After a performance of early 20th-century English composer William Walton's first symphony during a recital in Liverpool earlier this year, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain stood up, set their instruments on their chairs, and, for about 10 minutes, proceeded to act like synchronized cavemen. They hissed, they clapped, they drummed on their bellies, and moved in ways that you generally don't see in concert halls. The piece was called "HandsFree"; the composer was Anna Meredith, a Scottish woman in her mid-30s. You don't need to know who Walton was or what his first symphony sounds like to understand how a bunch of teenagers yelling after it might prove refreshing.
Black Prince Fury, Meredith's first EP as a solo musician, is playful, spirited, visceral, and smart. Aside from the pummeling brass section of "Nautilus" and an AOR rock sample in "Never Wonder" that is too good to spoil, the EP sounds like it was made entirely with drum machines and synthesizers all cut to sound flat, bright, tough and tiny-- the aural equivalent of plastic toys. It's easy to grab a hold of due to how much emphasis Meredith puts on rhythm. They aren't hummable, but they are drummable, snappable, and other impact-related forms of participation. Half the time it sounds like the real joy here for her was creating situations where she could play Tetris with her own polyrhtythms-- once brainy, always brainy.
In her track review of "Nautilus", Laura Snapes compared Meredith's music to that of Björk, Planningtorock, and These New Puritans, for whom Meredith has opened on tour. To my ears, Meredith's real ancestor is Moondog, a New York street musician who also made tough, puzzling miniatures that drew as freely from the pop and jazz of his time as they did from what might have been more readily identified as "classical music." (Meredith has already been the composer-in-residence at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and currently occupies the same position at the Royal Philharmonic Society.) Like Moondog, the character of Meredith's music is triumphant and warlike, but the scale of it is cartoonishly small-- most of the time it only sounds like the work of a few people working in a living room.
And like Moondog (or like the electronic producer Max Tundra, or James Blake's first EPs) Meredith's music feels dense, busy and isolated, but essentially fun, as though it was designed first and foremost to amuse the people making it. At 18 minutes, Black Prince Fury is just a toe or two in the water; whether she'll make more is unclear, but considering how deadeningly self-serious the worlds of classical and electronic music can be, a few more teenagers drumming on their bellies would be a nice thing.
