Amidst an already very impressive 2026 (Picture, K Wata, Yu Su…), Short Span flex their ever-expanding credentials with a trawl through the library of Demdike Stare’s Miles Whittaker. A fruitful pursuit in itself given the man’s track record, though there’s a little more in operation here than mere tasteful archival exercise. The accompanying words from Whittaker detail his dual interest in both dub and noise, situating his practice within the context of Basic Channel/Rhythm & Sound, and This Heat and Wolf Eyes, and it doing so gives the collection a conceptual frame. On first glance, Vault plays most obviously to the former, the seven tracks largely drawing on the grainy ebb and pulse of the dub techno juggernauts of ‘Smile’, ‘Basic Reshape’, ‘Domina’ et al (as well as a little of the amorphous looped dynamic of E2-4), but with an added steely austerity that speaks to its origins in The North. And on closer inspection, it’s in that steeliness that the stated influence of noise aesthetics starts to manifest itself, an added textural quality that leaves in the grain of the machine, where you can hear the mistakes, the hardware, and ultimately the human hand - let’s call it the jouissance of the wrong. It’s those kind of detours that often lead us to the best places and Vault proves itself an astute reflection of the value in privileging practice, process and productivity.
FFO: Andy Stott, Basic Channel, Rhythm & Sound, Loidis
