Edrix Puzzle - Coming of the Moon Dogs (2022) [Official Digital Download]

Rising from the rubble of Planet Battagon’s cosmic collision of shimmering improvisation and bass-weight electronics, producer, multi/instrumentalist and veteran drummer, Nathan “Tugg” Curran (Basement Jaxx, Kano, Bryan Ferry) returns with London-based ensemble, Edrix Puzzle’s latest celestial disturbance, ‘Coming Of The Moon Dogs’, forthcoming on On the Corner, this October 2022.

Edrix pulses in the distant sky. Modal meditations, hypnotic bowed formations and detuned throbs of echo and bass reverberate from the ruins of Planet Battagon. A puzzle, a tremor detected in the stars buried deep in the decay of Neptunia retractracting at breaking speed. Edrix pulses in the distance…

Rising from the rubble of Planet Battagon’s cosmic collision of shimmering improvisation and bass-weight electronics, producer, multi/instrumentalist and veteran drummer, Nathan “Tugg” Curran (Basement Jaxx, Kano, Bryan Ferry) returns with London-based ensemble, Edrix Puzzle’s latest celestial disturbance, ‘Coming Of The Moon Dogs’, forthcoming on On the Corner, this October 2022.

Presenting the latest chapter in Curran’s reimagined v3050 dub of Mwandishi-era Herbie Hancock, Edrix Puzzle swap its mother planet’s rattling Battagon sub-bass and improvised, machine-bebop of bleep, for live acoustic bass (Tom Mason), classical violin (Darren Berry), and Stockhausen-esque experiments. Recorded remotely across ten months during lockdown, the full-length follow up to Edrix’s 2021 ‘Rise To Eris EP’ (support from Tom Ravenscourt, Gilles Peterson), also features Oli Savill (Percussion) and Martin Slattery (Bass Clarinet & Sax) (two long time Curran collaborators and members of Planet Battagon) – Tugg the creator can be found on acoustic drums, drum synths and machines.

Ra’s supersonic sounds from Saturn, Aphex Twin’s vanished Melodies From Mars tape and violinist Michael White’s Journey Of The Black Star all swell in the atomic body of Edrix Puzzle’s Coming Of… but there are no geo-tags of effect in infinity, right? Miles sketched the blueprint in ’69, ‘Shh/Peaceful’, the Mixolydian route from earth to the cosmos set pace to a new idiom that Bitches Brew amplified and supersized - ‘Spanish Key’, a mood suspended in time overlooking a future of FlyLo, Shabaka & Moor Mother. Correa & Zawinul’s electric piano finessings of Miles’s technicolour paintings charted course, Herbie piloted it into the infinisphere.

‘Rain Dance’ is the opening track on Hancock’s 1973 album Sextant, the third and final album in his Mwandishi (Swahili for writer/composer) sextet series and the stem of Edrix Puzzle’s design, its opening phrases of sequenced ARP synths and echoplex, Shaka-esque drip delays, nod to Tangerine Dream, or Drexciya’s subaquatic dives in to Detroit tech 20 years fast forward. When introduced to ‘Rain Dance’ by bassist, Tom Mason, Curran sensed Edrix spaceways converging.

Built upon Curran’s long-formed concept of a far away Planet Battagon, (whose inhabitants would service their imperial king, Lord Battagon, with sounds composed from intergalactic waste), Edrix represents an arcane moon planet, in orbit of Battagon thousands of light years in the expanse. Where Planet Battagon’s 2020 album ‘Trans-Neptunia’ “cosmic droid jazz freakout” (SotU) takes pause, Edrix Puzzle’s analog, instrumental noir ‘Coming Of’… begins. Martin Slattery’s phase-drenched horns & Darren Berry’s piercing string textures provide the impetus on opener ‘Shadow Of Phobe’, before the dub-heavy, Syncussion-shredding first single ‘V11’, channel the spirits of Lee Perry & Frank Zappa in 7/8 style. ‘Haunted Soldiers Of Rhea’ salutes Herbie and Ursula Rucker & 4Hero’s ‘Loveless’ drum n double bass apparition, whilst Martin Slattery’s cinematic sax lines glide across SY-1 sweeps and FX. Explosive bursts of free playing and improvised jungle, conjure flashbacks of 1980s Hamlet cigar adverts on ‘Unhuman Hyperion’. ‘Deep In Dione’ & ‘Farthest Known’ lean into Battagon bass and droid jazz terrain, Curran’s shuffling kit blasts care little for time – who cares where the 1 is, before Tom Mason’s swirling bowed double bass mutations clatter into early 1950s electronic samples on album outro, ‘Cry Wolf’.

Whilst Curran’s Planet Battagon idles in the galaxy, Edrix’s post punk silhouette appears in the temporal of eclipse, in transit and resurrected, primed to emerge out of darkness.

Tracklist:
01. Shadow of Phobe
02. V11
03. Deep in Dione
04. Unhuman Hyperion
05. Haunted Soldiers of Rhea
06. Farthest Known
07. Crywolf


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