Photos by Owen Richards

Anna Meredith: "Nautilus" (via SoundCloud)

Last August, Anna Meredith released her debut single, the mighty “Nautilus”.  If J.J. Abrams is looking for new walk-on music for Darth Vader in his Star Wars reboot, John Williams can cash his severance check right now: Meredith’s opus rallies a tangle of brass fanfares before introducing a sound barrier-bending wub that feels like it could vaporize a human body at the right volume.  As far as making an entrance goes, the imperial track is a monogrammed red carpet, a dozen footmen, and a billowing velvet cape-- a hell of an introduction to the London-based, Edinburgh-raised musician. 

“Nautilus” actually heralds the start of Meredith’s second act-- the 35-year-old is already a renowned, groundbreaking force in more rarefied fields.  After several years as composer in residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the rising classical star had an original piece performed at the BBC’s prestigious Last Night of the Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall last August as well.  During the concert, Meredith's “HandsFree” saw 160 members of the National Youth Orchestra lay down their instruments to click, clap, and cluck in unison, using Reichian body percussion to conjure a sound akin to waves crashing through a jungle-- a great antidote to the stuffy surroundings. “ The Proms is such a weird, nationalistic thing-- I had actual proper, physical hate mail,” Meredith explains, half-impressed by the sender’s outrage.  She's sitting in the tiny room where she composes at home in Camberwell, South London, coming through via Skype. 

An hour in Meredith’s company proves her to be tremendously cool-headed and game for anything: She’s scored music for MRI scanners, concertos for beatboxers, and a piece for five symphony orchestras in different corners of the country, connected by satellite. “ I have a gung-ho attitude, which has been a curse and a blessing,” she says. “ Like with ‘Nautilus’, I came up with a bit of it, and thought, ‘Well, that’s a bit ridiculous, but let’s just roll with it!’”  The song (which Foals have been using as their live entrance music) headed up her debut electronic EP, Black Prince Fury, released on Moshi Moshi last October, a spiky, squirming set that married sci-fi soundtracking with Queen-worthy bombast. 

Anna Meredith: "Orlok" (via SoundCloud)

On August 19, she’ll follow it with Jet Black Raider, an EP pitched somewhere between the respective maximalist strains of Planningtorock and Fatima Al Qadiri-- check out lead single "Orlok", above.  Although several of her song titles sound like levels in a gothic MMPORG (some are actually named after her mum’s childhood imaginary horses), Meredith doesn’t start from a point of visual inspiration, but conviction. “ I might have some adjectives-- oily, gritty, ‘like seals at a disco’ was one idea-- but essentially you need to write strong.  There’s so much over-saturation of music that making something memorable or characterful is more important than originality.” 

Pitchfork: How did the process of making Jet Black Raider differ from Black Prince Fury?  What’s the ratio of physical to synthesized instruments? 

Anna Meredith: The actual writing process is very similar: I start on paper, a graphic sketch to set out contours and pacing.  Black Prince Fury had no real sounds at all, though some of them are trying to be real, which some people got very upset about.  This time, the instruments are still mostly fake, but there’s clarinets, singing, glocks, drums, lots of cello.  That made it a lot more time-consuming, and a lot less me-in-my-room-alone.  It’s taken a ridiculously long time to do this, but I wanted to make sure I got it right. 

Pitchfork: Who got annoyed about Black Prince Fury being synthesized?  Are electronic purists as protective as classical ones? 

AM: I think Oneohtrix Point Never was sent it, and he was really nice about the material, but had problems with the kinds of synthesized sounds I was using.  I had thought everyone in the electronic world would be so laid back, but there’s as many cliques and prejudices as any other world.  Other friends have said, "I don’t understand why you’ve used this trumpet-style sound rather than a real one when you know you can write for trumpet."  But it’s most important to get the energy right.  With the classical stuff, I’ve always been better at the big brushstrokes and broad textures than spending ages honing a chord, or tweaking a sample.  I’ve never been really interested in music, classical or otherwise, where the craft is more important than the result.  I realized quickly that I’d never be a technical electronic musician. 

