4 out of 5

Label: No Static / Automatic

Produced by: ?

I’m generally a proponent of “context shouldn’t matter” when it comes to media – that is, you should be able to enjoy it without knowing the background – but… fine, sometimes it helps. Sometimes it’s that extra bump needed to acknowledge that a project achieves its goals, even if / when those goals maybe aren’t designed for my outright enjoyment.

That might sound like a setup for knocking DMX Krew’s Brain Mutants EP, but no – not for the most part. These are five tracks built around quite killer acid hooks, which instantly harken back to some 90s era AFX, but with an underpinning of Ed DMX funk. The production is dense and bass-y as heck, which is our first hint of the aforementioned goals. Getting back to that in a second, though, “Brain Mutants,” much like the eye-squiggly cover art, is a lot more directly layered than most DMX Krew club-geared efforts, and that paired with these really heavy beats sets an impressively high bar – it’s equally danceable / accessible, harsh, fun, weird, cold, and emotive in one go.

…And then, as a common note from me, especially when Ed is cutting for the club, that “go” is a bit too long. Almost every track is looped beyond a logical point, with a logical peak hitting at the 2 or 3 minute mark, then winding down to a good conclusion, before going on for another round of practically the same. It’s looped well, but it’s looped; on a lot of DMX releases, this is fine given the wealth of funky beats that are offered, whether an EP or LP, but as Brain Mutants ticks on, it can feel like the aural palette is a little limited, staying within a set range of somewhat familiar sounds and at a set pace.

Ed used Aphex Twin’s “Sample Brain” tool for crafting the base to these tracks – my poor explanation of this being a tool which networks a unique sample out of samples fed into it – and then No Static / Automatic’s label boss selected his faves, to which Mr. Upton added label-appropriate beats and looped them. With NS / A’s old school electro / dancefloor preferences, combined with this creation and selection process, we have a kind of funnel through which the tracks are processed, tailoring them somewhat for a particular purpose. Taking all of that into account, I start to like Mutant Brain quite a bit, and read into that title: we’re a couple hops removed from Ed’s hands, and then this mutated concept is handed back to him for shaping, with an end goal of a dancefloor banger.

To that end, the goal was mightily achieved.