- Glasgow producer Tony Scott has been a fixture of European techno for aeons now. A prominent figure in Soma's '90s heyday under the name Percy X, he also recorded as Mion, Recycle and Abyss before settling on the Edit-Select moniker in 2007. Where Scott's Percy X material had a vivid, upfront quality to it, his EPs as Edit-Select EPs have had a subtlety and self-assurance that seems to come with age.
Most Edit-Select EPs to date have been released on Scott's label of the same name, as well as Ostgut Ton and Len Faki's Figure, among others. Phlox is a neat summation the sounds explored on those records, blending pulsing techno with passages of beatless ambience. Scott flourishes when crafting the sort of gently insistent machine-throb exemplified by "Survivors Of The Pulse," the album's first proper track following the ambient intro of "Blissfully Unaware." Here he spreads warm, thrumming percussion over a bed of dreamy pads and adds gorgeous, sparkling keys, bringing to mind, not for the first time in his career, Speedy J's G Spot. This kind of propulsive ethereality defines the rest of the album's opening half.
The title track and its ambient predecessor, "Phlox Intro," herald a slightly sparser second act characterised by a rougher percussive thump. The beautiful backdrops are still there but more brittle or more submerged-sounding, as with the echoing sonar bleeps on "Downside." Before "The Passing" brings things to a gentle close, we get "Bauer Reprise," a rework of "Bauer," from Faki's Berghain 03 mix in 2009. The track only makes minimal alterations to the original's brew of belly-scraping bass and occasional flashes of light in the murk, but it's a pleasing final cut in any case. The digital edition of the album wraps up with a new version of Scott's single "Asperity," an excellent piece of hurtling techno that feels a bit out of place here. Nevertheless, Phlox is an assured collection from an artist with very little to prove.
Tracklist01. Blissfully Unaware
02. Survivors Of The Pulse feat. Dino Sabatini
03. Receptor
04. Distant
05. Circling
06. Phlox Intro
07. Phlox
08. Downside
09. Bauer Reprise
10. The Passing
11. Asperity feat. Markus Suckut