4 out of 5

Label: Expanding Vision

Produced by: Ed DMX

An excitingly varied cut of 90s-era IDM, straight from the old school Rephlex playbook… though it’s Ed DMX doing Aphex electro of the time, as opposed to his more boppy style of his main releases on the imprint. Obviously Ed’s done plenty along these lines since then, but there’s something delightfully old school about this record, somewhat cut off from the years since of influences, while also displaying the artist’s always-present keen sense of simplicity sans repetition.

The A-side of EV 004 is pretty dark and moody, and thus moderately unusual for DMX Krew, with Carnkie and the more minimalist Return of Q sounding like first volume Ambient stuff from Aphex. The two followup tracks are fascinating extensions of this, but perhaps where the mini-album loses me a bit, as Slow Gloom is this really appealingly evil, grimey beat but it doesn’t really go anywhere, and though Ice Melting’s appropariately cold tones do build do a really emotional ending, it’s spread out a bit too much to make that stick. However, both of these “experiments” are exciting on that merit – trying something a little different – and the album is overall short enough that this kind of works; they are curiosities, and not distractions.

On the B-side, Ed goes a bit more house and acid – opener Archimedes is quite a bouncy banger, especially if (as a Discogs’ commentor suggested) played at 45 RPM, and similar to but differently effected from the A-side, things get moderately darker as we go along, with closer Xpansion 5 feeling closer to the AFX side of things.

Setting aside all these RDJ comparisons, this is Ed, 100% – it’s focused, and warmly produced, with an eye on a danceable beat. The sound is rather lovably retro, but in a way that produces classic cuts that would’ve sounded fresh in 1995, and still sound fresh now.