Ekoplekz: Intrusive Incidentalz Vol. 1
Nick Edwards has long been on my radar, first as a local proponent of the tape loop and analogue electronics scene name-dropped and referenced by the ageing (no offence meant) 'head' crowd who made a fetish out of 90s Warp and 70s Industrial abstraction and technique -a group I'm guilty of being a young adherent to; my late teens were spent deliriously vacuuming up old Warp albums while they still retained their playful mystery and searching desperately for concrete links between them and the steadily growing stack of early Industrial (SPK, CV, TG, Clock DVA, Severed Heads et al) I was amassing.
Abstraction, complexity, non-conformism and a spiteful (if occasionally unintentionally ironic) rejection of pop music and its perceived norms (coherant lyrics, if any, digestible melody, verse-chorus-blah, 'normal' drum/guitar sounds) were my touchstones and criteria for buying or even acknowledging the existence of any music. Therefore, Cabaret Voltaire's Methodology: The Attic Tapes was my bible, an encapsulation of a passion and ideology in uncooked form; no studio-sheen (I still rejected clean music, in spite of Warp's sharp-focus, polygon aesthetic) or pretense, just 3 dudes in someone's loft, a bunch of homemade/scavenged electronic equipment and a feeling. This was my punk rock, my reductionist ideal and idea of purity...you only need an oscillator and, if you were a maximalist, a drum machine of some kind (having a commercial synth was like having a string section by my reckoning).
By this logic, I should love Nick Edwards aka Ekoplekz. Nick is of the generation, with all due respect, for whom the Warp set were present day and the Industrial lads mere recent history. For me, the former was a recently missed boat and the latter ancient history. However, Nick has the advantage of also being well schooled and a firm part of the latest UK Bass Music phase (actually a distant lineage, including Warp et al) which includes Dubstep culture and its offspring/descendants. He's made it plain that his music is intended to marry the UK industrial heritage (70s style) with Bass Culture developments, a worthy and enviable field of research (something I've fewer achievements in), and in terms of presentation -released on Punch Drunk, Bristol's top boy dubstep label, Edwards depicted as mixer-abusing DJ on the cover (albeit with evil fish head) -it's on the mark but, when the needle drops, the marriage seems merely political; strictly separate bedrooms.
The trouble is, this is a fantastic 70s Industrial record. Really good. Tape loops of astounding quality, virtuoso even, drum sounds that inspire swoons and flashbacks to my pubescent, lights-off bedroom TG revelations, smattered liberally and, dammit, seemingly so effortlessly about these pop-song length incursions. Edwards' synth swoops, oscillations that hang in the air like ectoplasmic vapour trails, have an authenticity that Demdike Stare are both wanting and cripplingly unable to produce. Droney synth stabs, redolent of The Voice of America by CV, give a mean-faced throb to proceedings but, overall, the functionality of the Bass Culture that Edwards has been so embraced by is lacking. I'm not asking for dancefloor material, far from it, but I don't see how these excellent and passionate recordings transcend or depart from the aforementioned Methodology or Rough Trade era CV stuff at all.
This isn't a criticism, as Edwards and I obviously share an admiration for the Sheffield Sonic cowboys, and I love hearing CV-soundalikes, really. My problem is that I feel that Edwards is abusing a fortunate position. Had I the skill to reproduce, with such loving care, the experiments of the Cabs and do so with the keen ear of the (post)dubstep community at my disposal, I'd feel compelled to draw a strong, black line between the two eras and show how music that sounded and obviously reference CV, was also able to be reconstituted into a modern, even forward looking, piece of UK electronic music. Could I get dubsteppers and grime fiends nodding, skanking, pointing and bobbing to a CV-style track? I'd love to try and, gosh, how wonderful would it be to succeed.
I admit, this is my personal agenda. I constantly attempt to repay the decade of joy, influence and revelation that Richard H Kirk and Stephen Mallinder have given me with nods, salutes, references and attempts to keep their (obvious to me) relevance and influence alive by recognising and indicating their greasy prints wherever I see them. I don't expect Edwards to do the same and, unfairly, I expected that a fellow CV-head might feel that compulsion. I see now that Ekoplekz is a man revelling in sound, welded to a thrilling aesthetic about which he and I obviously feel very passionate about and, in reality, I should be grateful that he's bringing that sound back to life by releasing period-sounding pieces on a modern, dynamic label and not seeking to compromise the initial qualities with potentially flash-in-the-pan developments.
I'll wearily check out the rest of Nick's stuff, to see how he develops, but otherwise I've heard it all before...thankfully, everyone else hasn't and for them this'll be a great, potentially gateway, experience.
