- After two sturdy years spent mining a well-defined sound, Modern Love's releases for 2009 have seen their core roster of artists reaching beyond their signature milieu, drawing on a shifted set of influences, taking chances and hoping that listeners will follow. Miles Whittaker's sole MLZ record this year is no exception, passing on the monolithic, dubby heft that was so essential to popular favorites "NewAnalogueCentury" and "Dark Days."
The A-side's title gives a conspicuous tip of the hat to Robert Hood's "Detroit: One Circle" (recorded for Metroplex circa 1996), and Whittaker roughly recreates the claustrophobia and dizziness of Hood's spinning classic in his own track. There's a fiercer and nastier agenda, though, to his "One Cycle." Heavy stereo panning is the weapon of choice, and it's applied so liberally that the track's din of scissoring scrapes seems to circle just over the listener's head like a wake of vultures in wait—very loud vultures. The rhythm only heightens the sense of threat, with unremitting, quickened-pulse kicks and astringent metallic stabs hammering away with harsh, unchanging indifference.
Of course, "One Cycle" isn't without precedent, its dry, sharp palette and severe resistance to variation already suggested on "Crossed Swords." It's the B-side that'll have you doing a double-take, featuring a choppy remix of a track by one DJ Ghosthunter. A busted boombox rhythm introduces a track of jerky, garish house, until the honeyed keys arrive with some deep house cushion. Whittaker names this one his "Theo Made Me Do It Mix" but, before we've had time for that influence to sink in, a plunging sub-bass pattern veers us toward Whittaker's dubstep-leaning work as Millie. It's held together with wax and string, but the cheap-sounding pastiche works rather well, and gives the record a looseness that's sometimes missed by the bass technicians at Modern Love.
Tracklist A MLZ - One Cycle
B DJ Ghosthunter - Experiment 3 (MLZ's Theo Made Me Do It Mix)