[Reviewed by Peter Marks]
Another day, another project and another fearless engagement with the void. It only is growing stranger in the realm of this artist as he moves around your mind in patterns and combinations only known to him. The imagination which Nick Edwards has is a vast one, ever expanding much like the universe in which we live. How else could this incisive new EP be explained?
From out of nowhere Phelkz arrive and quickly take command of the situation, pulling your senses this way and that; one’s own internal equilibrium is completely thrown off balance and what becomes obvious is that the captain of this ship is himself under the sway of those sirens. Just out of your reach and yet they feel as though they’re right beside you; with mocking confidence they goad you on to keep listening never once warning you of what you are sailing into. From the tranquility of “Brownfield” and through the calming serenity which is “Drenched” there’s an unending array of sonic trickery going on.
It gets gruff from time to time on here with rough rhythms puncturing the grandiose electronic vistas Phelkz compose, but just when you start to think that it’s all getting to be too much the scenery changes radically. You are placed back out on fringes of possibility amid sparkling displays of aural-chemical alchemy revealing itself unabashedly in the darkest recesses of experimentalism. The name of this release should be a clue as to what it’s all about, it’s an open ended concept and one which is quite alien these days. People demand explanations, they must know each and every outcome before it happens…
In a world rife with advertising and marketing running amok and completely out of control something such as ‘Off’ is a rare commodity. You cannot brand this nor can it be quantified in terms of artistic merit utilizing a monetary scale; no flow charts or graphs will unlock the reasoning behind these tracks because I don’t think that there are any. How about that, suits. This individual created these works for the sheer pleasure of being able to do it without any thought given to expectation or formula. Yeah, bits of it may sound familiar but it is the way in which it has been assembled that makes all the difference.
Focus group that concept office drones.
Phelkz – Off
Mordant Music, MM079
Digital/MC 2015
Santa Sangre 