Bleep

Over the past decade or so EOD has carved out a place for himself as one of the more innovative voices in modern IDM. Across releases for Rephlex, 030303 and Bjarki’s bbbbbb imprint the one born Stian Gjevik has served up a gnarled, scrunched-up take on the genre’s classic sound.

With the Warmwoods EP we find EOD back on bbbbbb and delivering a selection of archival cuts. This set also serves as a good overview for what makes EOD’s sound stand out in such a saturated field. IDM’s traditional sound palette - dinky keys, precision-engineered beat programming, busy-body basslines - are twinned with a bit of an acid reflux here. Almost every track on Warmwoods sees EOD’s 303 being given a good workout, from the whirligig braindance of ‘dog_bits’ to the almost Detroit-esque stargazing of closer ‘CQC’.

As with most everything that drops via bbbbbb, you get the sense that the creator had a lot of fun when making this thing. The way that synths zip around with carefree abandon on, say, ‘(Untitled) (w-R6)’ hints at Richard D. James at his most playful. While they may not have been born with Bjarki’s label in mind, the cuts that make up Warmwoods make perfect sense in these surroundings.

EOD and bbbbbb hit the nail on the head once more with the buzzing, ebullient braindance of the Warmwoods EP.