Prep have aired the new video for Don’t Bring Me Down, the first single to arrive from their forthcoming EP Cold Fire , due out in April 2018. Directed by Tuixen Benet (also behind the choreography for Tame Impala’s The Less I Know The Better clip), Don’t Bring Me Down, is the first new music from Prep since the hotly-tipped Londoners’ debut EP ‘Futures’, released in 2016 alongside 4 Hype Machine hits, an AlunaGeorge remix and radio plays across Radio, 1Xtra and Beats 1, with over 7 million streams online. Prep will support the release of Cold Fire with a headline date at London’s Oslo on May 5, 2018.
Appositely shot in the perma-sun of Los Angeles’ Korea Town, Benet’s clip for Don’t Bring Me Down – intersecting with the Asian-inspired elements of Prep’s previous visuals – traces a young Korean dancer moving through the neighbourhood’s rooftops, parking lots and neon-lit streets. Informed in part by Spike Jonze’s classic video for Daft Punk’s Da Funk, the surreal, tender clip aligns the man’s gradual transformation into a Birdman with ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’s upbeat rumination on anxiety and ambition in a West Coast city.
The Cold Fire EP captures Prep making good on the buzz surrounding Futures, with an impressive string of collaborators, including Kaytranada associates Pomo (who’s production work featured on Anderson .Paak’s ‘Malibu’) and fast-rising, Kitsuné-signed Portland singer Reva De Vito. The EP’s taut, immersive title track also features a co-vocal from Korean megastar DEAN, a driving force behind PREP’s own hothoused success in Asia, where gigs are more-often-than-not the scene of hundreds of people, phones aloft, singing every word of the Futures EP.
Prep came about as a placeholder alias for 4 artists with an eye-watering list of credits under their belts. Co-writer and keyboard player Llywelyn Ap Myrddin – a classical & opera composer with a predilection for electronica – began working up instrumentals with House music producer / drummer Guillaume Jambel, who – under the GIOM moniker – has headlined Fabric, collaborated with Defected Records and is touring with George Fitzgerald. Llywelyn was completely thrown by the response to some of these tracks from Grammy nominee Dan Radclyffe, noted for his work on recordings by Drake and AlunaGeorge. ‘I played him this instrumental, and Dan said, ‘Well that’s quite Yacht Rock, isn’t it?’ And I was like ‘What on earth is Yacht Rock?’” Sensing nonetheless the foundations of a shared musical DNA, Myrddin, Jambel and Radclyffe began to dedicate serious moonlight hours to the new joint venture. PREP’s line-up was quickly solidified by frontman Tom Havelock (friendly with Radclyffe from co-writing for the likes of Riton, Sinead Hartnett and Ray BLK), who’s effortless falsetto was immediately apparent as the perfect foil to the band’s airtight grooves.
UK dates
March 18 | Islington Assembly Hall, London (supporting DEAN)
May 5 | Oslo, London