom he hadn't seen since he was a teenager back in 1996. There was no grand gesture in mind, it just sort of happened -- but after almost a year of studio work, the result is really quite unlike anything you'll have heard from him before. "Numb" opens the album with Alison's voice; layered and looped, but essentially left bare and exposed, tumbling into a dense shuffle, sort of somewhere between Theo Parrish and Sade, but more fucked. "Lost and Found" follows and deploys a growling rave bass line and a disturbed vocal, the beat assembling itself around a squashed Linndrum like a submerged Prince/Cameo production, haunted and impenetrable, but full of funk. "Sleepless" started life as an African drum edit that sooner or later succumbed to Stott's intense rhythmic shifts. It's a sound that's been imitated countless times since the release of Passed Me By, here re-tooled and re-built for its next evolutionary phase. "Hatch the Plan" ends the first half of the album with some heavily treated location recordings and a low-end grind that probably doesn't quite prepare you for the vocal arrangements that follow -- it's just a beautifully inverted pop song. The second half opens with "Expecting," the most recognizably "Stott" moment on the album: a wrecked, deliriously knocked-out 4/4 shuffle deployed at half-speed; those heavy kick drums sucking in everything around them. "Luxury Problems" offers up the album's most quietly euphoric moment; conventional arrangements and drum loops are disrupted by sharp disco bursts that mess with what you know: it's straight and beautiful and unbalanced and damaged, somehow all at once. "Up the Box" fucks with the narrative and goes somewhere else entirely, an extended intro that seems to build continuously for 3 minutes before breaking off into a slowed-down amen edit, creating a kind of narcotic jungle variant that fragments everything and ends just at the point you think it's going to go off, before "Leaving" finishes the album with an almost unbearably-beautiful arrangement of voice and synth and a final key-change that takes you from joyful to forlorn in an instant. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Air Studios.

Artist:	VATICAN SHADOW
Title:	Ornamented Walls
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	LOVE 080LP

Ornamented Walls is the most intense, brutal and, in many senses, most substantial work from Dominick Fernow's Vatican Shadow project yet. Released to coincide with his first tour of Europe, the album incorporates the live mix rehearsals of "Operation Neptune Spear" with tracks made in their aftermath, recorded straight to tape and mastered by Matt Colton at Air Studios. Anyone familiar with Fernow's live set-up will recognize the distinct nature of this material -- making use of stems and partial tracks separated into a cassette system which is then re-layered and mixed, effected with electronic processing. In short -- Fernow uses his tape machines like turntables in a mix, weaving a hazy and intuitive narrative of sounds that never quite head in the direction you expect, all imbued with an almost feral attitude that's exhilarating to witness, their limitations (ever noticed how VS tracks end so abruptly? the tape ran out), and their mechanical machine qualities used to devastating effect. Side A features all three parts of "Operation Neptune Spear," originally made available in a measly edition of 17 cassettes and sold at the first-ever Vatican Shadow live show in L.A. back in May 2012. Side B features an additional 25 minutes of previously-unreleased work made in the aftermath of the show and using the same set-up, including an astonishing revision of "Cairo Is a Haunted City," dis-assembled and re-wired, lending it a shortwave quality that's nothing short of revelatory. Ornamented Walls is the fourth Vatican Shadow release to be made available on vinyl, following on from releases for Blackest Ever Black, Type and his own Bed of Nails imprint.

Artist:	MILES
Title:	Faint Hearted
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$25.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 081LP

Repressed! Miles has been releasing material on Modern Love for a decade, first as one-half of Pendle Coven, then on his own as MLZ, and eventually pairing up with Sean Canty to record as Demdike Stare. In between he's also pursued more experimental terrain under the Suum Cuique moniker, produced jungle for the HATE project and (together with Andy Stott) taken on the occasional release as Millie & Andrea for Modern Love sub-label Daphne. He is also an admired, exhilarating DJ, and his sets have been known to span a broad spectrum of electronic music, from the obscure UK techno of labels like Radioactive Lamb and Irdial, to classic Chicago house, Detroit techno and -- most importantly -- early '90s jungle and breakbeat, feeding into his love of the most uncompromising end of the Italian experimental movement, musique concrète, synthwave, and contemporary noise. After more than 10 years of producing, Faint Hearted is his debut solo album -- an exposition of Miles' love of electronic music in all its shapes, harnessing his fidgety production style into one expansive, restless set of tracks. The album opens with the filtered and looped jungle mutation of "Lebensform," through to the minimal, barely-noticeable bass-shifts of "Irreligious," the classic Plastikman-infused looped ruffage of "Status Narcissism" and the padded bliss of "Sense Data," coming across like a lost Move D production from the classic Studio Pankow era. The second half opens with "Rejoice," a slowly-unfurling 4/4 variant that sounds like a more technofied and electric take on his work with Demdike Stare, while "Archaic Thought Pattern 1" invades a sequence of strings and bass notes with blasts of white noise, sounding like something off Aphex Twin's Donkey Rhubarb EP rebuilt by Mika Vainio. The set ends with the evocative field-recorded sequence "Queuing" and the ambient futurism of "Loran Dreams," in some respects the straightest, most affecting nine-minute stretch yet from a producer who is seemingly unable to settle or stand still. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton, pressed at Pallas.

Artist:	RAINER VEIL
Title:	Struck EP
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	12"
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	LOVE 083EP

Rainer Veil are Liam Morley and Dan Valentine, and this is their first EP and debut for Modern Love. The Struck EP incorporates recordings made over the last year and extends from the rewired jungle ruckus of the title-track to the more emotive formation of "Wade In" and "Bala," through to the hazy closer "Yield." There's a melancholy pop pulsing at the heart of these tracks, colored by a love of electronic mutations from UKG and hardcore rave to house and techno.

Artist:	MILES
Title:	Unsecured
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	12"
Price:	$16.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 084EP

Miles' returns with a half-hour EP of new material more squarely aimed at the floor with four darkened, robust variants. "Blatant Statement" slowly emerges from a rough alignment of metallic percussion and abrasive stabs you'd most likely associate with Vatican Shadow, before super-warm bass stabs shifts the perspective. "Technocracy" delivers an oozing house deconstruction, while "Infinite Jest" revolves around an industrial cacophony somewhere between technofied Pete Swanson and a sweaty Kassem Mosse. "Plutocracy" is a bleached-out warehouse chug surrounded by a submerged choral arrangement.

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Artist:	JACK DICE
Title:	Block Motel
Label:	MODERN LOVE (UK)
Format:	12"
Price:	$16.50
Catalog #:	LOVE 082EP