No one needs to over-analyze why James Blake was able to mesmerize the low-fat Cafe Mocha crowd to see why certain electronic records cross over. The murky underwater fuzz of the early FWD >> material wasn’t going to play in Peoria or really anywhere outside of Rinse. Unless you garnish your beatz with artery clogging bass and a flock of seagulls haircut a la Skrillex, dubstep is too a-melodic and suffocating to really float — unless you’re on about three yellow dolphins.
Between Blake’s success and the Magnetic Men, it’s obvious what it takes to get love from the mainframe. Vocals and super-sized choruses, preferably pressed high up in the mix. Burial’s mangled whale music might win him Mercury’s (and be the best thing ever), but you’ll never hear him on American radio. People want hummable hooks and the occasional Feist cover. Enter Rudi Zygadlo, my pick for the breakout star, who lacks the right media-crafted mythology to be a breakout star.
I’m not trying to make this an either/or type thing. There’s room for everyone and James Blake is a very gifted young man who has one of the most singular voices to emerge out of the electronic music miasma. But what Zygadlo’s doing is equally compelling. Glasglow-bred, Zygadlo recently flocked to Berlin to continue his strain of experimental electronic pop. His latest EP, Achtung, sounds like a less schizophrenic Hot Chip, if they were attempting to make Frank Zappa records. There are horns and (I think) accordians, processed falsetto vocals that soar and sink along with the multiple suites embedded within each song.
If you pull the songs apart, they’re as intensely intricate as a plutonium bomb. The underpinnings of his classical music ardor and his former rock experience are both subtle and obvious. There’s an attention to song structure and melody that’s completely absent in many of his peers. Bowie and Grizzly Bear comparisons have been tossed around and they’re not invalid. But Zygaldo’s style is clearly bass music, first. But rather than use it as a tool to make cool, head nodding songs, he’s using the genre as a vehicle for raw emotion. And that’s what people ultimately respond to, whether you’re listening to Feist or Falty DL. Or Rudi Zygadlo.
Achtung (Go Easy, Come Easy) by RUDI ZYGADLO
The Deaf School by RUDI ZYGADLO
Plage (Rudi Zygadlo Sexed Up The Dossier Remix) – CRYSTAL FIGHTERS by RUDI ZYGADLO
Variously Made Men (out on vinyl, September 2011) by RUDI ZYGADLO
Layman’s Requiem by RUDI ZYGADLO
