- Reviewing Ed Upton's latest album, Escape-MCP, RA's Patric Fallon lamented that the prolific producer, usually associated with electro but capable of all sorts of stuff, rarely explores more than one style on any given record. Not so on Space Cucumbers, which ends another busy year for the UK producer. The record begins with a straight-up Italo disco tune. Like some of the best DMX Krew tracks, "Space Cucumbers" is deceptively simple—a strobing bassline and some melancholy melodies—and built with bold analogue textures.
Central Processing Unit is one of the best electro labels going, so of course there's some of that here as well. "Radioactive Leak" is Upton's Dopplereffekt impression, all cold metal and chilly atmospheres, while "Re-Invasion" turns the thin metallic textures of classic electro into alien-sounding melodies, all pitch-bent and melted. The other two tracks put twists on the formula—"More Questions" churns slowly and groovily, and the jumpy "Positronic Matter" turns it up to 138 BPM with a storming techno kick—making Space Cucumbers one of Upton's most diverse records in recent memory.
TracklistA1 Space Cucumbers
A2 Re-Invasion
B1 Radioactive Leak
B2 Positronic Matter
B3 More Questions