When electronic music is compared to video games, it is invariably linked to spry and cartoonish soundtracks. Dubstep artists like Zomby (who actually composes on an Atari) have mostly reinforced these parallels. Guido, who along with fellow Bristol youngsters Joker and Gemmy is lumped into the dubstep-offshoot wonky or purple, also frequently receives the "video game music" tag. Guido's music, though, has little to do with anything bright or glitchy. A self-professed fan of soundtracks to ornate dreamworlds like those of the Final Fantasy series, Guido's debut album, Anidea, is composed, patient, and a lot closer to phantasmal R&B than anything written for an xBox.
Guido (née Guy Middleton) doesn't yet have the can't-miss-prodigy aura of scene-mate Joker, but that's probably due to lack of material more than aura-killing misses. He shares Joker's sternum-rumbling mids and a general fondness for saturation but little else. Crucially, he is less menacing. A pianist trained in jazz and classical, Guido stuffs his tracks with MIDI instruments until they resemble funky plastic symphonies. He exposed his R&B roots on the vocodor'd slow-jam "Beautiful Complication" and amped expectations with last year's "Way U Make Me Feel" (which reappears here as a pop-vocal track). Guido's love of horns and 1980s vocal-heavy R&B also link him to current hip-hop producers like Polow Da Don; Guido's banging "Mad Sax", which flips a looped saxophone into a siren blare, needs guest verses yesterday.
Guido is anything but showy-- he releases his music on the Bristol-based, Peverelist-run Punch Drunk records-- and Anidea unfurls rather than bludgeons. The eponymous opening track is almost too reserved, its simple four-note patterns politely serving as a base for several sputtering melodies. It's not until the fifth track-- " [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| Beautiful Complication", with Aarya's mesmerizing, pitch-shifted vocals-- that Anidea forcefully demands attention. Then during Anidea's grinning mid-section Guido rolls out "Mad Sax", the tumbling soul of "You Do It Right", and icy after-party of "Take Me Higher". He calmly pulls out all the stops: quivering bass, sensual saxophones, piercing feedback, but Anidea never sounds stuffed or overproduced. Guido doesn't twist knobs or dazzle on the piano. He just delights in sounds, all sounds.
Joker once said of the proposed purple music, "It's not a genre, but purple is the color we all get along with." The lack of genre on Anidea is apparent: Guido doesn't style his music so much as caress it. Anidea impressively never even seems like techno, though it will never be mistaken for an organic live-band recording. The first third of the album, initially too methodical, eventually reveals itself. The arcing synths on "Woke Up Early" start to sound bright and sturdy. The glorious horns that send of "Cat in the Window" are modestly triumphant. Guido can stack sounds with his pals-- pull up to a stoplight with "You Do It Right" blasting and watch heads turn-- but he seems content to pile them neatly. This impulse, to compose, will serve him well in a scene hellbent on the next movement. For now, Anidea is plenty: gray R&B lit by television glow and one of the finest post-dubstep full-lengths yet.
