Album of the Week: EOD – Named

We’ve had EOD on this feature in the past, with the self-titled debut for WeMe records, and although we tend to refrain from getting two consecutive albums from a single artist on our shelf – just because surely there’s more music out there to discover every day – having EOD’s second album join the first amongst our records just made sense. The artist, from Trondheim, is a unique entity on the Norwegian scene and beyond, with music that bulks at the conformities of borders between electronic music genres, incorporating elements of breakbeats, electro and IDM in an unidentifiable sound that has become the eccentric sounds to EOD.

Listening to “Wilbur” from his sophomore album “Named” I challenge you to compare it to anything else out there. Something akin to Leisure Suit Larry stuttering on the green and black screen of a DOS system is the closest I can get to describing the sound of that track. Fortuitously it and the rest of the album, which runs the gauntlet of this sonic spectrum, has found its way on Bjarki’s bbbbbb label – the only record label that could ever be a suitable vehicle for EOD’s music today. Although EOD has featured on the label before with the “Swurlk” EP, the honour of debut LP from the label ultimately goes to the Norwegian artist and with good reason.

“Named” is very much like the second half of EOD’s last album, which makes it more of a consistent album. It seems like this is the point the Norwegian artist was always intended to arrive, after EP’s on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex and his own EOD imprint skated around a less defined sound for the artist. There’s a sense of calamity and urgency through the record, but it’s grounded in pleasure rather than disruptiveness. From the cover art to the label and the  closing track, “Whippoorwills” everything relays this theme.

Glitch Bass or Bleep Beat would be adequate nomenclature to describe EOD’s music on “Named”, but even then it falls short of putting into words what this album represents. Liquid Drum N Bass through a food processor, is another way of describing the album with tracks like ‘sblood Thou Stinkard” and “Y’ha-nhtlei” specifically urging this kind of simile, but try as you may, there is no consistent designation that ever seems appropriate for this album. Even EOD, it seems tried and failed, settling merely on the title “Named” on the occasion.

There’s a melodic serenity that pulses throughout the entire album, yes even “Wilbur”, but it’s completely wrapped up in a kind of impartial non-music, with random, and it seems very organic glitches spiralling out of control, and distracting from the inherent beauty of the melodic phrasing of the tracks. “Named” is unlike anything you would have heard before, although it might be on the spectrum of IDM, but it’s more like UIDM – unintelligible dance music. Unintelligible, yet completely mesmerising.