Fusing the splintered remains of dubstep with lush songwriting, Eastern influences, Frank Zappa and more, Rudi Zygadlo is one of the most distinctive figures in UK electronic music.
A producer with a strong appreciation of visual media, the Glasgow-based producer's work seems to pluck inspiration from all corners of the arts. Appalled by ongoing slashing cuts to arts and culture imposed by the current government, the Scottish artist asked Clash if he could write something.
This is what we got back – an abstract yet revealing journey into the outer fringes of Rudi Zygadlo's imagination.
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2014
It's the first day of spring and I am supposed to be meeting a fashion student pal outside the Royal College of Art in Kensington. She is invariably tardy and I have arrived early. The school is on the shaded side of the street so I relocate to the steps beneath the Albert memorial across the road, a good observation post for the sudden germination of spring wear cat-walking down Kensington Gore. Immediately around me are sun sneezing tourists snapping the glowing-gold Prince consort as he presides over the street, whilst stretching northward, the park buzzes with the eternal novelty of a season’s beginnings; a true pathetic fallacy.
Too long a time elapses before I receive an apologetic message involving deadlines, rescheduling promises and all the other unforgivable cliches which pertain to a let-down text. However this does allow me laps around the huge monument which until today I have never properly acknowledged, despite passing frequently. As with the Walter Scott Memorial in Edinburgh, the dedicatee is housed in a rocket shaped ciborium, indeed Albert looks like he is being launched into space. He sits atop the ‘Frieze of Parnassus’ which depicts 169 artistic, European high achievers. Shakespeare and Homer take centre stage here. In the spire above, things are generally ecclesiastical. It’s all frilly, gothic and a bit confused; a vertical hierarchy of grotesques, clergymen, angels – ‘Victoria and her people’ stacked 50m skyward.
At the outer corners of the square which surrounds the central structure and steps, are allegorical sculptures of the four continents and on the inside beneath the frieze, are four personified industrial sciences (agriculture, commerce, engineering, manufacture) You can’t climb up and join him for there are high barriers at the top of the steps but I reckon that from his vantage point he can see great swathes of South Kensington falling back behind the eponymous concert hall; the embassies, museums and schools of ‘Albertopolis’ on Exhibition Road, the Jamatkhana Ismaili Centre at Cromwell Gardens which resembles, should it ever have existed, an Art Nouveau egg box and farther south still, the exorbitant al fresco eateries and ice cream parlours around Thurloe Street.
The game of recognising the celebs of European history (they are labeled) followed by the game of omissions (no Schubert nor Caravaggio) keeps me occupied for sometime before the imperial arrogance and divine righteousness of the thing starts to grate. Is it not more a memorialisation of the spirit of victorian plunder? With as many Baroque composers, Greek philosophers and Renaissance polymaths squeezed in to a 200 feet strip as possible and sat upon by the Prince Consort.
I am considering a route home when a girl my age approaches looking for a cigarette lighter and the V&A. I pad myself down, produce one and instantaneously decide that Im heading there my self, would she like a chaperone? This gesture is uncharacteristic and can only be explained by the heat, being stood up and the desire for replacement company. She is wearing what i believe to be patent leather silver derbies which glow now like the Prince. It reminds me of a joke about shoes that don’t mind waiting around and when I tell her she invites me to examine them more closely. I am startled to find that they are in fact metal shoes, in the toe cap of which I can see my gawping face, fish eye. As I rise I see my reflection embedded in the shoulders, elbows and breast pockets of her crop leather jacket in yet more sartorial metalwork.
Each plate is engraved with intricate Greek meandros – that pattern you see on anything not Greek purporting to be Greek, like Greek style yoghurt. Underneath her jacket she wears a cropped white singlet, short loose black linen trousers, black diaphanous socks and a silk brocade belt. Her exposed midriff exhibits more Grecophilia; dangling from her naval, a semi metamorphosed Daphne depicted like Bernini’s, with branches for arms and leaves for hair. I must be showing intrigue because she turns around to dazzle me with another much larger plate on her back showing a young woman eating some fruit.
"Gonna petrify some gorgons with that bad boy?" I offer.
