| I'm pleased to announce this is not a solo album from the diminutive nerd Pedro from the indie cult film Napoleon Dynamite. Pedro is, in fact, the nom de guerre of UK producer James Rutledge, who's been releasing work since 1999 on Manchester's Melodic Records. It's strange that this album has been available as an import for two years yet has only found a moderate audience, albeit a celebrity-enhanced one, with Radiohead's Thom Yorke and My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields among the fans. LA's Mush label (home to Busdriver, Daedelus, and Her Space Holiday) saw fit to rectify this lack of, um, recognition by reissuing Pedro and adding a bonus disc of remixes. Here's where the fun begins: Rutledge attempts to sew together his love for 20th-century classical composers like Steve Reich and Karlheinz Stockhausen with mangled hip-hop beats and fragmented electronic programming. Sounds like a mess, huh? Almost as geeky as that other Pedro: "Look out, here comes that UK po-mo glitch b-boy — come to rock you like Philip Glass!" But no, Rutledge manages to keep his sonic goulash tasty for most of the album's nine tracks. That would be the end of the story here, except that the additional seven-song remix EP, Fear and Resilience, is an absolutely epic affair of its own. These guest producers poured every ounce of creative blood they could spare into making Rutledge's music manifest. Prefuse 73 deftly slices and dices, Cherrystones infuse spaghetti western hip-hop beats, Danger Mouse loops spiritual soul into the mix, and Four Tet freaks out à la John Coltrane. Talk about revenge of the nerds — this two-disc set should set the record straight about brainy electronic music. - San Francisco Bay Guardian |
![MH-240 Pedro - Pedro [2006 Edition]](/album_art_front/MH240_F.jpg)
1XLP/Out Of Print