| Pedro has long been dogged by the 'a bit like Four Tet' tag, but hopefully this new Mush LP will finally cement the producer as a creative force in his own right. Well, if it doesn't the upcoming remixes for Radiohead and Foals should do the trick (mind you, remixing Radiohead? That's one of Kieran Hebden's regular gigs, isn't it?) You, Me & Everyone sounds a good deal more elaborate than previous efforts, and in production terms it's a culmination of years spent honing the craft. Importantly, the sheer simplicity and elegance that characterised Pedro's eponymous debut remains in check, but there's just that little bit more going on. It's fairly inevitable that any electronic musician with a penchant for free jazz and hip hop beats is going to keep getting tangled up with Four Tet references, and sure enough, after a brief intro track, 'I am Keeping Up' presents us with a first instance of this, marrying squealing sax runs with chopped up, frenzied drums in splendid style. It's pretty rare to hear an electronic producer making music that sounds this human and seemingly liberated from the normal strictures of technology. This is taken to extremes on something like 'Spools', which comes across as if a minimum of four or five different records all playing simultaneously. Far more streamlined is the motorised, tuned percussion of 'Nothing But Pebbles', which harks back to the kind of minimal music box sounds dispersed across his first album. There are several such instances that see Pedro dropping the jazzed up hip hop breaks in favour of more ambient pursuits, brilliantly carving out simple, meandering string section melancholy on 'Sound Song', before the similarly pensive title track slowly fires up, just plain thieving the main theme from Sigur Ros' 'Samskeyti', but what the heck, you can let Pedro off the hook given how good it all sounds in this context. Excellent. - Boomkat |
