You may want to fasten your seatbelt before you start in on this album, lest you be blown out of your chair by the irresistible force of its opening track, a skipping, loping fanfare called “Nautilus.” One could well imagine it, rescored for standard symphonic instruments, lifting the lid on a classical concert, not to mention threatening to lift the lid off the concert hall.

And Anna Meredith could do the rescoring too, since she’s a bona fide classical composer, graduate of the Royal College of Music and former composer-in-residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. So, what’s a nice composer like Anna Meredith doing in the world of techno-pop? To quote from Laura Snapes’s profile of Meredith in the Guardian:

Eventually, though, Meredith decided that she wanted to explore an area that few classical composers tiptoe into: the pop world. To be more specific, the avant-synthpop and peak-time howlers of her debut album Varmints. She had grown frustrated by classical’s constraints, where months of work can climax in a single performance – and often to a sneery audience. “I don’t want to write music that people are enduring just to get to the Elgar in the second half,” she says wearily. She repeatedly highlights the snootiness during our gallery walkabout – an awareness that safeguards her own compositions. “I’ve got quite a pretentious-ometer running. If there’s ever a more direct way to say something, I’d rather do that. That’s what I’m asking myself the whole time: can you be braver, can you be bolder, can you be simpler?”

(Ms. Snapes, by the way, also gave “Varmints” a glowing review in the American indie music mag Pitchfork.)

Then again, Anna Meredith doesn’t just compose “nice” classical music, to judge from her best-known works, such as her big hit from the 2012 BBC Proms, a visually and aurally arresting spectacle called “HandsFree”:

Now, if I hadn’t known about Meredith’s background before listening to “Varmints,” would I have guessed that it was the work of a classically-trained composer? Probably not, especially during the approximately half of the album (e.g., “Taken,” “Something Helpful”) with a strong pop orientation, replete with melodic hooks and conventional pop vocals (some by Meredith herself). But on the big instrumentals, such as “R-Type,” “The Vapours” and the aforementioned “Nautilus,” the shaping, shading and invention of the music equals or excedes that of almost any techno artist now active. They also really rock. So for now, at least, classical’s loss is our gain. Check it out below or at Anna Meredith’s
Bandcamp page, where you can purchase “Varmints” on CD or vinyl with complimentary download.