By The Power Of Zygadlo

It’s odd to hear a cliché from someone so creative: “Signing to Planet Mu was a dream come true.” Still, Rudi's in shock, having recently landed on his feet after sending out “a few tunes to about two labels” and getting a smugly casual one-liner back, from a label he hadn’t even contacted. “Do you want a release on Planet Mu?” Yes, please.

I read about him on some rather adoring blogs, check out his mix on the Mary Anne Hobbes show. I note his personal Myspace message – nice. I hear he’s been given the official LuckyMe pat-on-the-back. I see him headline a gig with The Blessings and Eclair Fifi. It’s rare that good things come to those who are, well, good, without the soul-destroying process of selling themselves.

But, the ‘scene’, the back-slaps, the hype... it just isn’t him. He’s far more comfortable talking about setting the Latin mass to electronic music. “All throughout classical music history composers have been commissioned by the church. It would be interesting to do a contemporary version to banging dubstep.”

The album is like a few things you’ve heard, but would never expect to hear together. We’re not talking ‘mash-up’. Layers of live, Zappa-esque guitar and arpeggic synths fit snugly with distorted vocal allusions to the Requiem Mass, supported by the expert, rhythmic precision of the most danceable dubstep and hip-hop. It’s complex stuff, but also so melodic, repeatedly falling back upon the classic pop structure, that it remains graspable, fascinating.

Claiming the lyrics are “mostly inane rubbish”, he then launches into the narrative behind one of the tracks, Layman’s Requiem. “This guy's trying to read the weathercock on top of a spire, so he climbs up, then falls through the spire and down on to a Mass. It’s the idea of an unordained man dying in front of the minister, the churchgoers saying ‘Ostracise this man’, and him saying ‘Sing my requiem’”

He trails off. This isn’t an isolated incident. Throughout the conversation, hints of a problematic, more epic project creep in. Sitting in his bedroom-cum-living-room, you can sense this ungraspable new idea, floating ghostlike around the empty Grouse bottle he uses as an ashtray, past the abstract paintings on the wall, lingering over the unmade bed.

Within half an hour we’ve gone from new kid on the scenester block, to romanticised isolated artist. Now it’s me veering into clichés. I try to ground the conversation. Growing up in Dumfriesshire, how does he feel about the Glasgow scene? “I actually stopped making tunes when I came up. If you're not confident, and everyone's imposing their creative things... the only way I could do it was sitting in my room. That's what the subject of the operetta is: a creative who doesn't have an outlet because he doesn't want to be part of the rat race, so then...”
He’s done it again. He zones back in. “I’ll send you the synopsis, if you like?”

Maybe he can’t be grounded. Maybe that’s a very good thing.