Miles Whittaker was one of the foremost figures in British experimental electronic music of the early 21st century. Operating solo under a slew of aliases and as a member of the cult acts Pendle Coven and Demdike Stare, he produced some of the most intriguing and forward-thinking sounds around, drawing on his deep love of electronic music in all its forms. Whittaker was first exposed to dance music through attending club nights and illegal raves as a teenager in and around the small town near Manchester where he grew up. Upon first hearing Basic Channel at a big club in Leeds, he decided he wanted to make music rather than just buying it. Taking a job at the Vinyl Exchange record store in Manchester, he moved on to working for the then-nascent electronica label City Centre Offices, getting a solid grounding in the music business while he worked on his own productions, both solo and with Gary Howell as Pendle Coven. A few years later, City Centre Offices co-founder Shlom Sviri started the Modern Love label to release music by Whittaker and his friends Andy Stott and Mark Stewart (Claro Intelecto).

Modern Love put out Pendle Coven's dub techno material and Whittaker's harder solo productions under the MLZ moniker. Later, Whittaker released analog drone music as Suum Quique, made hardcore/jungle-inspired tracks with Andy Stott as Millie Andrea, and then formed the dark, library music- and soundtrack-inspired Demdike Stare project with his longtime friend Sean Canty, who still worked at Vinyl Exchange and helped run the crate-digging reissue label Finders Keepers. Drawing on local witchcraft folklore, obsessive vinyl heads Whittaker and Canty fused hundreds of obscure samples with years of dance production experience to form an otherworldly, occult listening experience which was a surprise hit, becoming immensely popular. After three Demdike Stare albums, Whittaker finally released his debut solo EP, Facets, in 2011, and a full-length album, Faint Hearted, in 2013, under his first name. These releases spanned the entire spectrum of his musical interests, touching on everything he had released to that date, and were critically well-received. ~ John D. Buchanan, Rovi