The Obvious I is the 2021 album from Ed Dowie and was the second new master release from Needle Mythology.

 

In 2017, Ed released his feted debut album The Uncle Sold, leading The Quietus to hail him as a “bold and starry-eyed visionary”, The Skinny to praise his “beautiful… stolen snapshots of glimpsed futures and lost pasts.” and BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction made the record one of their albums of the year.

 

Adhering to Kraftwerk’s maxim about achieving the maximum emotional impact by the most minimal means The Obvious I marks a pronounced evolution from Dowie’s earlier music. Co-produced by pioneering British experimental musician and sometime member of PolarBear “Leafcutter John” Burton what ultimately emerged from these efforts – and what reveals itself with successive plays – is a beguiling process of alchemy. Each song is the culmination of a beautiful process of distillation. A crystal extracted from chaos. Tumult distilled into lullaby.

 

“My biggest battle,” says Ed Dowie, “was to ask myself how I can make something that reflects the turbulence of this period without adding to it.”

 

By that metric, and several more, The Obvious I is no small triumph.

 

The Obvious I would sound unutterably pretty even as an instrumental album. But once you factor in a voice whose purity has elicited comparisons to Robert Wyatt, Mark Hollis and Dean Wareham, the effect is something akin to hearing a ghost transmitting from a machine of its own making - Pete Paphides