- There must be something in the water up at Modern Love HQ. Not content with putting out some of the best dubby house and techno this side of Basic Channel, they've recently had the audacity to commission a horribly compelling (and anonymous) proto-jungle re-rub project, and, more recently, a slightly less mysterious but equally enthralling dubstep(ish) imprint called Daphne, the latest instalment of which ranks as perhaps the best thing to come out of Manchester all year.
A-side "Temper Tantrum" is a riotous piece of 'ardkore-meets-half step, starting out in classic pre '94 fashion with joyously vulgar synth stabs and rude, shuffling breaks before a shockingly beefy bassline and cavernous snare cracks fairly boot proceedings into 2009. Halfway in, thick, smoked out pads emerge for some hands-in-the-air (or, rather, spliffs-in-the-mouth) style respite, but soon enough they're gone and we're back on the road to ruin. Stonking doesn't even begin to describe it.
Over on the flip, Millie takes things bone deep with a typically hybridised 4/4 dubstep roller, continuing in the same powerfully hauntological vein as his previous Daphne release but upping the ante considerably with supreme bass dynamics and a spine-tingling woodblock snare. Unlike the in-your-face A-side, "Vigilance" is full of mist and murk (the synths sound as if they're squirting in from a parallel dimension) but thanks to expertly programmed percussion it's in no danger of letting the dance down. Quite the contrary, in fact: for fans of dark, ambiguous dance music that know its roots, it's sheer fire.
TracklistA Andrea - Temper Tantrum
B Millie - Vigilance