Pitchfork: When you compose in the classical realm, there’s hundreds of years of music in that vein.  Is it harder to be original in that context than in electronic music, a much younger idiom?  Is originality something you’re concerned with? 

AM: I used to think it was very important.  But now I’m less interested in uniqueness than in goodness.  I see so many concerts where the program notes are more interesting than the music.  I remember talking to one composer who went through the most complicated mathematical algorithm to generate some material from scratch.  It took weeks and weeks, and he came up with a C major chord.  For me, honesty is more interesting than originality. 

Pitchfork: How did you develop your skills for electronic music? 

AM: The very first thing I did was a piece called “Axeman”, which is for a bassoon that you wire up like an electric guitar, through pedals.  I wanted it to sound like a Slash solo.  That was the first time I thought about transforming sound through distortion.  I did a few courses introducing technology, and I did find it quite daunting-- for years, I liked the idea but felt I could never do it, I felt like a fraud.  It’s only in the last four or five years that I’ve thought: "just do it."  For me, it’s all about confidence.  If I’m feeling confident, then I write confident, happy, or assured music.  I can hear some early electronic sketches I did where I’m clearly not confident and everything’s a bit mid-range, nothing really pushes through. 

When I look through old sketches, I can tell where I’ve thought, “What if I wrote something like James Blake, or Outkast?”  It’s never as good.  I try to listen to stuff that makes me happy for other reasons, rather than being musically inspiring.  I feel happier knowing a starting point came from me.  And I like stuff that gives you a physical reaction.  I went to a performance where the composer put speakers under every chair in the audience.  Performances are so defined by their venues-- it’d be nice for the music to dictate more of the reaction.  Quite often, when I describe to people what I want, I’ll say “overwhelming”-- I want it to feel like it’s physically taking you over. 

Pitchfork: In another interview, you said you’d love to play London nightclub Plastic People one day.  How would you make that work? 

AM: I’ve never really played a club, but I think it could suit the music quite well-- at least, I’d love to hear it on a really massive system.  I want to become less and less about the laptop.  That’s what’s lovely about an orchestra-- the physicality, the way every gesture relates to something you’re hearing.  There’s something strange about a laptop, how you can make the tiniest gesture and make the biggest sound.  I don’t feel I’ve resolved working a sense of performance into a piece yet. 

Also, if the power went out in a venue, is there still something to what you’re doing? “ Bubblegum” is mostly played on boomwhackers, to a beat.  Last time we did it live, the computer crashed halfway through.  We were shitting ourselves, but the music carried on.  It’s the balance between wanting the power of electronics and having something real happening-- if you want people to engage in what you’re doing, I think that’s important.  I want to have fun with people, but that’s hard to do with a laptop. 

Pitchfork: Have you ever seen Grimes live? 

AM: No! 

Pitchfork: She’s always somehow tethered to her table of equipment.  There’s this amazing photo of her playing a festival where she’s moved around the front of the stage, but her hand’s reaching up behind her, triggering something else. 

AM: She’s an amazing role model.  She’s strong, she loves it.  It’d be brilliant to see what she does from behind the table.  Maybe she’s not the strongest singer, but it was partly how she sings that made me think, "Fuck it, I’ll do it too."  It took an unbelievable amount of stress to make myself sing on Jet Black Raider, I was absolutely shitting myself, so I don’t know whether that means I’ll never do it again or not! 

Pitchfork: Are these EPs building up to an album? 

AM: I want to do an album next, hopefully next year.  I’ve already got a few tracks.  I like the idea of it feeling like going for a journey through the whole thing, that’d be fun to plot out. 

Pitchfork: Do you have a big dream project? 

AM: I’m up for a massive, bombastic tour with hydraulics, robots, lasers, 15 costume changes, projecting on a power station, big impact, big visuals.  I’d love to realize the theatricality of the whole thing.  To be overwhelming, to surprise you, maybe to play in hidden spaces.