Pop Matters gives Andy Stott Electronic Album Of The Year (Posted By Harry)
Andy Stott is Pop Matters Electronic Album Of The Year
Andy Stott ‘Passed Me By’
(Modern Love)
“Arguably the most alluring and atmospheric electronic album of 2011, and inarguably a masterpiece of dub techno intensity, Passed Me By fulfills all the promise of Andy Stott’s excellent 12-inches for the Modern Love label while smashing his legacy to pieces. Originally an above-average minimal techno musician in the steely, workmanlike style of mentor Claro Intelecto, Stott not only subverts the familiar dub palette, he achieves Jeff Mills’ highest honor by giving us something we’ve never heard before. The sound of Passed Me By is, to put it mildly, remarkable. Unremittingly dark, suffused with pressure and blackened in soot, it makes you feel as if you’ve been pitched down a well 1000-feet deep and are hearing the music from inside. Samples pop suddenly out of the darkness only to furl back on themselves and leave you to remember them. Yet Stott isn’t just creating sounds—he’s creating songs, each one haunting, confusing, and brilliant. In the reimagined lap-dance of “New Ground”, in the simultaneous serenity and paranoia of “Dark Details”, in the impossible blue depths of “Passed Me By”, not an inch of room is wasted, not a note is out-of-place, and every track presents itself as a vital piece of a monstrous whole. Records this good are one in a million. Blink and you’ll miss it, but if you don’t, it will suck you in, pulling you ever downward until all that remains is the thump-thump-thump of the kick drum, shaking you to your very bones.” Written By Mike Newmark
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