Stott making sense

Sometimes people slave away for years to get a record released. And sometimes people don’t. Andy Stott started making music “properly” in 2003 and has already achieved what can take others an entire career.

He’s lashed out five singles in the past 18 or so months, dropping the excellent Nervous EP just four weeks before the release of his debut proper, the fantastic Merciless, which he had whittled down from a couple of hundred tracks he had sitting around. As you do.
It’s a fairly remarkable story – even if the 26-year-old Mancunian seems quite keen to play it all down. He began taking piano lessons at the age of 16 “but was totally into the wrong kind of music for piano”.
His debut release came out on the Modern Love label – curated by the people that run the excellent Boomkat online shop/resource – and that’s where he remains. His sound, a deep and distinctive fusion of techno, house, IDM and dubstep, is similar to that of Claro Intellecto, and with good reason: Stott was “mentored” by Claro during his formative years.
“I’ve known Mark from Claro a long time,” he recalls. “He's my best friend’s brother, so being around him a lot led to us showing each other our tracks and therefore ideas. He mentored me with learning software, giving hints and tips on programmes like Ableton. He's been a huge influence on my music.”
Another important figure in Stott’s meteoric rise has been BBC Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs.
“Mary Anne has done so much for me," he enthuses. "She's played a track off every release bar one, and featured me on her Warrior Dubz compilation, which I’m very proud to be a part of.”
Warrior Dubz is basically a ‘beginners' guide to dubstep’, curated by Hobbs. Dubstep is a relatively new genre that grew out of the more experimental/weirder end of the grime scene. It’s interesting how techno and house producers of a certain ilk are being drawn towards the sound. Perhaps it’s a reaction to MP3 culture and the increasingly homogenous techno and house scene. Or maybe they’re attracted to the anonymity of the scene (at the moment, most releases begin life as white 12"s).
“I got into dubstep around a year ago,” Andy recalls. "I heard one of the Tectonics 12"s in a club and just thought, ‘What the hell is this?’ – in a good way of course! And basically from hearing that one track I had a go at it. The first dubstep track I wrote was ‘Blocked’ off the album.”
How did he adapt his sound for the dubstep gigs?
“For the Maas gig in Brixton (a Warrior Dubz-affiliated show) I’m just doing an Ableton set of everything and anything. It’s a bit worrying playing to ultimatley a dubstep crowd – I just don’t know what they’ll make of the set. We’ll see!”
What does the ‘normal’ Andy Stott set sound like then?
“They vary all the time depending on where I'm playing. I’ve done gigs in the past where I’ve started off minimal and people have started to walk out! Then I played faster, harder stuff and it filled up again. It's learning what’s right for where.”
What record made him decide to make music?
“The one that made me think, ‘Jesus Christ, I need to be able to do this’ was Aphex Twin’s ‘Metapharstic’. It blew my fucking head off. I first heard it around ’94 when Mark from Claro played it to me. At the time I was just listening to hardcore, so to hear that, so hard and dark, was amazing.”
Given that his sound is quite broad, how does he go about recording?
“I never sit down and go, ‘I’ll do a jacking acid track today or a dubstep track’. I just play with noises, then the elements fall into place. Once I start to arrange a track I hear where it needs to go.”
How long did the sessions take?
“I’ve no idea! It seemed like ages – at one point, I thought it would never come out. It started off using tracks that never made it on to 12"s, so we had a few stashed away purposely. Then when we had a small selection I began to write tracks to bridge the ones we already had.”
He’s come quite a way in three years – does this eat up every minute of every day?
“No, I've got a full day-job. It’s when I get home that I do all my writing. It can be knackering, especially when you stay up most of the night trying to finish a track. Next thing you know your alarm clock is going off and you only just got your head down. I’d love to write music full-time. That would be perfect.”