The fascination with the sound shaped by Basic Channel and the Chain Reaction artists does not stem from the musical expression – and thus the tangible representation – of an abstract present, but is rooted rather in the realisation of just how multifaceted and multi-layered a moment can actually be. Miles – a veteran of the Modern Love crew, one half of Demdike Stare, founder of the DDS label and perhaps the world’s best DJ – approaches this phenomenon from a different angle on his first album for Short Span. His days in the studio always begin with a dub-inspired warm-up – without a plan or a goal, simply feeding electrical energy into the mixer’s channels. *Vault* brings together six of these warm-ups, dramaturgically condensed into a tour de force of the inconceivable.
*Vault sounds like looking through an old Mattel View-Master. Coarse-grained snapshots, stripped of their details to just the right degree, which must now be reconstructed from the echoes of memory. With Miles, this can kick, unsettle, destroy, sweep you away and soothe. Every track breathes history, yet is merely a compelling signpost of just how far we still have to go to find answers to the simplest questions. Dub, basically. Signal in, outcome open.
Vault
