It’s hard not to notice the marked similarities between the work of Brighton producer Pridon and Warp’s bubble ‘n’ squeak stalwarts Plaid. Now living in Greece, where he keeps himself busy as a music and sound designer for television and radio, Pridon’s output – glowing with both wide-eyed wonderment and vaguely dystopic darkness – is charmingly reminiscent of the London duo’s heavily hybridised post-techno, while managing to keep it’s own distinctive musical trajectory. New Stein, his new EP for emerging Athens label-folk Low Impedance, is a case in point. The follow-up to his 2005 full length for the Vibrant Music imprint, this six-track EP draws from a basis of blocky rhythmic structures, springing beat-craft, and cute, circular melodic inferences to mould a sound that breaches bubbly, bounce-laden hip-hop as nimbly as it does opaque, synth-heavy IDM. Flipping from the insatiably fat, low-end cuteness of Caretta and Relax, to the slanted drum’n’bass of Scruffy and dark, scything dub of Legh Naoum, New Stein shows Pridon to be on top of his game. Of course, which particular game that is – a lovingly rehashed version of Pac Man, or the latest in the irrepressibly sinister Doom series – remains perfectly and flawlessly unclear.
Dan Rule
