Mildlife - Automatic (2020)

When Mildlife’s debut album, Phase, was released in 2018 it didn’t so much explode on to the scene as ooze. Their mellifluous mix of jazz, krautrock and, perhaps more pertinently, demon grooves, was the word of mouth sensation of that year among open-minded DJs and diggers searching for the perfect beat.

Their emergence was backed up by European tours that demonstrated a riotously loose-limbed approach to performance that was every bit as thrilling as Phase’s tantalising promise. What was more impressive was how lightly they wore influences that took in Can, Patrick Adams and Jan Hammer Group, while primarily sounding precisely like Mildlife.

By the end of 2018 they’d been nominees for Best Album at the Worldwide FM Awards (Worldwide’s Gilles Peterson was a notable champion) and won Best Electronic Act at The Age Music Victoria Awards back home in Melbourne. Their progress post-Phase was cemented with a UK deal with Jeff Barrett’s Heavenly, who released How Long Does It Take? replete with Cosmic doyen Baldelli and Dionigi remixes, while last year they were officially anointed by DJ Harvey when he included The Magnificent Moon on his Pikes compilation Mercury Rising Vol II.

With Automatic, the band have made a step-change from their debut. It’s more disciplined, directional and arguably more danceable. As on Phase, they are unafraid to let a track luxuriate in length without ever succumbing to self-indulgence. The arrangements, tightly structured thanks to Tom Shanahan (bass) and Jim Rindfleish’s fatback drumming, permit space for the others to add spice to the stew, topped off with Kevin McDowell’s ethereal vocals as Mildlife effortlessly glide between live performance and studio songwriting. “The recorded songs kind of become the new reference point for playing the songs live,’ says Kevin. “They both have different outcomes and we make our decisions for each based on that, but they’re symbiotic and they both influence each other. It’s usually a fairly natural flow from live to recorded back to live.”

 The centrepiece of Automatic is the title track where the band sound like Kraftwerk and Herbie Hancock on quarantined lockdown in Bob Moog’s Trumansburg workshop. It’s both a departure and quintessentially Mildlife. This is music you can dance to rather than ‘dance music’ and it’s all the better for it.

Tracklist:
1. Rare Air (06:53)
2. Vapour (04:23)
3. Downstream (06:21)
4. Citations (08:51)
5. Memory Palace (06:42)
6. Automatic (08:41)

Exact Audio Copy V1.6 from 23. October 2020

EAC extraction logfile from 1. August 2021, 10:25

Mildlife / Automatic

Used drive : Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-7230S Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 48
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:Program Files (x86)Exact Audio CopyFlacflac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T “ARTIST=%artist%” -T “TITLE=%title%” -T “ALBUM=%albumtitle%” -T “DATE=%year%” -T “TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%” -T “GENRE=%genre%” -T “PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%” -T “COMPOSER=%composer%” -T “ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%” -T “DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%” -T “TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%” -T “TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%” -T “COMMENT=%comment%” %source% -o %dest%

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 6:53.40 | 0 | 31014
2 | 6:53.40 | 4:22.39 | 31015 | 50703
3 | 11:16.04 | 6:21.12 | 50704 | 79290
4 | 17:37.16 | 8:51.06 | 79291 | 119121
5 | 26:28.22 | 6:41.47 | 119122 | 149243
6 | 33:09.69 | 8:41.21 | 149244 | 188339

Track 1

Filename C:Mildlife – Automatic (2020) {Heavenly~HVNLP182} [FLAC]1 – Rare Air.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.00

Peak level 99.8 %
Extraction speed 2.5 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 494C45FA
Copy CRC 494C45FA
Accurately ripped (confidence 4) [5053A418] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 2

Filename C:Mildlife – Automatic (2020) {Heavenly~HVNLP182} [FLAC]2 – Vapour.wav

Peak level 99.8 %
Extraction speed 2.8 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC A28DE18E
Copy CRC A28DE18E
Accurately ripped (confidence 4) [6E4B44B6] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 3

Filename C:Mildlife – Automatic (2020) {Heavenly~HVNLP182} [FLAC]3 – Downstream.wav

Peak level 99.8 %
Extraction speed 3.2 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC D5865198
Copy CRC D5865198
Accurately ripped (confidence 4) [90E9D7BD] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 4

Filename C:Mildlife – Automatic (2020) {Heavenly~HVNLP182} [FLAC]4 – Citations.wav

Peak level 99.8 %
Extraction speed 3.7 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 0A54D34D
Copy CRC 0A54D34D
Accurately ripped (confidence 4) [4008D311] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 5

Filename C:Mildlife – Automatic (2020) {Heavenly~HVNLP182} [FLAC]5 – Memory Palace.wav

Peak level 99.8 %
Extraction speed 4.0 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC B92B1135
Copy CRC B92B1135
Accurately ripped (confidence 4) [F7D401F0] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 6

Filename C:Mildlife – Automatic (2020) {Heavenly~HVNLP182} [FLAC]6 – Automatic.wav

Peak level 99.8 %
Extraction speed 4.4 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 8D1C5D4C
Copy CRC 8D1C5D4C
Accurately ripped (confidence 4) [5979F26E] (AR v2)
Copy OK

All tracks accurately ripped

No errors occurred

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6

==== Log checksum 67C048E3C2EED16ACC7511A26AF006C9C5B7DB8CE44D8979A80127AF48EE9D46 ====

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