Anna Meredith

Anna Meredith had a reputation in contemporary composition well before she put out a record of her own. Black Prince Fury was that first record, a four-track 12" issued in October 2012 by The Vinyl Factory with Moshi Moshi Records. In it a composer trained in orchestral writing turns towards electronics and brass. When the EP was announced, FACT introduced her as a former composer for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and one of twenty composers chosen for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. VF also cited The Daily Telegraph, which had described her as one of Britain's leading young composers. It was the first of two EPs she made for the two labels, both pressed in small numbers on vinyl. It is also the starting point of the path that led to her debut album Varmints in 2016.

According to VF and FACT, Meredith spent about a year honing these pieces in the studio and on stage. She road-tested them at shows with James Blake, These New Puritans and Mira Calix. The record opens with Nautilus, led by what VF called a throbbing horn fanfare. The label described what follows as lush psychedelia and slow-building downtempo electronica, about eighteen minutes in all, across Rhododendron, Never Wonder and Orca. Nautilus outgrew the EP quickly. VF later wrote that it was named among Pitchfork's top tracks of 2012 and that Foals used it as walk-on music at their concerts. Meredith placed it again as the opening track of Varmints, released by Moshi Moshi in 2016. The chamber group Icebreaker also took it into its repertoire in an arrangement for the ensemble. In 2013 Moshi Moshi gathered this EP and its follow-up, Jet Black Raider, on a single CD. Reporting on that pairing, Clash described her live shows as a gleeful display of invention with an assured pop touch, and found the combined 38 minutes hugely impressive.

This is the original VF057 pressing: a 12" EP on black vinyl, pressed at 180 grams according to VF and FACT, in a limited edition of 300 copies.