Andy Stott
Merciless

I don't even know who Andy Stott is, I only know that Merciless is marvelous. Its poor yet fascinating cover: that silhouette in its wide puffer jacket facing the world, that gray interrupted by light captured me. Sure, I knew it was about electronics and not metal or punk. I had also heard some whispers, but not much. Yet in the end, I let myself go and got it. And I'm glad I did! A remarkable IDM masterpiece: Carl Craig recording underwater. Techno drowned in dub. Mad Professor filtered through minimalism. These are the references for an intentionally modest album, but perfectly produced and crafted in every small nuance. A truly precious record in combining digital sounds and inspired piano melodies.

Florence showcases the offering well by pairing frantic yet not crazy drum machines with a few liquid piano chords. Edyocat shows a bit of muscle with its regular and slightly reverberated beat, yet the Jamaican influences do not deviate the track which continues straight with its regular kick until it finds its place in the city of techno: Detroit.

And Choke seems to want to follow the same path, but soon the beat is deconstructed and softened by dub influences that divert the track between the rolling rhythm and evocative ambient strings: it thus becomes the manifesto track of the entire work in merging music that is both intelligent and urgent and corporeal. Techno and dub blend into music rich in its thinness.

The Latin percussion of Hi-Rise could be distracting, but always well-present in the background during the track is a squared and narcotic beat that stops only to let the clear and clean notes of the title track surface. Just a moment of quiet before the rhythm returns to invade the scene with its thousand branching, recurrent, and insinuating paths that compose the dancer Come To Me, though obscured by that low frequency that expands and chases the song. Hertzog declines ambient tinged with lysergic and experimental Germany, yet marries it with a smoky and rubbery bass and rhythmic bursts. Boutique veers slightly from the set standards and seems like an infantile house, uncertain in its beginning (as if made by children for an audience composed exclusively of other children); then it explodes guided by the relentless and damn serious thud of the straight kick. Blocked is the darkest moment of the album: a dub raped by synthetic sounds transforms into hyperkinetic drum'n'bass torn apart by scorching noise bursts. Peace Of Mind comes to rest the minds and resumes the classic and relaxing atmospheres of the title track, closing this fifty minutes nearly perfectly.

In my opinion, Merciless is a record not to be missed at all: it's a shame to discover it late and admit to having listened to what is probably one of the best works of 2006 only now. And not only...