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Pendle Coven Self-Assessment

• Words: Walter Wasacz
• Label: Modern Love
• XLR8R Rating: 9/10

Dub techno at its best is thick, dark, hypnotic, soulful, and physical—a gift for all the senses. For maximum effect, it’s best served up raw, wild, and lonely, never under- or over-produced, and slow-cooked to perfection. On its debut full length, Manchester's Pendle Coven (Miles Whittaker a.k.a. MLZ and Gary Howell) stitches together previously released 12s with buried archival material to create a near-perfect audio document of these dread times. The grayscale mood is set by the spacey opener "Aged Drone," and sustained in the psychotropic groovers "Uncivil Engineering," "MVO Chamber," and "Exigen," which concludes with a calming outro that calls out for the sun to rise after night of dancing inside a pitch-black heart.