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XAVIERMOREL  - XO36 MACHINE MIX 2025

Faith In Strangers’ was written and produced between January 2013 and June 2014, and was edited and sequenced in late July this year. Making use of on an array of instruments, field recordings, found sounds and vocal treatments, it’s a largely analogue variant of hi-tech production styles arcing from the dissonant to the sublime. The first two tracks recorded during these early sessions bookend the release, the opener ‘Time Away’ featuring Euphonium played by Kim Holly Thorpe and last track ‘Missing’ a contribution by Stott’s occasional vocal collaborator Alison Skidmore who also appeared on 2012’s ‘Luxury Problems’. Between these two points ‘Faith In Strangers’ heads off from the sparse and infected ‘Violence’ to the broken, downcast pop of ‘On Oath’ and the motorik, driving melancholy of ‘Science & Industry’ - three vocal tracks built around that angular production style that imbues proceedings with both a pioneering spirit and a resonating sense of familiarity. Things take a sharp turn with ‘No Surrender’- a sparkling analogue jam making way for a tough, smudged rhythmic assault, while ‘How It Was’ refracts sweaty Warehouse signatures and ‘Damage’ finds the sweet spot between RZA’s classic ‘Ghost Dog’ and Terror Danjah at his most brutal. ‘Faith in Strangers’ is next and offers perhaps the most beautiful and open track here, its vocal hook and chiming melody bound to the rest of the album via the almost inaudible hum of Stott’s mixing desk. It provides a haze of warmth and nostalgia that ties the nine loose joints that make up the LP into the most memorable and oddly cohesive of Stott’s career to date, built and rendered in the spirit of those rare albums that straddle innovation and tradition through darkness and light.

Missing

How It Was

With over thirty-five years of DJ experience spanning clubs and festivals across Europe, Asia, & Australia, UK-based Xavier Morel is a true master of musical storytelling. His mixes embody symmetry, balance, fluidity, and cohesion—while their contrasts of disjunction, chaos, and inertia create the tension that drives the narrative. 

Immerse yourself in this magical journey with X036, mixed by Xavier Morel.

MACHINE MIX -  XAVIER MOREL - X036

Masterpiece

Up All Night

Machine resident Simon Slieker presents the second mix for our 'music for isolation' streams.  
Dive in head first to this excursion of sound
 
SIMON SLIEKER  :: 7 quick lockdown questions  

1. Action, Drama, Romance or Documentary movie? 

Whichever one has a sweeping epic hero. Unfortunately this means I have dubious taste in cinema, lacking nuance, eschewing complexity, and constantly craving something to believe in. I’m increasingly disappointed. 

2. Coffee, Tea or Alcohol? 

At the moment tea. That’s the morning ritual. But I don’t really like tea, it’s too watery and insipid. But coffee is brutal, so I like to roll off it periodically. Hence the tea. As for alcohol, if you’d asked me last lockdown, it was all about Damned Murphy and his crazy specials, hmmm a spirit, all the fun of the mixed case of wine, may well get this six pack as well, oh and these ciders, and on the way out that shopping trolley with random bottles was so much fun; wow $1.39 for a bottle of citrus stout: bargain! Bleaugh. This time I’ve stopped altogether. Dry. So the tea has become quite the ‘high’. High tea. 

3. Sleep in or get up early 

Ah this is becoming about the contrasting lockdowns: 1 and 2. Lockdown 1 I didn’t sleep, I stayed up the whole time. Lockdown 2 I’m going to bed early and have made a surprise discovery: getting up early. Which sounds bad, like you’re being punished. But it turns out it means you’re getting enough sleep. I’ve not experienced this before so it didn’t make any sense. It’s amazing you should try it. 

4. Favourite Sunday afternoon listening album 

I don’t have one.

5. What art movement describes you the best?

Pre-Raphaelite.

6 Opera, Country, Folk or Black Death Metal

Maybe folk. But I think you’ve chosen the four exceptionally problematic and compromised genres there. Were they chosen especially for me? I’m going with folk because when I was 16 I decided to become quite good with a harmonica and I think that had something to do with folk, or Bob Dylan at least. 

7. Tell us something no one knows about you?

I don’t have a favourite listening album. Oh that cat’s out of the bag. Um, I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I think I’m starting to go bald.

Image by VDMO

Machine isoStream 02 :: Simon Slieker

MACHINE is an Australian based record label for deep futuristic techno music.
Established in 2009 



MACHINE MIX - XAVIER MOREL - X036

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