Currently composing affecting electronic music with emotional resonance like few others, Chris Clark’s new EP – the title track’s lifted from his latest LP, Body Riddle – finds the St Albans native, now decamped to Berlin, going for the most direct of approaches. ‘Ted’ is a three-minute master-class in modern IDM manufacturing; it’s simple on the surface but mind-bendingly complex beneath the beat-heavy upper layers. Its squelches and crunches are immediate in their grasp about the listener’s synapses, and the buzzing, insect-like rushes that ripple below the straightforward thud-thud of ‘Ted’’s surface are tingling in their potency.

The subtleties of the title track are expanded here, via a remix from Bibio (MySpace); here, the song’s stripped bare to an almost acoustic rendering, with strings plucked about one another with brilliant abandonment while the original song’s melody informs the piece, guiding it to a satisfying climax of shimmering drone. Another track on this six-song EP is a re-working of a Body Riddle arrangement – ‘Springtime Epiphany’ is a remodelling of ‘Springtime Epigram’, and takes the album’s track and extends it into a sweetly beautiful glisten ‘n’ chime affair, a la something Matmos might’ve left lying around after the Vespertine sessions.

If you’re looking for a super introduction to the engrossing world Chris Clark crafts, almost effortlessly, from banks of unemotional machinery, then the Ted EP is the perfect starting point. He’s one of many musicians working in an overcrowded field, for sure, but Clark’s way with the wayward, the left-of-centre and avant-et cetera, is truly intoxicating. He’s a maverick in a sea of mediocrity, and deserves hearty celebration.

Watch the video to _'Ted' here_