Anna Meredith

Jet Black Raider is the second EP by Anna Meredith, released on 19 August 2013 by The Vinyl Factory together with Moshi Moshi Records. It followed Black Prince Fury by less than a year, when Meredith was still known mainly as a composer for orchestras and ensembles. VF presented it as her most fully realised set of electronic pieces so far. Clash placed her between avant-garde classical composition and electro-pop that summer, noting that she could bring humour even to her most cerebral moments. Here live players join the electronics, with cello, clarinet, drums and glockenspiel written into the arrangements, as the credits show. In October 2013 Moshi Moshi joined both EPs on one CD for her introduction to American listeners, and three years later came her debut album, Varmints.

Discogs lists the players on the record. She wrote, arranged and produced three of the four tracks, played clarinet and sang. Gemma Kost plays cello and Sam Wilson drums and glockenspiel, also adding vocals, while Tom Carmichael engineered and mixed the sessions. Unicron and Bubble Gun fill the A side. Orlok, released ahead of the EP, takes its name from the vampire of Nosferatu, as KRCU noted in its review. DIY heard power synths, bells and jazz pianos in this piece, a track that begins "scattered and on the brink of being completely overwhelming" (DIY, 2013). The closing ALR is not one of her own pieces. KRCU identified it as a reworking of Erasure's A Little Respect, looped until it becomes nearly unrecognisable, with a rare lead vocal from Meredith. Discogs confirms the point indirectly, crediting her writing only on the first three tracks. On release VF quoted Pitchfork calling the record "an epically ominous fantasia" (Pitchfork, 2013). The whole EP lasts under twenty minutes. KRCU called the record demanding but rewarding, and found it thrilling that music like this was being made at all.

This is the original VF086 edition: a 12" EP pressed on 180-gram heavyweight black vinyl, in a full-colour outer sleeve, limited to 500 copies worldwide.