5 out of 5

Label: Rephlex Records

Produced by: D’Arcangelo (?)

Man, collecting Rephlex Records is… expensive. And, like, I mean even at the time, not just paying collector’s prices: you think you’re good because you nabbed the newest X release? Well, no, you forgot that there’s a remix version, or that the CD version has a different track list. Even then, when you’ve picked up all the variants, maybe you never had a chance: some of this stuff was promo only. Sometimes that wound up in used bins for reasonable prices, but otherwise…

Setting aside that some of this is maybe Richard D. James and Grant Wilson-Claridge having fun with us obsessive types, I’ve been collecting Rephlex and D’Arcangelo – one of my favorite discoveries from the label – for literal decades, and I don’t think I ever realized that Eksel‘s “promo” release was actually a wholly unique 4-song EP. And that’s it’s better than the album. Bro.

Pro 188 EP certainly plays up the D’Arcangelo brothers’ icy side, at least to start. B40 is a clipped, minimalist beat that ends up massaging in a lot of sunlight – gently; carefully. It’s both a very smooth and else deeply grooving track, the latter being sneaked in as the iciness stacks on top of itself until its edges round. Sup has a more boppy beat befitting the casual greeting of its title (at least as I read it), but like B40, this gets nuanced into something deeper, and more involving. Both tracks arguably wind up in about the same space – minimalist, steady-state groove – but come from different approaches. Doped Beat is a D’Arcangelo banger: also appropriately named, and just full-on cool, walk-the-streets-at-night beats. It’s not going for the range of the lead-ins, so the brothers keep it to a 3.5-minute single length, and it’s phenomenal.

The flip side has the ‘original mix’ of Diagram 2, but I can’t find another mix anywhere. This is in line with older D’Arcangelo: it’s somewhat linear electro, retaining the duo’s somewhat clipped, claustrophobic sound as applied to very melodic beats. It’s a solid way to add a kind of “classic” early Rephlex vibe onto the end of the EP.