Claro Intelecto: "Chadderton"

And as the winter air rolls in, what better way to rehearse new numbness but with a food parcel from the prolific Modern Love (any more prolific and they’ll need a prophylactic, I’m telling you). The grey skies are back, construction work’s died down, and Christmas has officially false-started. Thank Christ then for Mr. Mark Stewart and his relentless steadying of us pulsing feckless with this follow-up to his Sessions (2009) reviver. He’s ready to begin Claro intellectualising again with a new mesmerising ode to the North, and I’m almost tempted to add “where we do what we want” there in honour of a certain TV mini-series as Chadderton’s got the same concrete, the same winds and damnation that us Southern souls flee from to our barrier made out of salad. “Chadderton” the techno tune is just as sturdy as its namesake and falls nicely into phase eight* of Modern Love’s plan to turn your sound system into the marines. By the left-sided, quick-march, rigorous-sub-workout, ganja-flushed-out-with-antiseptic dubstep, you’re fucked once you touch the Queen’s shilling. This is the obverse to last month’s Demdike incantations copper on steel on dope.

I think it’s phase eight, at least. As far as I can tell, their agenda is this: recreate a motorway at night, with everything from pile-ups to ghostliness. If the spooky Symbiosis (2009) was lights in a field then “Chadderton”‘s the infinite cats’ eyes, wave after wave of grey plastic purring that sends ripples deep down into your joy department. There must be something quite magic in this rogue part of Manchester to bounce so slickly between Berlin and Detroit, packing more car parts than an AA tow-truck and bathed in its own bleak horsepower. There’s some clicks of neon in the slip lanes, just there head of the cymbals, but otherwise not much happens. That’s what makes it brilliant, and what also means possible future good news: there’s an album on the way. Top banana.