Biography
Andy Stott shifted from crafting refined dub techno toward forging distinctive and riskier hybrids that incorporated hardcore techno, post-punk, and dream pop, along with further influences, stirring responses that spanned dread and exhilaration. Several years after issuing his debut full-length Merciless in 2006, the producer executed an abrupt pivot via the 2011 mini-albums Passed Me By and We Stay Together, both built around what were labeled, in descriptive yet playful fashion, “knackered house.” That pivotal step informed all of his subsequent full-lengths on Modern Love, spanning Luxury Problems in 2012 through Never the Right Time in 2021, each one intertwining Alison Skidmore’s atmospheric vocals with numerous sampled and processed voices. Additional output has appeared under the alias Andrea, while collaborative projects have taken the forms of Millie & Andrea and Hate.
Originally raised in Oldham, Stott has lived in various locations in and around Manchester, the city that houses Modern Love, the label responsible for every one of his original releases. Although too young for direct participation in rave culture, he consumed music avidly and began emulating hardcore tracks on keyboards during his school years. At the urging of his piano instructor Alison Skidmore, he abandoned conventional lessons in his early teens to concentrate on sound design, initially working inside the studio emulator Reason. Once in his early twenties and aligned with Modern Love’s circle, he issued his first 12-inch, the Replace EP, in 2005, then followed it with two further EPs before the year closed. Merciless arrived the next year. Additional EPs continued through 2008, when he also compiled Unknown Exception, a collection of earlier 12-inch material dating back to Replace. A further series of EPs appeared through 2010, yet Stott was even more active in that span as Andrea, as half of Millie & Andrea alongside Demdike Stare’s Miles Whittaker, and as one-third of Hate with Whittaker and Gary Howell, aka G.H.
A marked evolution occurred in 2011 with Passed Me By and We Stay Together, two unsettling works driven by sludgy rhythms and blurred samples. The pair were later merged and expanded into a double-CD set around the time Wire placed We Stay Together on its year-end Top 50. While numerous producers abandoned sampling in favor of exclusively original instrumentation, Stott instead refined his use of samples and, in doing so, produced his most personal work to date. Continuing to blend performed, programmed, and sampled components, he invited Alison Skidmore to record with him; the opera-trained vocalist contributed an additional dimension to Luxury Problems, released in 2012, which again ranked among Wire’s year-end favorites and became Stott’s first title to appear on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart in the United States.
He then stepped aside with Miles Whittaker for the Millie & Andrea full-length Drop the Vowels, issued in early 2014. Toward the close of that year he returned with Faith in Strangers, which contained some of his most abrasive and most delicate material and featured Skidmore’s voice more centrally than on prior releases. Two further albums closed out the decade. Too Many Voices, from 2016, merged some of Stott’s most visceral rhythms with crystalline keyboard lines and drew inspiration from grime mixtapes as well as David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1982 avant-pop collaboration. It Should Be Us, a double EP issued before the decade ended, placed greater weight on club-focused material. By that stage his extensive list of remixes encompassed tracks by Vladislav Delay, Tricky, Martin Gore, and Sakamoto.
It Should Be Us appeared without advance notice and carried the expectation of an album in 2020, yet a personal upheaval postponed the follow-up. Following a period of inactivity, Stott regained momentum and completed Never the Right Time before 2020 closed. The resulting album, gentler in texture than his earlier LPs while equally charged with feeling, surfaced in 2021.
Originally raised in Oldham, Stott has lived in various locations in and around Manchester, the city that houses Modern Love, the label responsible for every one of his original releases. Although too young for direct participation in rave culture, he consumed music avidly and began emulating hardcore tracks on keyboards during his school years. At the urging of his piano instructor Alison Skidmore, he abandoned conventional lessons in his early teens to concentrate on sound design, initially working inside the studio emulator Reason. Once in his early twenties and aligned with Modern Love’s circle, he issued his first 12-inch, the Replace EP, in 2005, then followed it with two further EPs before the year closed. Merciless arrived the next year. Additional EPs continued through 2008, when he also compiled Unknown Exception, a collection of earlier 12-inch material dating back to Replace. A further series of EPs appeared through 2010, yet Stott was even more active in that span as Andrea, as half of Millie & Andrea alongside Demdike Stare’s Miles Whittaker, and as one-third of Hate with Whittaker and Gary Howell, aka G.H.
A marked evolution occurred in 2011 with Passed Me By and We Stay Together, two unsettling works driven by sludgy rhythms and blurred samples. The pair were later merged and expanded into a double-CD set around the time Wire placed We Stay Together on its year-end Top 50. While numerous producers abandoned sampling in favor of exclusively original instrumentation, Stott instead refined his use of samples and, in doing so, produced his most personal work to date. Continuing to blend performed, programmed, and sampled components, he invited Alison Skidmore to record with him; the opera-trained vocalist contributed an additional dimension to Luxury Problems, released in 2012, which again ranked among Wire’s year-end favorites and became Stott’s first title to appear on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart in the United States.
He then stepped aside with Miles Whittaker for the Millie & Andrea full-length Drop the Vowels, issued in early 2014. Toward the close of that year he returned with Faith in Strangers, which contained some of his most abrasive and most delicate material and featured Skidmore’s voice more centrally than on prior releases. Two further albums closed out the decade. Too Many Voices, from 2016, merged some of Stott’s most visceral rhythms with crystalline keyboard lines and drew inspiration from grime mixtapes as well as David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1982 avant-pop collaboration. It Should Be Us, a double EP issued before the decade ended, placed greater weight on club-focused material. By that stage his extensive list of remixes encompassed tracks by Vladislav Delay, Tricky, Martin Gore, and Sakamoto.
It Should Be Us appeared without advance notice and carried the expectation of an album in 2020, yet a personal upheaval postponed the follow-up. Following a period of inactivity, Stott regained momentum and completed Never the Right Time before 2020 closed. The resulting album, gentler in texture than his earlier LPs while equally charged with feeling, surfaced in 2021.
Albums
