| By the time he'd found his way onto the label-defining Geographic compilation, You Don't Need Darkness to Do What You Think Is Right, James Rutledge had put out just one Pedro EP, an early 2000 missive for Melodic that would've served as a key part of the gathering "folktronica" movement if it hadn't remained so obscure. By appearing on that compilation, though, and thereby being seen to embody the handmade spirit that defines the Pastels' imprint, it seems to suggest that Rutledge - whose day job was playing in dawdling post-post-rockers Dot - had gone further into the furrier edges of his organic/electro craft. When he turned up with his debut Pedro disk, Rutledge didn't dissuade such thinking: his folktronic frolicking pirouetted through all the familiar Four Tet-ish circles, turn-turn-turning through autumnal electro whose dexterous cut-ups of synth squelches, orchestral samples, Reichian malleting, dubbed-out bass, one-finger piano fumbling, and acoustic guitar twangs were strewn like so many fallen leaves. With this remix disc, Rutledge's strolling, lolling one-man show is now "free folk hop," with remixes from Prefuse 73, Danger Mouse, and Cherrystones. There's no surprises from those folk, all of them pushing a dusty break/back-beat to the fore. Cherrystones clears space away from proto-synth funk and phased guitar, while P73 stabs a staticky radio-signal with a sharp cello, which shatters of shards of truncated voices - of course - and blood-lipped brass. Danger Mouse digs that same cello line, wedding it to a beat-loop caked in a basement's worth of dust. Breaking from those ranks comes Four Tet, who rides his current cosmic-jazz kick for 21-minutes of freak-out built from cut-up hot-chops, his epic ramblings tabling the elements and taking up exactly half of the contents. - Grooves |
1XEP/Out Of Print