5 out of 5

Label: Hypercolour

Produced by: Ed DMX

While the world of electronica seems to lend itself to some particularly prodigious talents, that doesn’t necessarily mean the wealth of – or even a significant portion of – those high-yielding artists’ outputs are going to make their way into your collection. There are various reasons for that that may or may not be related to quality, but regardless: Ed DMX, a million years down the road from his debut, has forever proven to be the foil in my money- / space-saving hopes of not needing to own it all. Because he keeps surprising me; he keeps putting out singles and EPs and then whole albums that are continually worth it, piling on the fun of all he’s done with an impossibly bottomless reserve of eagerness for new ways to experiment.

Spiral Dance is another triumph in this regarding, weaving one of the artist’s most streamlined acid efforts to date, wending a general boppiness to an emotive undertone – a feeling linked with the title (coiled but bouncy) and the goofy artwork, which mashed happy squiggles with a discordant color palette.

Yeah, I’m reading into that too much.

But take the funkier vibe of Ghost Bubbles and other Hypercolour release Strange Direction‘s layered club anthems as the album’s base for its dense, danceable midsection, and layer some 90s Aphex ambience / acid onto that… sprinkled with Ed’s perfect sense of iteration: how much to loop, how much to tweak upon each loop; it’s an endlessly listenable blend of tracks that are shorn to the required elements, keeping the music instantly funky and accessible, but also changing enough where each track can feel in motion, and unique.

Relatively bookending the moodier middle of the album (if I have an unfair criticism, it’s only that I wish the album “sections” better aligned with the 2 x LP split, but digitally it’s seamless) are some joyously bouncy bangers, or rather bangers where the beat gets a bit more priority – they fit the album’s tone but can be great intro / outros in that they elevate that streamlined feeling, making it quite surprising when something like ‘Perfection’ has some heavy hitting emotional hooks; this is an album that comforts us with its immediacy, and then slips in some pretty challenge left and right dodges into modern acid at just the right moments.

Doubling down on my ongoing praise for Ed, most of his 2010 and forward albums masterfully dart between classic and progressive elements; Strange Directions even shared the circular imagery! But Spiral Dance cuts out any moment that could be filler, or leftover from / better on another album – it is an ideal experience.