I've spent a lot of time this year complaining about the complacency of dub techno, pondering its inevitable death as a viable genre. We get a glimmer of hope with the title track, based around a mercilessly phased sample, but it's unceremoniously stomped out by the hellish closer "Cracked." This dynamic turns a fairly straightforward techno thumper like "Bad Wires" into a heaving mass of gravelly shakers and dust-eaten drums, and the otherwise funky "Cherry Eye" into a swirling watercolour punctured by an unforgiving kickdrum. It might be lo-fi, but it's not the kind that obscures Stott's rough textures merely blur the lines between the elements. On "Posers," the vocal sample pushes the other elements dangerously off-balance as it pans the stereo spectrum. Where the music on Passed Me By slowly destroyed itself with each passing bar, here it sounds like it's desperately struggling to hold together. One listen to opener "Submission" should prove it: those billowing chords of yore are back and unharmed, even if they are sounding a little haggard. We Stay Together isn't a retread of Passed Me By, it's a continuation-but there are signs of life this time. But here we are, just a few months later, with another album-length EP from the Mancunian producer. After such an outpouring of anguish, I wouldn't have expected a follow-up so quickly.
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With Passed Me By, Andy Stott turned his own history of sensually respiring dub techno into a nightmarish vision of primordial rage.