Demdike Stare - Biography
There’s a large creative force surrounding Manchester’s Modern Love label. Aligned with the record distributer Boomkat, as well as Finders Keepers and several other outlets of inspired underground music of all stripes, the artists that work at and with Modern Love seem to have a knack for carving out very distinct takes on electronic music from ambient to techno. Demdike Stare is the duo of Miles Whittaker (MLZ, one half of Pendle Coven) and Sean Canty (Finders Keepers). Both are linked to Modern Love as artists and employees. Together the two create sample heavy music that melds dark drones, queasy techno, processed field recordings and various strains of ethnic music into one giant, throbbing dub dream.
Demdike Stare formed in 2009. The duo immediately self released two eponymous 12”s of dark ambience and dubwise collage informed by television library music and various strains of post-techno. Both records were released in ’09 and immediately made an impression in the electronic music community. Tracks like “Suspicious Drone” and “Haxan” mine fertile and unique territory, mixing unlikely styles with truly hypnotic results.
Later in ’09 Modern Love collected the tracks from both limited vinyl releases on CD as Symbiosis. Heard as a whole, these tracks leave a massive impression. Fractured dub experiments crash headlong into icy drones, deep minimal house and scratchy vinyl noise. Much of the music is peppered with folk sounds from traditional Turkish, Iranian and Indian music as well as samples of horror films. The way these sounds are processed lends the tracks an otherworldly feel, as if the listener has picked up on a stream of ghostly audio beaming in from another time. The record is expertly sequenced, benefiting from a cathartic sense of release as slippery grooves kill the tension of the dark, occult drones and sound collage that came before. “Haxan Dub” for example, features a skanking beat with distant horns and a massive bass pulse while “All Hallows Eve” sounds like Goblin jamming with Thomas Koner.
2010 brought the Modern Love released single Forest Of Evil. Comprised of two long tracks, the record finds Demdike Stare merging post-dubstep rhythms with pulsing minimal techno and thick drones. These tracks stand as some of the duo’s most hallucinogenic music yet, featuring crushing bass frequencies, mesmerizing vocal chants, tribal drumming and lush electronic ambience. While references could be made to certain music by Coil, this release vaults Demdike Stare into a league of its own. The group has always projected a sense of the mystic and occult in its name (supposedly the nickname of an accused witch), song titles and album art, but on Forest Of Evil the music stands as the most bewitching aspect.
Further cementing their growing reputation as masters of haunted, sample based techno the duo self-released a 60-minute mix CD late in 2010. Osmosis sources all of the group’s influences — obscure psych, funk, disco, droning minimalism, space-jazz, television soundtracks and ambient music — and welds them into one colossal, mind-bending track.
Demdike Stare is shaping up to become one of post-techno’s most innovative groups. The duo’s releases have synthesized very specific influences into a highly personal sound. Heady, mysterious and utterly spellbinding, Demdike Stare’s music is sure to pull you into its dark, shadowy world.