Landfill Elektronikz
Nick Edwards, the electronic artist formerly known as Ekoplekz, invited GMD Senior Lecturer Craig Burston to produce an identity for a new project – an online radio show called Landfill Elektronikz. Once the project had the go-ahead, time was of the essence – making for a radical approach to design development and production timelines.
Nick and Craig agreed to work with ‘total expedience’ via an online conversation regarding influences, ‘aesthetics to avoid’ and functionality, whilst design development and graphic experiments would be undertaken in realtime.
Nick proffered “I’m thinking modernist council pamphlet sort of thing” as an opener, and Craig responded with “pre-Ziggy Stardust David Bowie fan club newsletter headers and Old Kent Road PC Repair Shops.”
Nick explained the radio show name as deriving from the term ‘landfill indie’ to describe worthless generic noughties guitar bands. It is a statement about the ultimate worthlessness of most electronic music clogging up the internet. And also a bit of self-depreciating humour.
The design of the identity took four hours of constant discussion and development and can now be seen on his Twitter and Instagram profiles, and being readied for further application for the radio show and possible future physical releases.
Craig, who has worked with more atypical time-frames and methods for previous music projects added “Working at such speed was like a real time creative collaboration with a client. A client who was happy to be proved wrong, or right, with presumptions done away with within the first half hour. We both knew instinctively what it shouldn’t look like, so then it was a case of working through what could work, with me producing something we were both equally satisfied with. I’m not sure I’d like to work like this all the time but it was an excellent experiment.”
As Ekoplekz and other pseudonyms (plus his real name), Nick Edwards has released over twenty albums for a range of labels such as Mordant Music, Punch Drunk and a run of four albums for the high profile Planet Mu records and most recently on Seagrave. Since 2020, Nick has reverted back to his real name and has already released three albums via Bandcamp in 2020. Landfill Elektronikz is a further adventure into new ways to produce and share new works.
Landfill Elektronikz launches in January 2021 via theneonhospice.com and the show will run every last Saturday of the month at 21:00hrs GMT. First show: 30 January.