Faith In Strangers

Faith in Strangers was written and recorded between January 2013 and June 2014, and was edited and sequenced in late July of 2014. Making use of on an array of instruments, field recordings, found sounds and vocal treatments, it's a largely analog variant of hi-tech production styles arcing from the dissonant to the sublime. The first two tracks recorded during these early sessions bookend the release, the opener Time Away featuring euphonium played by Kim Holly Thorpe and last track Missing, a contribution by Stott's occasional vocal collaborator Alison Skidmore, who also appeared on 2012's Luxury Problems. Between these two points Faith in Strangers heads off from the sparse and infected Violence to the broken, downcast pop of On Oath and the motorik, driving melancholy of Science & Industry - three vocal tracks built around that angular production style that imbues proceedings with both a pioneering spirit and a resonating sense of familiarity. Things take a sharp turn with No Surrender- a sparkling analog jam making way for a tough, smudged rhythmic assault, while How It Was refracts sweaty warehouse signatures and Damage finds the sweet spot between RZA's classic Ghost Dog and Terror Danjah at his most brutal. Faith in Strangers is next and offers perhaps the most beautiful and open track here, it's vocal hook and chiming melody bound to the rest of the album via the almost inaudible hum of Stott's mixing desk. It provides a haze of warmth and nostalgia that ties the nine loose joints that make up the LP into the most memorable and oddly cohesive of Stott's career to date, built and rendered in the spirit of those rare albums that straddle innovation and tradition through darkness and light, lingering on in the mind like nothing else. CD comes packaged in a 6-panel digifile.