The relative conciseness of the 12-inch format suits Demdike Stare. Left to unspool over an entire album's length, their darkside sample collages and scorched-earth ambient can feel a little too uniform, lending proceedings a plodding feel quite at odds with the restlessness of their best work. Channeling their energies into 16 focused minutes of corrosive junglist noise, Test Pressing 001 is by some distance the most vital Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty have sounded since 2010's Voices Of Dust album, and might just be their most powerful material to date.
It helps that they draw more explicitly from Whittaker's extensive history as a DJ and producer of club music than they have for a while, with both tracks possessed of a punishing drive reminiscent of his recent solo work as Miles. "Collision" also bears scars of the shredding techno/jungle hybrids he's produced under the name Millie: it sends a barbed-wire helix of breaks corkscrewing through a murky sea of mid-range radio interference and storms of trebly distortion. Halfway through, the percussive fray crashes towards the track's surface, belching out clouds of debris that tear down its sides and further roil up the turbulence below. It's coarse and utterly unrelenting, and it says something of its breakneck intensity that, arriving immediately afterwards, "Misappropriation"—a percussive vortex of banging pots and pans, maraca shakes and noisy, almost voice-like scribbles—still feels like the calm after the storm.
It helps that they draw more explicitly from Whittaker's extensive history as a DJ and producer of club music than they have for a while, with both tracks possessed of a punishing drive reminiscent of his recent solo work as Miles. "Collision" also bears scars of the shredding techno/jungle hybrids he's produced under the name Millie: it sends a barbed-wire helix of breaks corkscrewing through a murky sea of mid-range radio interference and storms of trebly distortion. Halfway through, the percussive fray crashes towards the track's surface, belching out clouds of debris that tear down its sides and further roil up the turbulence below. It's coarse and utterly unrelenting, and it says something of its breakneck intensity that, arriving immediately afterwards, "Misappropriation"—a percussive vortex of banging pots and pans, maraca shakes and noisy, almost voice-like scribbles—still feels like the calm after the storm.
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