Editions Mego
This seems chunky and real compared to the other Ekoplekz releases. You can buy it at Sainsbury’s. It’s out there, in all senses but it also feels like something of an end, like Nick Edwards is drawing a line, er, under the sand; it’s like a statement of where he’s been and how far he’s come. Nick’s always been very willing to give up his influences, both in conversation and in the music itself but on this release it seems like he’s offering each of the influential strands a long track of their own.
“Chance Meets Causality Uptown” keeps his
Upsetter riddim king thing going and is almost… mellow in places, with a slowpoke bass guitar sound amongst the patented eko squiggles and screeches. Eventually the mellowness slows and the track becomes airless, unlocking and groove less but the start sounds like Jamaican beach music for Dungeness. “(No) Escape From ’79” sounds like a longer form (all these tracks are buzzing around for around a quarter of an hour) version of his earliest CDR and tape releases: i.e.
like a stretched out Cabaret Voltaire being pummelled through a dub ethic and perhaps just glimpsing the very early techno explorations of a much younger self. “Inside The Analog Continuum” is perhaps my favourite track if only because it evokes a
Ekoplekz/
Sun Araw collaboration that surely must happen sometime soon. It works beautifully listened to from the garden, merging with birdcalls and hops in the trees and me and Littlest Loki attempting to make birdsounds (neither of us are a
Percy Thrower). It’s ambient in the right way, in a
Conrad Schnitzler way; not drifting, never still but beautifully flitting. Probably my favourite single Ekoplekz thing.
“A Pedant’s Progress” finishes the album off and, for me, this calls to mind
Throbbing Gristle’s Journey Through A Body. Coming at
the end of the album is a little like being punched in the face; it’s a different headspace entirely and I’m not there yet. It’s not noisy, as such, but it’s very difficult to get a grip on… I found my attention wandering a little;
rejecting it… If Nick intended the end to be the beginning, for this album to circulate
around his body of work, then perhaps it makes sense but I haven’t played it again (I don’t play
Journey Through A Body, either). The rest of the album? I’ve played it four times in three days and for a twitch, attention-spazzed, inarticulate dreamer like me, that’s high praise indeed.
-Loki-
This seems chunky and real compared to the other Ekoplekz releases. You can buy it at Sainsbury’s. It’s out there, in all senses but it also feels like something of an end, like Nick Edwards is drawing a line, er, under the sand; it’s like a statement of where he’s been and how far he’s come. Nick’s always been very willing to give up his influences, both in conversation and in the music itself but on this release it seems like he’s offering each of the influential strands a long track of their own.
