The Phasing Octopus is a producer from Birmingham who has only been releasing music for a couple of years, but in that time, he’s proven himself to be one of the most prolific and inventive in his city. His most recent album, A Long Night, came out in January of this year. Now he’s back with a new EP, positive void coefficient…plus.

As you might surmise from looking at the track listing of this EP, this release was the result of The Phasing Octopus having one single, “positive void coefficient,” which he liked, but he hadn’t found a home for it yet. After sitting on it for a while, he finally said, “Fuck it,” and paired it with a few more orphan songs he had, and voila, we have an EP. Now, this doesn’t always work that well for every artist. There are plenty of EPs out there that you can listen to and you can tell almost right away that you’re listening to the scraps. Not so with this one. That’s because you have a very strong anchor in the opening title track, where The Phasing Octopus goes deep into some left field house music, taking you on this journey where the bass is thumping and the grooves will keep you dancing, but you also feel like you’re being led down the rabbit hole as all of these weird sounds and variations build around you. What makes this work as an EP is that fortunately The Phasing Octopus had three more tracks that are in musical conversation with the title track, sometimes leaning more in the house direction, other times leaning more in the experimental electronic direction. Whatever it is, though, you can be sure that The Phasing Octopus is really taking the time to develop the tracks and explore the soundscapes he’s building for himself.

positive void coefficient…plus is a release from The Phasing Octopus that didn’t have to be as good as it is, but thankfully it is. He continues to build upon his young career and experiment and grow each new release is another exciting chapter.