| You, Me & Everyone is the stunning new album from Pedro (James Rutledge), an ambitious attempt to widen the scope of cut and paste music. Receiving praise from such pioneers as Danger Mouse, Four Tet, Hood, Prefuse 73, Andrew Weatherall and Thom Yorke, Pedro is seen as a Producer’s Producer. With layered references to the sound and compositional structure of modern orchestral work, hip-hop, free jazz and experimental rock music, Pedro has defined himself as a unique craftsman of collected sound. Since the release of his first EP in 1999, which marked the birth of Manchester's Melodic Records, Pedro has worked relentlessly to broaden the definition of instrumental hip-hop and cut n paste music. Some of his early work and collaborations with people like The Pastels, Kevin Shields and Kathryn Williams were hailed as landmark recordings by a number of UK publications, and were released on Domino (Franz Ferdinand, Sons and Daughters etc) and Moshi Moshi (Hot Chip, Architecture In Helsinki, Mates Of State etc). With only a small handful of releases under his belt Pedro quickly went on to find favour with acts like The Books, Boom Bip, Caribou, Hood, Radiohead, Tunng etc. and also prompted artists like Dangermouse and Four Tet to remix his tracks for the Fear & Resilience EP (Melodic/Mush). His last appearance was with Prefuse 73 on the Warp LP Surrounded By Silence. In 2002 James was living in the north of England. Recently graduated from Oxford, he was working with the Melodic label, originally set up to release Rutledge’s output as Pedro. He was also playing in Dakota Oak Trio with two friends from school. The Manchester based group had become a firm live favourite; a group that swayed between heady swirls of garage feedback and angular melody. Part way through recording their debut album, the founding member Dave Tyack went missing whilst on holiday in Corsica. He had died after a walking accident, but his remains lay undiscovered for two years. After this event James stepped back from making music. Having been shaken and disturbed by the tragic disappearance and death of his friend and creative sparring partner, James became disillusioned with releasing records and returned to being a listener and occasional broadsheet journalist. Switch to late 2005, and to a particularly vivid dream that Rutledge claims contained pretty much the entire You, Me & Everyone album. "I’d been listening to a lot of music played by child orchestras, or written for kids – things like Langley School Project, Stark Reality’s Now, Carl Orff’s Music For Children, or just really primitive noise/ free jazz. I dreamt I was walking around the corridors of my old secondary school, and I could hear the album being played by this strange band of about 100 people. I could hear different parts of the music that I’d been working on repeating and sliding into earshot as I tried to find where it was coming from. When I finally got to the gym, they had finished playing and were all stood staring at me. It was glorious and terrifying." Incredibly, James set about assembling the sounds he had recorded onto the hard drive of his ancient desktop pc, adding flourishes here and there with a 1970s Italian synth, trying to recall what went where, building the record into a vast collage of collected sound. Rutledge went through several versions of each track, and spent a lot of time structuring and sequencing the running order. Preferring to use his imagination to work around the limitations of a small home set up, and wanting the album to feel different to his previous releases, James plumped for a more aggressive and deeply personal sound. Keen to remove elements that had previously got him caught up in a movement he didn’t want to be part of, he switched back to the Beach Boys, Beatles, Can, Hendrix, Sonic Youth and Zappa CDs that he’d listened to as a teenager. Taking their adventurous interest in free jazz, psychedelics, African rhythms and tape music, he expanded this to fit in with the hip hop production aesthetic of artists like Jay Dee, Madlib, Sa-Ra… Rutledge placed these ideas into a musical climate of indie/ dance crossover, and the burgeoning US experimental scene of bands like Animal Collective, Black Dice and Sunburned Hand Of Man, sprinkled with a continuing interest in classical minimalism and DIY electronics. (BTW, you can see Richard Kenworthy’s (Shynola) visual version of the dream on the glorious sleeve). 2007 looks set to be a busy and prolific year for James. He’s produced an entire album about near death experiences by a triumphantly reborn Goldrush for the City Slang label, finished off a single 40 minute dance skronk track/ LP, remixed groups like The Longcut and Bloc Party, recorded an EP with school pals under the name Chapters, is finishing off an LP under the name Colours, preparing a CDR of drone/ minimalism, playing some noise music, working on a hip hop record and currently doing something involving Flaming Lips and Brian Eno. More to follow… You, Me & Everyone is licensed from Mush Records home of such musical mavericks as Daedalus and Cloudead to Inertia’s imprint label Rogue Records, home of Caribou, CocoRosie, Lambchop etc. - PBSFM |
