Banjo Or Freakout’s Upside Down EP is an opaque beast. Comprised of five nuggets of blissed-out pop by a one-man sonic powerhouse named Alessio Natalizia, it follows on from the bedroom shoegaze stylings of last year’s critically adored 'Mr No' single.The EP opens with its title track, a gauzy three-chord strummer, reminiscent of Red House Painters gone lysergic rather than lethargic. The song’s hazy dynamics stay constantly mellow throughout the track’s five minutes; there’s no sense of tension and release, and certainly no risk of a freakout ”“ just a calm drift that manages to be as compelling as it is sedate. Likewise, closer 'This City Is a Fake' is a gorgeous, static-smothered ballad which plays the EP out perfectly.It’s when the tempo gets upped that Banjo Or Freakout start to go a little awry; 'The Week Before' trades the cavernous haze for a curiously danceable loop of tom toms, like Atlas Sound gone tribal, but doesn’t quite have the same lazy power that the lead track does. The reverb gets turned up to eleven on 'Like You', as a four-note piano riff builds up to a climax of chugging drums and fuzzed-up bass; still, the production leaves the song somewhat flat ”“ curious, since the EP is apparently Natalizia’s first foray into a proper studio. Likewise, the El Guincho-esque waves of carnival samples that power the otherwise 'I and Always' sound too muffled to be anywhere near as revelatory as they should; the overall effect resembles nothing more than the sound of the Rio Carnival from inside the bedroom of a nearby Holiday Inn, rather than being fully immersed in the celebration.The true highlight of the EP is a version of debut single 'Mr No', lovingly fucked with by Allez-Allez which, criminally, doesn’t even appear on the EP’s 12” release; stretched out to nearly eight M83-tinged minutes, its skittering beat is hammered out into a minimal four-to-the-floor pulse, its layers of analogue noise matched up with pulsating synth drones. Maybe I’m missing the point by saying that this dancefloor friendly hi-fi excursion is what makes this record great; still, it would be wrong to say that Upside Down doesn’t show promise. It’s just that, until Natalizia can find the tunes to match the ambience, he runs the risk of becoming as polarised as his band name. 63%Banjo or Freakout on Myspace