suum cuique: ascetic ideals

For their first release of 2012, Modern Love delivers the second album from Suum Cuique, the analog noise/experimental project from Miles Whittaker, one-half of Demdike Stare. The first Suum Cuique album Midden was released on Modern Love sub-label Young Americans back in 2010, with these new recordings made in the intervening years and in between sessions for the Demdike Stare album, Elemental. What differentiates this project from all the others Whittaker is involved with is that the material recorded under Suum Cuique was made using analog hardware only, often recorded straight from the mixing desk with no overdubs or edits. The sound veers from the intense shards of noise that make up album opener "Strohtopf" to the padded techno malfunctions of "Kuiper Anomaly," the found sound/shortwave radio signals of "Atlas Levels" to the mystical rotations of "Intonation" and the electrified drones of album closer "Dionysus Decay." Although there are obvious sonic threads running between Suum Cuique and Demdike Stare, the material on Ascetic Ideals is much more stark, at turns recalling the work of Mika Vainio, Eleh, Maurizio Bianchi and even John Carpenter, whose nightmare visions lurk somewhere deep in the mix. Mastered and cut by Lupo at Dubplates & Mastering, limited to 700 copies.