4 out of 5

Label: Hypercolour

Produced by: Ed DMX

With a circular motif and some totem-type drawings edging around the cover of DMX Krew’s Strange Directions, taken with the title, there’s a sense that we’re going to get some kind of newly established, forward-looking style from main man Ed DMX.  And we do, and we don’t.  Over multiple (multiple) releases, DMX Krew has proven remarkably consistent at offering up fun and grooving beats, erring toward a colder synth-y sound but almost always finding a quirk to sprinkle in there that makes it breathe.  Ed’s apparent collection of new and old tools to accomplish this further adds in making his sounds stand out: fresh and familiar; the raw sounds of yore with a progressive and precise edge.

In that sense, Strange Directions is following the trend: it nibs notes from other IDM and garage eras, loops them into a beat, then does a call-and-response with other elements, either stripping things down to a wonderful minimalist level that gets at the core of a track, or layering on some surprising discordance that just somehow magically works and elevates the vibe to another level.  But where it becomes “new” is in how purposeful this feels: the album might not so much be showing us a brave new world, so much as acting as a spirit journey for Ed through his influences, while being very mindful of making these sound very, very modern.  Strange Directions is incredibly focused in that sense, and a genuinely engaging listen throughout for that reason.  That said, its latter half – after the quirky video game bloop of Nice Portal – feels like its stylistic shifts aren’t shuffled about as much, leading to a couple of tracks blending together.  This sort of only matters if you’re looking at runtimes and names of songs as they play (which, alas, I tend to do), but I’d also say it’s possible that shedding a couple of tracks (or consolidating their ideas) would have tightened this disc up to perfection.  But, eh, 21 albums in… that’s a rather minor complaint.