"I wear this jacket to herald the arrival of spring," she declares, pointing over her shoulder. "This is Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She is abducted by Hades and taken to the underworld. When Demeter, goddess of the harvest, searches the earth for her, she neglects agriculture and the earth becomes barren. Helios, who can see everything, finally tells Demeter where Persephone is and Hades releases his captive but not before cunningly feeding her a pomegranate seed. Having tasted the food of the underworld, she is forever obliged to spend a third of the year in his company." The story is familiar to me, albeit not the fruity detail. "It's a myth which explains the seasons," she continues. "When Persephone is captive, Demeter banishes the sun and neglects the crops. When released, like today, Demeter lets the sun back, rejoices, re-germinates."
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2015
In a long corridor flanked either side by mannequins, invisible speakers play a simple baroque motif. Dm A7 Dm C F C Dm A7. I know the music well and I anticipate relating this to Percy, whereupon we might chat about its curatorial significance, but both the title and the composer elude me. As it moves through five or six variations, its identity hangs on the tip of my tongue, preoccupying me entirely for the length of corridor, indeed I have reached the next gangway without acknowledging any of the garments. Right come on. Its earlier than Bach. Purcell’s Funeral March for Queen Mary? No, no drums. Rameau gavottes? La Folia! But who’s variations? Baptiste Lully? Corelli? Scarlatti? Percy has u-turned and is inspecting the other flank of mannequins, entitled ‘Widows Of Culloden’.
"‘You know Jean Baptiste Lully died of gangrene after striking his foot with his own conducting staff, at a performance of his own music?"
"Uh huh?", she responds, without taking her eye off the garment. "Why do you mention it?"
"I just wonder if his death – death by profession – is a relevance here, in this macabre of exhibitions. Lully’s La Folia is like an omen isn’t it? As we walk through the chronology of Alexander McQueen’s life and work, we are approaching the end; his death, which some may attribute to his profession. You know, it’s dramatic irony or something." I’ve spoken without conviction and I remember how quiet she likes to be in exhibitions. Talking is for afterwards. Nevertheless she does respond.
"Oh? Maybe." She moves to the next exhibit wagging an imaginary staff in 3 as the music reaches a perfect cadence. ‘I believe this is Handel though."
The next room is dark, but erected inside it is a large glass fronted box lined inside with a white chesterfield padding. I suppose its like a clinical cell and within it 2 mannequins wear a varnished razor clam shell dress and a skirt of died red and black ostrich feathers with a bodice of 2,000 red-painted microscope slides. Intuition compels Percy and I to stand, each opposite a mannequin. The light in the cell begins, imperceptibly at first, to dim, whilst the room brightens in perfect contrary motion. The glass must be a surveillance mirror because the cell seems unaffected by the light on our side. As the brightnesses of the room and the cell slowly converge, our reflections overlay the mannequins so that either they appear to have our faces or we appear to be wearing their dress.
The equilibrium lasts less than a minute before the light inside the cell diminishes to blackness and we are left transfixed to complete, opaque reflections. After a short paralysis, I become aware of people behind us. I become self conscious. I put my arm around Percy and with an exaggerated guffaw I ask her if the dress in front of me was commissioned by an aristocratic Chinese person… or should I say someone of the Upper crust-Asian community?
She asks me why I can't be a just a little dignified? Not the desired response. The cell begins again to illuminate. And Did I understand the piece? Had I read Lacan? The mannequins, feathers and shells re emerge. Imagoes, superegos? etc.
"Maybe," I say, "but I cant apply them so deftly, so immediately as you."
"Why do you have to make a joke out of everything, undermine it?"
"I thought you liked cynicism, its healthy." A razor clam quite spontaneously drops to the floor and breaks in two. People are buffering in behind us and out in front of us.
"Cynicism demands an explanation, you just trivialise everything, suck away all the sincerity, reduce it to toilet humour. Being quiet is never an option is it? Can’t you go on ahead or something. You’re rushing me." Our reflections have completely disappeared now and an entirely new group of people behind us must be looking at our silhouettes. Despite what she has just said, Percy advances ahead of me to the next room with an audible exhalation and I am left wondering weather to follow immediately, go back against the current or hang around here, by the padded cell.
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Rudi Zygadlo's new single 'Sympathies Scrapbook' is out now.
