Album Review: Mark Pritchard - The Four Worlds

One of electronic music's best enduring boffins, Mark Pritchard returns with his soundtrack for a film and virtual reality installation by visual artist Jonathan Zawada. It's something of a return favour as Zawada provided striking and memorable visuals for Pritchard's previous album Under The Sun.

Glasspops is a slow-building opener with an edge of menace that was no doubt supplied by the Hamburg air raid shelter in which it was recorded, not to mention its ominously undulating bassline and what could be bionic crickets chirping. After this somewhat intense opener, the solo piano piece Circle Of Fear leads the rest of the album into more haunting territory. Come Let Us features a truly unnerving semi-spoken vocal from Gregory Whitehead delivering what might be an anti-civilisation rant, while The Arched Window recalls the very-early electronic music of Terry Riley. The vocalist identifying as The Space Lady comes across like a lunched-out Laurie Anderson on SOS.

The Four Worlds is a relatively minor work, but an ambitious chapter nonetheless and yet another example of the extreme versatility that Pritchard's shown throughout his career. He's able to master any electronic musical style at will.