Album Review: We Stay Together [EP] by Andy Stott

Six months after his Passed Me By EP advanced like a scorched-earth campaign over the ruins of dance music, Andy Stott is back with another six tracks of charred techno. You can bet that in the fast-zombies-versus-slow-zombies debate, Stott sides with the groaners and stumblers: As was his previous record, We Stay Together is a Frankenstein's monster pieced together from scraps of club tracks pitched down to an agonizing crawl. Funny things happen at this speed: The beats lurch violently, kicking up clouds of ash with every impact; every syncopation becomes a hesitant shudder.

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With Passed Me By, Andy Stott turned his own history of sensually respiring dub techno into a nightmarish vision of primordial rage. After such an outpouring of anguish, I wouldn't have expected a follow-up so quickly. But here we are, just a few months later, with another album-length EP from the Mancunian producer.We Stay Together isn't a retread of Passed Me By, it's a continuation—but there are signs of life this time.

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Increasingly estranged techno producer Andy Stott - who abandoned the genre earlier this year and began releasing dark, twisted house EPs - is back with another hair-raising collection only months after the visceral Passed Me By. There must be something in the water in Stott’s native Manchester, or specifically Stott’s native flat, to transform him from deep house DJ into crazed, prolific experimenter: although less inclined to source horror movies/Turkish radio than labelmates Demdike Stare, he’s bent on recreating the Lord of the Flies titles, churning out poison like a lead works. Somehow each record gets more beautiful than the last, and We Stay Together offers that perfect mix of lethal mulch and sounds recorded from the parties held in Parisian caves by base jumpers.

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