Greedy Baby is an audio-visual 5.1 Surround collaborative project between IDM duo Plaid and visual artist Bob Jaroc. The CD/DVD project follows some gradually declining efforts since Plaid’s seminal album, Rest Proof Clockwork (1999), and took 4 years to finally complete.

I must say that Greedy Baby sees Andy Turner and Ed Handly return to something close to top form from a purely musical perspective, and with Jaroc’s aid also delivers one of the best audio-visual releases I have seen to date – although, in truth, this still remains a fairly unchartered area.

The 9-track album opens with the paranoia of War Dialer, fashioning together vocal speech samples and dial tones to haunting atmospheric noises – nothing new here, but the album soon gets going on the irrepressible I Citizen The Loathsome – a classic Plaid track, with off kilter melodies sprinkled amongst twisted electronics, it develops into a bruising crescendo of heavy rhythms and mangled electronica.

ZN Zero is equally enticing; in fact this is probably Plaid’s most melodic and simplistic release to date, although it’s difficult to tell whether the music has been ‘watered down’ to fit in with the video aspect of the DVD disc, or whether it was recorded this way regardless. The only track that sounds like it is wholly intended for film is The Return Of Super Barrio, but nevertheless this is still an interesting, experimental piece, with double bass lolling below a simple breakbeat amidst handclaps and South American percussive melodies.

As previosuly mentioned, however, Greedy Baby operates on two levels, both audio and visual. The DVD videos on a secondary disc are generally very good – ranging from abstract symmetrics to vaguely political propaganda and nightmarish urban imagery. Then there’s the outlandish, but beatifully illustrated, cartoon-like video for The Return Of Super Barrio. The DVD also has four bonus videos, and therefore music tracks, that are not featured on the CD, which is surprising because they are as good as anything on the audio disc.

The real beauty of Greedy Baby is that the audio disc stands on its own two feet as an enjoyably sinister yet melodic album, which is likely to be considered one of Plaid’s top three albums to date. Meanwhile, the 5.1 Surround DVD is more than an added bonus – although personally I’m still not sure if people are ready to watch albums in this format – especially as music is continually moving away from home listening in preference to a multitude of easily transferrable, digital formats.