After releasing their debut EP Futures in 2016, London-based future-pop quartet PREP - hip-hop producer Dan Radclyffe, classical/opera composer Llywelyn Ap Myrddin, house DJ Guillaume Jambel and singer-songwriter Tom Havelock - are gearing up for the release of their second EP Cold Fire in April. "Don't Bring Me Down", the first taste of their sophomore effort, is another example of how the band's blend of R&B, funk, and jazz coheres into a timelessly euphoric pop concoction. (Their mission statement is to deliver "smooth music from the future").
The sunny and uptempo track is made memorable by Havelock's earnest and acrobatic falsetto, which seems to equate the pursuit of happiness with a conscious flight from a darker state of mind: 'I got my own set of complications/ No one can hear me right/ Don't bring me down/ Don't bring me down (bring me down)/ I just found love in a cruel town [...] I got no time for that other shit now.'
The accompanying music video matches the song's urgent optimism with some exuberant dancing by CalArts actor and L.A. based photographer Hao Feng. He takes to the streets of Korea Town on a day marked by sunshine and picturesque blue skies, matching the song's infectious energy and joie de vivre with his seemingly spontaneous choreography. After mimicking some bird movements, he finds himself in a full-fledged birdman costume - all the better to represent the song's relentless insistence on its ability to defy (emotional) gravity.
