Bleep

We Stay Together, the sequel to its predecessor, the critically acclaimed 'Passed Me By', arrives from Andy Stott who seems to be still in the pensive and merciless mood that spurned on his most recent work. Paying even less attention to the dance floor and any kind of bodytonic needs this time round, Stott packs in a humid atmosphere of alienation that even though murky and detached in parts still has an undeniable groove underneath it all. This is techno pulled tight to its extremes and then detuned and rewound to an agonisingly slow pace. The downshifts in tempo provide the record with a naturally unsettling tone, lending each sound element a slightly sinister effect. Like shining a light down a dark alley, some things are revealed that maybe should have been left alone. However, there’s a certain perverse excitement to We Stay Together as well. Andy Stott provides a new path forward for experimental electronic music, one that rubs grubby elbows with the dancefloor without fully committing to hedonism. It’s house for the mangled cassette deck set.

We Stay Together opens with a trap door in the form of ‘Submission’, a mostly pleasant slice of ambient that runs dungeon dwelling synth tones against drum brushes that rise and fall in timbre. Eerie stuff for sure, but far from the turmoil that ensues. In fact, the middle section of ‘Bad Wires’ and ‘We Stay Together (Part One)’ cut an imposing figure across the entire LP. ‘Bad Wires’ is an apt title as its skipping rhythm and waterlogged production sound kinda like the turntable connection was made faulty, while the equally queasy would-be title track is about as far from a love song as one could imagine.