- Grill anyone that has spent quality time with Modern Love's recent output and, chances are, you'll get a strong response: The label is on something of a roll right now. Predictably enough, Millie's first solo offering—following an initial, genre-bending collaboration with Andrea—adds yet further fuel to Mancunian fire, arriving as it does on Modern Love offshoot Daphne.
"Sample Clearance," a phantasmagorical collision of howling bass and ghoulish pads wrapped around a strafing laser beam of a melody, comes off like a possessed amalgamation of MLZ and DMZ, merging the pale-faced techno of the former with the smouldering half-step of the latter to powerful effect. Dark, moody and stripped to the barest of floor-shaking essentials, it'll get anyone with a penchant for deep, sinister bass music squirming uncontrollably (particularly so if dropped by an animated corpse at a crypt party).
Flip over to the aptly titled "Path To Hell (Redemption Mix)" and it's more of the same, if a little edgier in tone. Lurching forward via a fidgety 4/4 kick, murky swabs of bass gust against a skeletal arrangement of razor-sharp snares and hats, eerie pads squirting about in claustrophobic fashion whilst, somewhere in the ether, what sounds like the heavy breathing of a monolithic dragon adds an ominous layer of density to the proceedings.
It's dizzying stuff, at once boldly corporeal and disconcertingly effervescent, unsure of its status as a vital embodiment of The New (read: dubstep-techno crossover) or a ghostly apparition of rave's long-gone glory days (witness the sheer, faded creepiness of it all).
Tracklist A Sample Clearance
B Path To Hell (Redemption Mix)