This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… Anna Meredith

UK based artist Anna Meredith has an exhaustive career for someone still in their thirties. Check out some mile-stones so far from her wiki page – composer in residence for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, ‘mentor’ to Goldie and heavily involved in the Proms.

She’s a creates music that shifts across electronica, jazz and classical and if that sounds po-faced can I direct you to the pop harmonies on Taken, from her first album Varmint which is released this month. Oddly her recorded output is quite limited. She’s produced two EPs across the last four years, one Black Prince Fury from 2012 and the other Jet Black Raider from 2013.

There’s a lot going on, it’s busy music – Meredith loves the arp , at some points sometimes overwhelming at other points repetitious (although in a good way) and it repays listening closely. Melodies are entwined, building one on top of the other (Nautilus is a perfect example, and perfectly named as it unwinds and unwinds). It’s not that she doesn’t do soft, Rhododendron is a calm almost understated piece of melodic electronica that drives along with subtle arpeggios. And check out the samples on the – one hopes – tongue in cheek Never Wonder. Then there’s the reflective Orca. Unicron is a more aggressive piece, all deep bass notes and frantic arpeggiations. Bubble Gun pops along before New Order style keyboard washes appear. Orlok starts out as a cousin of Unicron, then alternates between short passages of softer classical percussion and more frantic arps. Finally ALR has actual vocals in what is a skewed pop song whose instrumentation veers somewhat away from the vocal towards the end. It’s pretty great.

Anyhow here’s a selection of tracks taken from Varmint and the EPs. I’m tempted to say there’s almost a prog like aspect to it all, albeit without electric guitars in evidence, but I think she’s approaching all this from an entirely different place. There’s a restless experimental feel to it all. Very impressive.

Taken – from Varmint

Nautilus

Rhododendron

Never Wonder

Unicron

ALR