FACT mix 141 is the eerie, absorbing work of Demdike Stare – the Manchester-orbiting duo of Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty.
Whittaker is perhaps best known for his austere, dub-infused but club-friendly releases on Modern Love as MLZ and as one half of Pendle Coven; Canty is one of the tireless nugget-hunters working behind the scenes at Andy Votel’s Finders Keepers label. Like the Haxan clubnight which predates and informs it, Demdike Stare is a project combining the duo’s interests in techno, dub, drone, early electronics, astral jazz, off-kilter ethnic musics; grounded in samples, it blurs the boundary between DJ and producer, collector and creator, and has yielding astonishing results on record. The first Demdike offering was 2009′s Symbiosis album (released on CD and across two self-titled 12″s), followed by the enchanting mix CD Osmosis and most recently another LP of original material, the two-track, vinyl-only Forest of Evil.
Buoyed by the considerable cult success of their releases, Summer 2010 finds Demdike Stare have venturing out into the world for a number of live audio-visual performances, including an appearance at Shedding The Past, Dubbing The Future (Nocturne 3), a collaboration with FACT at the 2010 Mutek festival that also features King Midas Sound, Shed, Ikonika, Actress and others. Mutek takes place across various venues in Montreal over the period June 2-6, with the FACT event happening at Club Soda on Friday 4. Catch ‘em if you can.
Above and beyond their often tongue-in-cheek invocation of the occult, there is something truly uncanny about Demdike Stare’s overlapping and synthesis of textures ancient and modern, eastern and western. Witness their FACT mix, which sees ‘La Dance De Nadia’ by Lebanese composer Elias Rahbani sharing airtime with Robert Hood’s 1998 minimal banger ‘Grace Under Fire’ (Nighttime Mix) and Carl Craig’s noir-techno sure shot ‘Darkness’, and also features psychedelic reggae of Keith Hudson and German art-prog from Guru Guru as well as four previously unreleased Demdike Stare productions: ‘Rain And Shame’, ‘Matilda’s Dream’, ‘Caged In Stammheim’ and ‘The Stars Are Moving’.
Grab the mix and cop the tracklist below. See the next page for a Q&A with Demdike Stare.
Download: FACT mix 151 – Demdike Stare
(Available for three weeks)
Tracklist:
1. Demdike Stare – Rain And Shame
2. Demdike Stare – Matilda’s Dream
3. Guru Guru – Atommolch
4. Demdike Stare – Caged In Stammheim
5. Keith Hudson – Satan Side
6. Unknown – Unknown Thai track
7. Elias Rahbani – La Dance De Nadia
8. Robert Hood – Grace Under Fire ( Nightime Mix )
9. Demdike Stare – The Stars Are Moving
10. Carl Craig – Darkness
Pages: 1 2
Forest of Evil is amazing. Really looking forward to hearing more from them this year. Great interview.